Ukrainian refugee Muza’s illustration lights up new The Girl of Ink & Stars gift edition

“The Girl of Ink & Stars project was important to me before the war. It became even more important with the invasion. It was the only sure thing left in my life. I feel lucky and grateful to have had it," says Ukrainian artist Olia Muza, who has illustrated a new gift edition of Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s bestselling début, published by Chicken House this week.

First released in 2016, the award-winning middle-grade novel is Chicken House’s bestseller, having sold nearly 270,000 copies in the UK to date. The publisher auditioned several artists for the illustrated edition, but deputy m.d. Rachel Hickman said Muza, whom it had previously worked with on Angharad Walker’s The Ash House, “captured the spirit of the narrative about a young girl who triumphs in the face of adversity”. 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Muza fled her home in Kyiv to Western Ukraine for a few days, before crossing the Romanian border and eventually ending up in Austria. Despite her displacement, she continued working on the book. She said: “We were roaming through Europe for a while. It was very bad with the internet and it was physically difficult to work, as the situation was far from comfortable… I had no place to work. Sometimes it was a kitchen table, if it was free, but usually it was a chair near a bed.” She added: “With everything going on, it was good to have something to concentrate on.”

Chicken House “squeezed the schedule and pulled in favours” to move the publication back. Hickman elaborated: “We stayed the course and somehow Olia managed to not only work from wherever she was as she fled her home—she managed to do something incredibly special.” Muza’s illustrations in the book are mostly digital and Hickman feels they “capture the magical realism [of the story] perfectly”.