Usborne cooks up a six-figure pre-empt for Harry Woodgate's baking-themed detective series

Usborne has nabbed award-winning picture book author/illustrator Harry Woodgate’s move into middle-grade with a "major" six-figure, four-book pre-empt for a bakery-themed detective series. Associate editorial director Sarah Stewart bought world and audio rights to Cinnamon Crumb, Baking Detective: The Great Cake Caper, and three other titles, from Alice Sutherland-Hawes at ASH Literary. 

The publisher described the series as "’Wonka’ with cakes instead of candies [combining] bowlfuls of charm and humour with lashings of secrets and sabotage". The launch title centres around the titular Cinnamon, who lives in the baking-obsessed town of Marizpan. As she is no baker herself (she even burns toast) she decides to become a detective. But she soon is caught between the rivalry of Victoria Sponge and Madeleine Macaron, who are vying to win the coveted Twelve Tier Crown at the Great Cake Carnival, with both Victoria and Madeleine asking Cinnamon to spy on the other baker. She reluctantly agrees, but soon Cinnamon is "in a situation stickier than sticky toffee pudding".

Stewart said: "Harry Woodgate plus baking mysteries is a match made in publishing heaven and the minute we heard about this series we knew we had to snap it up. Harry’s writing for older readers oozes with so much charm and humour, just like their gorgeous illustrations and picture books."

Long-time illustrator Woodgate’s début picture book as author/illustrator, Grandad’s Camper (Andersen Press, 2021), won the British Book Award Illustrated Book of the Year, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize Best Illustrated Book, and was a recipient of a Stonewall Book Award Honor from the American Library Association. They have been the author/illustrator for three subsequent books for Andersen and Little Tiger.      

Woodgate said: "Writing and illustrating for older children is something I’ve hoped to do for a long time...Cinnamon’s world has been a source of humour, joy and escapism for me over the past few years, and I hope that it becomes the same for readers. It’s a place of sugary-sweet silliness, patisserie puns aplenty, and mouth-watering mysteries waiting to be solved. But most importantly, I hope it’s somewhere readers always feel welcome."

Usborne will publish the first in the series in September 2025, "backed by a major marketing and publicity campaign". The further titles in the series, aimed at readers aged eight plus, are The Biscuit Burglary, The Monster of Mallow Mountain and The Mince Spy Mystery.