D K Children's signs historical novelist Elodie Harper for her first kids' books

The bestselling historical novelist Elodie Harper will make her first foray into children’s with an “ancient Rome meets My Family and Other Animals” middle-grade trilogy.

D K Children’s trade strategy director Arabella Stein bought world English rights, including audio, from Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment in the three titles, after Stein had approached Harper with the idea of writing for children’s.

The first book in Harper’s as-yet-unnamed series will publish in Autumn 2026, with the second and third titles following at nine-month intervals. The series is set in ancient Rome “with a fast-paced plot” featuring Pliny, its 10-year-old protagonist. The artist for the “highly illustrated” books has yet to be announced.

Harper said that when she was approached, “I was absolutely thrilled—as was my son. I knew almost at once that I wanted to reimagine two of my favourite Roman characters, Pliny the Elder and his sister Plinia, as children. Pliny is famous for his work on natural history, but his fascination with animals and nature will take a much lighter and more comic turn [in my books].”

Harper is an ITV journalist and author of the Pompeii-set Wolf Den trilogy, the first of which won the Glass Bell Award. The Wolf Den books have been sold into 20 territories.  

Stein said: “Elodie is a winning combination: an author who draws in her readers with a fast-driven, plot-led narrative and backs it up with incredible historical research. [She] has already captivated adult readers and we’re so looking forward to bringing her pacy, unputdownable narrative packed full of gods, myths and legends to the D K fiction list.”

Mushens said the new series was “ancient Rome meets My Family and Other Animals, in the hands of such a natural storyteller”.