Katherine Roberts

One for Shi Two for Kashe Three for Rialle Four for Kherron Five for the Silver Shore Six for a golden cover… ...and seven for a secret now revealed! Here is the winning Song Quest cover as chosen by YOU (with 54% of the vote, so it was very close). It was designed by Mandy Norman   and drawn by  Johanna Basford , and will be published by Catnip in February 2012, when you’ll be able to read the book and decode the unicorn's changes to the magpie rhyme above (if you haven't already guessed them). And why did a magpie rhyme pop into the unicorn's head today? Well, as every muse knows, magpies like to collect shiny things that take their eye. This might be just a bit of silver foil, but they have been known to whisk away really valuable items to their nests. "Song Quest" caught Catnip’s eye as being the pick of Katherine's backlist titles (because it won an award), so it gets the golden treatment in paperbac...

THE STORY OF THE BOOK . A first novel is always exciting, and the unicorn was kicking up his heels in joy twelve years ago when “Song Quest” first got published in hardback by Element Books. Here’s the original 1999 cover. Katherine was kicking up her heels in joy, too, when she walked into Waterstone’s in Piccadilly and saw 150 copies of her book displayed around the top shelf of the foyer… though I can’t show you a picture to prove it, because that was back in the days before authors could afford digital cameras. In fact Katherine got lost on her way to the book signing after getting off the train at the wrong tube station, and had to run across half of London in her posh boots, which wore a hole in the soles so she had to spend her advance on a new pair... but I digress. The following summer, Song Quest won the very first Branford Boase Award , awarded to the best debut novel for children published that year, and shared between the author and h...