Bloomsbury Children’s has announced three major new illustrated funny fiction series, including a hilarious, highly commercial graphic-novel debut from UK author and illustrator Beccy Blake, and exciting new directions for stars of the Bloomsbury list Catherine Doyle and Tom Percival. All three form part of a wide-ranging strategy to put accessibility at the heart of Bloomsbury’s publishing for children as a response to emerging data about falling rates of reading for pleasure and literacy, as addressed by Publishing Director and Editor-in-Chief Rebecca McNally in her keynote speech at the Bookseller Children’s Conference.
A superlead acquisition heading into Frankfurt Book Fair, publishing in February 2026, is Chicken Hill: Attack of the Zombie Cactus. A full-colour middle-grade graphic novel from UK debut author and illustrator Beccy Blake, it is a flagship title for this growing space on the list. World rights in three off-the-wall adventure books about Ferdy, Gripper and Tink, who investigate all things strange in the seriously odd town of Chicken Hill, were acquired in a pre-empt by Commissioning Editor Eleanor Willis from Gill McLay at the Bath Literary Agency.
Willis says, ‘When I saw early material for Chicken Hill, I knew this was something very, very special. Working with Beccy to develop the series into hilarious, accessible and brilliantly madcap adventure stories has been a dream commission. Beccy Blake is an absolute creative powerhouse, and we’re thrilled that Bloomsbury is her publishing home.’
Blake adds, ‘I am thrilled to bits to be working with such a superb team at Bloomsbury. The wonderfully weird world of Chicken Hill is my dream project and a realisation of all the ideas, jokes, characters and stories that I’ve been evolving over my career as an illustrator.’
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