New Client: Walker Books
Many award-winning and internationally renowned authors are published by Walker US, Walker UK, Walker Australia and Candlewick, and we're happy to now represent their children's and YA fiction list. Below you can find a selection of the most important projects from the Spring 2024 rights guide.
Let's start with the lead title MAGICALIA: RACE OF WONDERS by Jennifer Bell, first of a four-book middle grade fantasy series. When her dad is kidnapped, Bitsy and best friend Kosh are swept into a secret world of ancient meteorites and strange beasts called magicores, each conjured using a different emotion. Using a powerful beastiary called Magicalia, the friends must quickly become conjurors themselves, before following a trail of clues that will take them from London to India to Paris, in a race to rescue Bitsy’s dad from a mysterious villain… Rights sold: Danish, French, German, Turkish.
FERRIS by two-time Newbery Medal winner Kate DiCamillo was released in March by Candlewick and immediately became a New York Times bestseller and has been described as "a balm for the soul”. It’s the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium. Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris’s mother’s chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has started seeing a ghost in the doorway to her room – which seems like an alarming omen given that she is feeling unwell. But the ghost is not there to usher Charisse to the Great Beyond. Rather, she has other plans... Rights sold: German, Simplified Chinese, US Spanish.
On the YA fiction front we're happy to present a new thriller series: OXFORD BLOOD by Rachael Davis-Featherstone, to be released in February 2025. Eva has one dream: to study English at Oxford University. Not only will she receive a world-class education – getting into Oxford is a pass to freedom. But when Eva and her best friend George are invited to Interview Week, they find themselves part of a kill-or-be-killed competition on anonymous student forum, Oxford Slays. When Eva finds George dead on the steps of a statue in the college, she knows he’s been murdered – but all eyes are now on her. Can she clear her name, catch the true killer and win her place at Beecham College? Eva has one week to prove her innocence.
LOUDER THAN HUNGER by John Schu is a fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, a triumph of raw honesty. Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age, avoiding the cruelty of mirrors, and avoiding food. Jake would do anything to shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? Rights sold: German.
We would also like to highlight the final installment in the fantasy trilogy REBEL SKIES by Ann Sei Lin, set in a future world where flying ships and cities are suspended in the sky. Kurara has never known any other life than being a servant on board the Midori, but when her party trick of making paper come to life turns out to be a power treasured across the empire, she joins a skyship and its motley crew to become a Crafter. Taught by the gruff but wise Himura, Kurara learns to hunt shikigami – wild paper spirits sought after by the Princess. But are these creatures just powerful slaves, or are they beings with their own souls? And can a teenage girl be the one to help them find their voice – and change the course of an empire?
“A vividly imagined fantasy with an enticing Studio Ghibli feel.” – The Guardian’s Children’s Books of the Month. Rights sold: Bulgarian, French, Russian, Spanish, Turkish.
