I Was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers; The Scarecrow and His Servant

Philip Pullman is one of the most acclaimed writers working today. He is best known for the His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass), which has been named one of the top 100 novels of all time by Newsweek and one of the all-time greatest novels by Entertainment Weekly. He is also the author of another trilogy set in the same world, The Book of Dust (La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth, and The Rose Field) as well as numerous other much-loved novels, a collection of fairy tales, and a volume of essays and speeches on writing. He has won many distinguished prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread (now Costa) Award, Parents’ Choice Gold Awards, and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Pullman was knighted for services to literature in the New Years Honours 2019. He lives in Oxford, England.

Peter Bailey is a British illustrator, educated at the University of Brighton’s School of Art, who has illustrated over 140 books, including Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Tony Mitton’s books The Storyteller’s Secrets and Tale of Tales. He lives in Merseyside, England, with his wife and fellow illustrator Sian.