Impossible Creatures

If you haven't come across Rundle's work yet, you will soon.

She's written over a dozen books, including an award-winning biography of John Donne and the children's fantasy series Impossible Creatures, a copy of which every year six child in the country will receive this Christmas.

Disney has just signed a seven-figure deal for the screen adaptation.

Rundle is being touted as the next J.K. Rowling.

You wanted to be a writer and you certainly have succeeded in becoming a writer.

You've written a biography of John Donne, you've written various essays on animals out of which these collections have grown, but you're also a children's author.

How did your interest in actually existing animals evolve into a fascination for impossible creatures and the desire to invent creatures?

So again, I think they're not that dissimilar.

It was perfect.

Katherine Rundell wrote my favorite book of last year, Impossible Creatures.

When I talked about that book on the show, I mentioned that it is middle grade and my children loved it, but it also ended up being my top book of the year because it's exceptionally written.

It tackles the beautiful and the challenging pieces of the human experience, and it encourages us to hope in a world that sometimes feels really dark.

If you pay attention at all to kids literature, you know who Katherine Rundell is.

Her Impossible Creatures book series is beloved by kids, and they constantly make the bestsellers lists here and in Britain.

Today on the pod, she talks to Here and Now's Indira Lakshmanan about the latest installment in the series called The Never Fear, but also about broader issues facing children's lit and why you should read books for kids even if you're all grown up.

That's after the break.

But what if discarding children's literature is a mistake? Katherine Rundell believes it is.

She's a Renaissance literature scholar at Oxford and the first British children's author since J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame to hit number one on the US and UK sales charts.

Disney made a seven-figure deal to adapt her fantasy series Impossible Creatures into films.

The third novel in that series, The Never Fear, publishes tomorrow, and so does her impassioned argument why you should read children's books even though you are so old and wise.

Katherine is a multi-million best-selling author whose novels for children have won the Waterstones Book of the Year, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Costa Children's Book Award, among many others.

In 2024, she was named the British Book Awards Author of the Year and Impossible Creatures won the Children's Fiction Book of the Year.

She's a fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and her books for adults include Super Infinite, winner of the Bailey Gifford Prize.

The third instalment of her Impossible Creatures series, The Never Fear, is out now with Bloomsbury.

Welcome, Catherine.

Thank you so much.

And she's called Irian Gwynn after Ursula de Gwynn as a salute

to how much I have loved her work.

them to choose? That's my point.

OK, well, this is interesting and this is not in our notes, but obviously Queen Camilla... has just announced that every child in year six is going to be getting Catherine Rundle's Impossible Creatures.

And there was a backlash against this.

And I think it's interesting.

And if you answer it correctly, you could win a prize, but more on that later.

Now, in this week's issue of the magazine, we asked Impossible Creatures author Katherine Rundell what the greatest adventure she's ever been on was.

So I want to know: What's the greatest adventure you've ever been on? Eve, uh, do you have one for us?

Yeah.

Um, I'm not too sure what to do with that one.

And while I consider it, let's talk about our Book of the Week.

This week it is the next book in The Impossible Creatures series, The Never Fear by Katherine Rundell.

The story returns to the world of the Archipelago where there are rumors of masked men attacking villagers.