Edith Pattou wrote her first story at the age of eight, The Adventures of Lipid Shortstock, which followed the adventures of a swashbuckling squirrel! Since then Edith has published two highly acclaimed fantasy novels in the United States: Hero’s Song, an International Reading Association Young Adult’s Choice, and Fire Arrow, a Booklist Top Ten Fantasy Novel of the Year.
Edith has always been a great lover of fantasy stories and their ability to whisk the reader away to magical lands, and came to write North Child after falling in love with the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
Edith became an expert in many different fields whilst writing North Child- weaving, compasses, mapmaking, seamanship, Scandinavian languages, Norse mythology, everything to do with the Arctic and of course polar bears, which were hard as Edith’s local zoo didn’t have any polar bears. She also travelled to Norway through the fjords by ship to get first hand experience.
North Child was shortlisted for the Ottakar’s Children’s Book Prize.