The Filth Licker is the eagerly awaited sequel to Takeshita Demons, winner of the inaugural Diverse Voices Children's Book Award. Cristy Burne's gripping story of Miku, a feisty young Japanese girl living in England, and her fight against the Takeshita Demons is a fast-paced and hugely entertaining contemporary adventure. The novel is interspersed with some Manga style illustrations from the author/illustrator of The Manga Bible.
The author on her inspiration for the Takeshita Demons series:
'The demons are all real: just as Western cultures have vampires and werewolves and witches, japanese people have kappa and oni. I first heard of these demons while living in Japan working as a techer and studying Japanese and their culture.'
Miku is going to School Camp in the forest, with her friend Cait and the rest of her class. It should be fun. But Miku has premonitions of danger, and when Oscar goes down with a festering rash, and a rushing wind blows out the bonfire she's sure something bad is going on. Then Alex finds the frog-like Filth-Licker in the boys' toilets, and all at once Miku, Cait and Alex are on a secret mission to overcome the vengeful Shape-Shifters or Super Demons before it's too late! Later that night, with Alex kidnapped by a pyromaniac fox, and Cait possessed by some angry sickle weasels, it's up to Miku and the Filth-Licker to save them all from disaster. Coming in 2012 Takeshita Demons: Monster Matsuri.
Cristy Burne has joint New Zealand and Australian citizenship, has travelled widely and lived for several years in Japan as a teacher and editor. It was during this time that she became fascinated with Japanese folklore and the supernatural yokai - demons - which are very much a part of Japanese culture, but little known outside Japan. Cristy has spent most of her career as a science writer and currently works for a computing network designed to solve global problems. She won the Voices on the Coast Youth Literature Award for emerging writers, in Queensland, Australia, and the inaugural Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award (click here to find out more about this prize). Cristy and her husband live in East London.
Visit Cristy's website for downloads and resources.
