Cathy Cassidy was born in 1962 in Coventry. She wrote her first picture book for her little brother when she was eight or nine. She loved making comics, too - pages and pages of picture stories, features and competitions. She would sell her homemade comic to a friend for 5p, then claim it back and sell it again to someone else, they didn't have photocopiers back then!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was Cathy Cassidy’s favourite childhood book. Looking Glass Girl, her uniquely modern retelling of the story coincides with the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s original.

Cathy explains “Alice is the ultimate little-girl-lost, finding her way through a world that makes no sense, that turns everything upside-down and presents her with choices that backfire on her constantly. It’s a wild, wonderful fantasy… and it’s also every girl’s story of growing up. There are so many ways to fall down the rabbit hole and lose your grip on reality. I’ve explored just one, but I’ve loved every minute of writing it.”

Cathy went to Art College in Liverpool, then got a job as fiction editor on the fab and legendary Jackie magazine. Later, went back to college and trained to be an art teacher. She taught in a Coventry secondary school for a few years, then moved to Scotland. For 12 years she was the agony aunt for teen mag Shout, as well as teaching art in several local primary schools, but these days the books take up pretty much all of Cathy’s time and attention.

Bittersweet, Dizzy, Driftwood, Scarlet, Sundae Girl, Lucky Star, Gingersnaps, Angel Cake and Looking Glass Girl are just some of the books from the amazing Cathy Cassidy collection.

Cathy Cassidy:

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