Other Children’s Books by Natalie Jane Prior

Minnie Pearl and the Undersea Bazaar
illustrated by Cheryl Orsini
ABC Books, 2007

Minnie Pearl’s parents own the Undersea Bazaar—an amazing undersea department store, where all the fashionable mermaids go to shop. But when the unscrupulous Manta Rae sets up a rival business next door, the Undersea Bazaar’s future is suddenly in jeopardy, and Minnie must use all her resourcefulness to save her parents business—even if she has to Swim with Humans in the process…

From the author

This book was just a dream to do. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with many great illustrators, but Cheryl Orsini and I are so much on the same wave length that it was sometimes almost as if the book was produced by one person. Cheryl has a tremendous eye for the sort of little details I love, and we had a lot of fun with the Undersea Bazaar—I just adore the idea of the mermaids going shopping. However, the book also has a darker side. Too often, we buy things with little intrinsic value, simply because other people tell us they are what we should have, rather than because we actually need them.

The failure of the Pearl family’s business was inspired by a childhood experience of my own. Like Minnie, I vividly recall lying awake as a small child, listening to my parents agonising over a business crisis in the adjacent bedroom. In the story, Minnie gives her mother and father the help I would have liked to be able to offer in real life.

The Paw Collection
illustrated by Terry Denton
Working Title Press, 2007

Welcome back to the adventures of the world’s cheekiest cat burglar. The Paw Collection collects the three picture books about Leonie, the Paw, which were first published as separate titles in the 1990s (The Paw, Destination Brazil and The Purple Diamond). For this new paperback edition, Terry Denton completely redrew the illustrations in black and white. The first Paw title was an Honour Book in the CBC Awards for 1994.

From the author

I’m often asked by children where the idea for The Paw came from. As is so often the case, it’s hard to give a precise answer, but following the success of my first book, The Amazing Adventures of Amabel, I was asked by my then publisher to try and write a picture book. As a small child, I really enjoyed the thrill of going out at night, so I decided to write a picture book set in the dark. Quite how I made the imaginative leap to cat burglars, I can’t now remember, but I do know that the Paw started off with a picture inside my head of a small girl in a black cat costume, creeping along the ridge-capping of a house in search of adventure. (The black cat turned into a white one when Terry Denton did the illustrations.) The result was a wonderfully anarchic mixture of imagination, fancy dress and derring-do which has appealed to children ever since. The Paw was only my third published book, but it remains one of the titles I am most proud of.

Fireworks and Darkness
(HarperCollins, 2002)

Simeon Runciman’s is firework maker to the royal court of Ostermark, a difficult man with a dangerous past. His son, Casimir, has always known part of the truth about him. But when Simeon’s enemy, the sinister magician, Circastes, reappears in their lives intent of revenge, Casimir is caught up in a deadly web of murder, deceit and magic. Forced to fight for his own survival, Casimir must also confront the harsh truth of who his father is, and what he as done, as well as the real nature of the magic that he wields.

The Star Locket
(HarperCollins, 2006)

Identical in appearance, yet raised as strangers on opposite sides of the world, Estee Merton and Sally Taverner share a perilous inheritance. Born as one child, and magically split into two at birth, each girl holds a broken half of a mysterious star-shaped locket, a magical talisman that could control the destiny of millions.

Now the star locket must be rejoined or destroy, and when that happens, only one twin will survive. Aided by a renegade secret society and a young man who loves one of them too much, Sally and Estee are drawn into a terrifying struggle on the murky streets of nineteenth century Starberg. As torn loyalties threaten everyone’s safely, the star locket is fated to decide which twin will live and which will be lost. The problem is, there is no way of telling which.

From the author
These two novels are particular favourites of mine. The books are designed to be read as a pair—I call them ‘companion novels’, rather than label The Star Locket as a sequel, because although thematically linked, and set in the same mad- up kingdom ‘somewhere in Europe’, they are set about 170 years apart in time, and feature two completely different sets of characters (though some of the characters in The Star Locket are descendents of characters who appear in Fireworks and Darkness). It was a way of showing what happened to Casimir after the events in the first book without actually writing a second book about him—and it was fascinating to come back to Ostermark after several generations. The books stand completely apart, and you don’t have to read them in order to enjoy them.

I’ve had a lot of letters and comments about the plot twist at the end of The Star Locket. It was something I worked very hard on getting right when I was working on the book, so it’s very gratifying to find that it works!

You can read a full account of the writing of Fireworks and Darkness in the back of that novel.

Natalie has also written many other YA and children’s books, which are not listed here because they are no longer in print. To download a complete list of these titles as a PDF file, please click here.