Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree illustrated by Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell

Beating off tough Costa competition, Hardinge was announced overall winner at a ceremony in central London on the 26th January 2016. Since winning the Costa Book of the Year Award, The Lie Tree has found thousands of new readers following Hardinge’s encouragement to “enter the beautiful jungle of children’s literature”, and has now sold over 73,000 copies through TCM since publication.

Internationally, The Lie Tree continues to branch out in to new territories and languages, with a total of 23 languages in translation sold by Macmillan Children’s Books’ Rights team led by The Bookseller Industry Awards Rights Professional of the Year, Michele Young. New territories since the Costa announcement include France, Spain, China, Russia and Japan.

The Lie Tree is currently also shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2016 and the YA Book Prize 2016, and was shortlisted for The Bookseller Industry Awards Children’s Book of the Year 2016.

For the new sumptuous gift edition, Rachel Petty, Editorial Director at Macmillan Children’s Books, has brought two of her authors together in a magnificent author/illustrator partnership, inspired by Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell’s margin-doodling in his copy of The Lie Tree on Instagram. Chris’ sketch of Frances’ fourteen-year old heroine, Faith Sunderly, gazing determinedly out from the Chapter 1 heading was the perfect image and the idea for a fully illustrated edition was born.

Publishing in hardback on 20 October 2016 priced £9.99, Macmillan Children’s Books is very proud to publish this extraordinary illustrated edition of The Lie Tree, rounding off an incredible year for both Frances Hardinge and Chris Riddell.