Category: Books and Authors

Michael Rosen is best known as a children’s author and poet.

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Facts About Michael Rosen

• Michael Rosen’s full name is Michael Wayne Rosen, and he was born in 1946 in Middlesex, England.
• After briefly working for the BBC, in 1972 he became a freelance writer and broadcaster.
• His first book of poetry for children Mind Your Business was published in 1974. He followed this up with other collections including Wouldn’t You Like to Know, You Tell Me, and Quick Let’s Get Out of Here.
• His most popular title is the children’s picture book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
• Michael Rosen’s Sad Book (published in 2004 and illustrated by Quentin Blake) won the English Association Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year award. The book is partly about grief and bereavement and was prompted by the death of Micheal’s son, Eddie, from meningitis at the age of 18 in 1999.
• Michael Rosen appeared on the Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs in 2006.
• Michael Rosen nearly died of COVID-19, and he wrote a book Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS, detailing his experiences while in hospital after spending morethan 40 days in a coma in the intensive care unit.

• He was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn during his bid to become Prime Miniter in the 2019 UK General Election.
• In 2007, Michael Rosen became the sixth British Children’s Laureate, taking over the post from Jacqueline Wilson. He held the post for two years, before being succeeded by Anthony Browne.
• He has written more than 140 books.
• His favourite books include Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, The Wool Pack by Cynthia Harnett, and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
• He supports Arsenal Football Club.
• In 2003, he named his Top 10 Books and included Zebby Gone with the Wind by Binette Schroeder, Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet & Allan Ahlberg, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah, Gulf by Robert Westall, and The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon.
• He is an admirer of the authors James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Carl Sandburg, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Rosemary Sutcliff, James Thurber, and Peter Ustinov.
• Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has sold more than 11 million copies, and it has been translated into 42 languages.
• His poetry performance videos on YouTube have been viewed more than 100 million times.

What is serial fiction?

Serial fiction or serialized fiction is a fictional work delivered to readers in installments that cannot be fully understood and enjoyed individually. Although each installment might well be structured to have a beginning, middle, and end, the author will refer back to characters and events from previous installments, and the main storyline will not be concluded until the end of the final installment.

When reading serial fiction, readers should start with the first installment of the story, as it will be hard to pick up the plot mid-way through. Cliffhanger endings are commonplace in serialized fiction as they are a good way of grabbing the reader’s attention and drawing them from one installment to the next.

Examples of serialized stories

Some of the best examples of serial fiction are the serialized novels of the 1800s and early-1900s. Written specifically to be released in installments, works like The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas were published installment by installment in newspapers and journals.

If a reader missed the first few installments, it would be hard for them to fully understand the story if they didn’t go back and read the beginning before reading the current installment.

More modern examples of serial fiction include the hundreds of ongoing works of fiction on sites such as Wattpad, Royal Road, and Web Novel.

What is episodic fiction?

Although the episodes that make up a work of episodic fiction may be linked by theme, or share the same characters, they can usually be enjoyed individually, without the reader needing to have consumed all of the episodes preceding the one they are currently reading.

Episodic fiction may well have some form of over-arching plot to link the episodes, but each of the episodes will be a satisfying story in their own right. Cliffhanger endings are rare in true episodic fiction, as they dictate that the episodes must be read in order.

Examples of episodic fiction

Some of the best examples of episodic fiction are the individual novels in a detective or romance series. These books can be read in order, and there is often an-going storyline, and limited development of the main charcater from book-to-book, but they can also be enjoyed out of sequence as standalone stories.

Some TV shows are episodic. Episodes of Friends, for example, can be watched out of order, and although there are a few storylines that extend beyond a single episode, a full understanding of what has gone before isn’t necessary to watch and enjoy any of the individual episodes.

John Agard is a poet, a children’s writer, and a playwright.

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Facts About John Agard

• John Agard was born in 1949 in Grantham (British Guiana, now Guyana), and he grew up in Georgetown.
• As a child, he loved listening to cricket commentary on the radio. He particularly liked the words used by John Arlott. He was inspired to make up his own commentary, and this kindled his life-long love of language.
• He was also a keen actor, playing Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan, Bottom in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the white rabbit in a production of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
• He enjoyed Enid Blyton books, PG Wodehouse books, and The Hardy Boys series when he was young.
• At A-Level, John Agard studied Latin, French, and English.
• He published his first poems when he was in sixth-form.
• He was inspired by the Mersey Sound poets, such as Roger McGough, Adrian Henri, and Brian Patten.
• In 1967, he left school and worked as a language tutor, sub-editor and writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle, and as an assistant in the local library.
• In 1977, John Agard moved to England with his father, and his partner, the poet Grace Nichols. They settled in Ironbridge, Shropshire.
• John Agard has received several awards for his poetry, including the Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry (1997), the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry (2012), and the BookTrust’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Humour is a very powerful weapon that can awaken people’s minds. If people feel you’re preaching at them, you can alienate them.

John Agard

• He currently lives in Lewes in Sussex.
• He has written dozens of books for children, including Lend Me Your Wings, We Animals Would Like a Word With You, We Brits, The Young Inferno, and Butter-Finger.

Going right back in our evolutionary DNA, poetry was the medium of utterance, ecstasy, a lullaby, an incantation, so before you had things written down, there was poetry. But somewhere along the line, particularly in the western tradition, the oral was cut off from the written, and then poetry began to be perceived as something abstract and airy fairy and not about the concrete fact. But let us face it: do we want to dwell in a world of concrete facts?

John Agard

• Some of his most famous poems include Windrush Postscript, Flag, Half-caste, Coffee in Heaven, Checking Out Me History, Bridge Builder, Windrush Child, and In Times of Peace.
• His earliest memory is of standing on a chair because he was terrified of a dog called Spot.
• His favourite rivers are the River Thames, and the River Demerara in Guyana.

A.F. Steadman is an author from the UK, best known for her debut children’s novel, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief.

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Facts About A.F. Steadman

• A.F. Steadman grew up in the village of Chillenden in the county of Kent, UK.
• She attended King’s School in Canterbury.
• As a child, she dreamed of being an author, and she wrote her first book at the age of 13. It was about pirates and spies.
• Her parents divorced when she was 13, and she was raised by her mother.
• She has two brothers.
• Before becoming a published author, A.F. Steadman worked in the legal profession.
• In 2017, she took a Creative Writing Masters course at Cambridge University.
• Her favourite books to read when she was a child were those full of magic and adventure.
• Her Skandar and the Unicorn Thief was inspired by an image in her mind of a boy flying a ferocious unicorn.
• Her first name is Annabel.
• At the age of four, she developed type 1 diabetes, and she had to have kidney surgery when she was nine.
• The advance she received from her publisher Simon & Schuster for her planned series (the first book being Skandar and the Unicorn Thief) was thought to be in the 7-figure range and was believed to be the largest advance ever made to a debut children’s author.
• She really enjoyed reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, and Elizabeth Kay’s The Divide.
• She also liked the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, the Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Song of the Lioness books by Tamora Pierce.
• She is a fan of Neil Gaiman.

I’m a really visual writer. If I can’t ‘see’ it I struggle to write it. It has to be able to play out as if it’s a scene.

A.F. Steadman

Who is Ann M. Martin?

Ann M. Martin is a writer of children’s books, best known for writing and developing The Baby-Sitters Club novel series.

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Facts About Ann M. Martin?

• Ann M. Martin was born in Princeton, New Jersey, US, in 1955.
• The M in her name stands for Matthews.
• Her father was a cartoonist and her mother was a preschool teacher.
• She was a keen reader as a child. Some of her favourite authors were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl.
• She also enjoyed riding horses, but she didn’t continue this hobby as an adult.
• From a young age, Ann M. Martin loved creative writing, and she spent much of her free time writing in notebooks.
• English and French were her favourite subjects at school, but she didn’t enjoy math lessons.

I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I’m trying to give a little of it back to others. It’s one of the greatest pleasures I know.

Ann M. Martin

• As a teenager, Ann M. Martin worked her summers at Eden Institute, a school for children with autism.
• From 1973 to 1977, she studied Early-Childhood Education and Child Psychology at Smith College, Massachusetts.
• After graduating, Ann M. Martin worked as a spit fourth and fifth-grade teacher at a school in Connecticut.
• Ann M. Martin decided to leave the teaching profession, and she began a career in the publishing industry, working as an editor for several children’s book publishers, such as Scholastic and Pocket Books.
• Bummer Summer (1983) was the first of her books to be published, and it received a Children’s Choice Award in 1985.
• Ann M. Martin began writing The Baby-Sitters Club series in 1985. She wrote the first 35 books in the main series, before handing over the writing duties to a team of Scholastic ghostwriters. She also wrote about 65 books for the spin-off series.
• Since then, she has concentrated on writing standalone novels, such as A Corner of the Universe.
• In 2010, Ann M. Martin published The Summer Before, a prequel to the books in The Baby-Sitters Club series.
• The Ann M. Martin Foundation provides financial support to art, educational, and literacy programs. It also contributes funds to programs to support stray and abused animals.
• In addition to the books in The Baby-Sitters Club series, Ann M. Martin has written more than 25 other novels.
• She enjoys going on long walks, watching episodes of old TV shows (especially I Love Lucy), and making children’s clothes.

• The Perkins girls from The Baby-Sitters Club books are based on Ann M. Martin’s goddaughters.
• Her father illustrated The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special book called New York, New York.
• When she was writing the first The Baby-Sitters Club book there were only going to be four books in the series. There are now more than 130 books in the main series.
• The first ten The Baby-Sitters Club books were adapted for TV as a Netflix series.
• She enjoys visiting the beach, eating ice cream, sewing, and reading.
• She has had several pet cats, including Ollie, Pippen, Mouse, Rosie, and Gussie.
• Many Ann M. Martin’s first drafts and outlines have been donated to Smith College.
• Her favorite character in The Baby-Sitters Club series is Kristy, but she thinks she is most like Mary Anne.
• Ann M. Martin enjoys listening to mystery audiobooks, and she likes Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series and books written by Stephen King.
• When she was asked about what The Baby-Sitters Club characters would be doing as adults, Ann M. Martin said that Kristy would be a CEO of a company, Claudia would be an artist, and Stacey would be involved in the New York City fashion scene. She didn’t say what she thought Mary Anne would go on to do.
• Some of her favourite children’s books include The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, the Paddington Bear books by Michael Bond, Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz books, James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, the Beatrix Potter books, and the Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff.
• Since 2019, The Baby-Sitter’s Club books have been turned into graphic novels. Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan are the illustrators attached to the project.

B. B. Alston is an author of children’s books. He is best known for Amari and the Night Brothers.

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Facts About B. B. Alston

• B. B. Alston began writing in middle school. He used to write horror stories and read them to his friends.
• His family didn’t have much money when he was growing up.
• B. B. Alston’s debut novel was Amari and the Night Brothers.
• He enjoys eating sweets and candy and exploring country roads.
• Amari and the Night Brothers has been adapted for the screen with Don Cheadle as producer.
• He stopped writing stories in high school and this break continued into his twenties.
• Reading the Harry Potter books reminded him of why he’d loved stories as a child, and he started writing again soon after.
• He is a big fan of the Men in Black movies.
• Some of the authors B. B. Alston admires include Jessica Townsend, Nic Stone, and Angie Thomas.
• As a child, he enjoyed Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, Mrs Frisby the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.
• He was inspired to start writing a novel by the success of the Twilight books.

• He studied Pre-Med at college and was about to start the process of applying to Medical School when he secured a book agent via Twitter.
• B. B. Alston lives in Lexington in South Carolina, US.
• His writing process involves writing a zero draft – a simple outline of the book which only includes the book’s main plot points and story beats. He keeps adding details with each subsequent draft.

I’m always asking myself “What-if” questions when I write, and my stories kind of spring up from the answers to those questions.

B. B. Alston

• B. B. Alston’s favourite part of the writing process is creating the world. His least favourite part is cutting words he has written during his editing and revisions.
• He would love to have the ability to teleport.

• He listens to a wide variety of music, and he enjoys Maroon 5, Rapsody, Drake and BTS.
• He is a fast reader, but he also enjoys listening to audiobooks in his car.
• Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings books, and Katniss from The Hunger Games trilogy are his favorite book characters.
• He is a big admirer of J. R. R Tolkien, Maya Angelou, and Rick Riordan.

• Amari from the Amari and the Night Brothers is based on B. B. Alston and the children he grew up with. He wanted to write a fantasy book for children with a black main character as he couldn’t find any when he was growing up.
• The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs summer camp in the Amari and the Night Brothers book is inspired by Hogwarts (from the Harry Potter books) and Camp Half-Blood (from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books).

It scared me to write a black kid in a fantasy book because I had never seen it before. But it also thrilled me because I was writing about myself and the kids I grew up with.

B. B. Alston

Mary Pope is an author of children’s books. She is best known for her Magic Tree House series.

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Facts About Mary Pope Osborne

• Mary Pope Osborne was born in 1949 in Fort Still, Oklahoma, US.
• She had a twin brother called Bill, a sister called Natalie, and a younger brother named Michael.
• Her father was in the military, and his job meant that Mary Pope Osborne’s family had to move regularly. As a child, she lived in Oklahoma, Virginia, and Salzburg, Austria.
• After her father retired from the military, the family moved to North Carolina.
• In North Carolina, Mary Pope Osborne joined her local community theatre, and she went on to study drama at the University of North Carolina.
• She changed the focus of her degree in her junior year and majored in religion.
• After her college graduation, Mary Pope Osbourne and one of her friends went travelling. They camped in caves in Crete for six weeks, and then headed east, visiting Iraq, Iran, Nepal, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, and Lebanon.
• Her trip ended when she was admitted to hospital with blood poisoning. During her recovery, she read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
• After returning to the US, Mary Pope Osborne lived in California, Washington DC, and New York.
• She married her husband Will Osborne in 1976. They met at a play. Will Osborne was playing the role of Jesse James.
• Before becoming a full-time author, Mary Pope Osborne worked as a bartender, travel agent, assistant editor at a children’s magazine, drama teacher, and medical assistant.
• The first book Mary Pope Osborne wrote was 1982’s Run, Run As Fast As You Can.
• She has since written more than 100 stories for children, in a range of genres, and for readers ranging from young children to young adults.
• The Magic Tree House books are Mary Pope Osborne’s most successful works. More than 130 million copies of the books have been sold since the first book (Dinosaurs Before Dark) was released in 1992.
• Merlin and Morgan le Fay (based on characters from the King Arthur legends) are recurring characters in the Magic Tree House series.
• Out of the two main characters in the Magic Tree House books, Mary Pope Osbourne says she is more like Jack but she would like to be more like Annie.
• She says that she can work on her books for twelve hours a day for seven days a week.
• Her husband Will Osbourne has been responsible for adapting the Magic Tree House books for the stage. In 2007 a musical adaptation was premiered, and in the Magic Tree House Kids Shows books in the series are performed on stage by casts made up of children.
• Mary Pope Osborne has twice been president of the Authors Guild.
• Her Magic Tree House series was turned into an anime film in 2011, and it premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival.
• Mary Pope Osborne said that Hemingway’s simple and direct style influenced her own writing style.
• Mary Pope Osborne’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
• When she’s not writing, Mary Pope Osborne enjoys kayaking and taking hikes with her pet dogs.
• She currently lives in a house on a lake in Connecticut.

Writing is a miracle. You can travel anywhere in the world, to any time and any place — and still be home in time to have dinner.

Mary Pope Osborne

• Mary Pope Osborne was an avid reader as a child, and some of her favourite books included the Nancy Drew mysteries, the Little House on the Prairie books, and Uncle Wiggly books.
• She still loves to read, and she has a library of more than 2000 books in her house.
• The Magic Tree House books have been turned into a series of graphic novels. They are adapted by Jenny Laird and illustrated by Kelly and Nichole Matthews.
• The idea of the tree house in the Magic Tree House books was triggered by Mary Pope Osborne seeing a tree house during a walk down a country road with her husband in Pennsylvania.

I’m one of those very lucky people who absolutely love what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children’s book author.

Mary Pope Osborne

Tui T. Sutherland is a Venezuelan-American author. Her most well-known books are the Seekers and Warriors series (some of which were written by Sutherland as part of a group of other writers using the pen name Erin Hunter). She has also written the Wings of Fire series under her own name.

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Facts About Tui T. Sutherland

• Tui T. Sutherland was born in 1978 in Caracas, Venezuela.
• Her name, chosen by her mother (born in New Zealand) comes from the tui, an energetic, noisy, and colourful bird native to New Zealand.
• During her early childhood, she lived in Paraguay, Florida (US), and the Dominican Republic.
• She went to high school in New Jersey.
• At high school she was involved in the school theatre, mostly working backstage.
• She graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1998. She thought about starting a career as a stage manager or about taking a graduate course in Art History, but in the end, she went to New Zealand and stayed with her uncle.
• After taking a children’s literature class at the University of Aukland, she started to come up with lots of ideas for books she could write, and she ended up getting a job with Penguin.
• The first novel she wrote was in 2004 for the publisher Harper Collins. It was called This Must Be Love and it was a retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
• Her first mentor was Jane O’Connor, author of the Fancy Nancy books.
• In 2009, she appeared on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!. She won more than $45,000 dollars as a two-day champion.
• She now lives in Boston with her husband Adam. They have two children, Jonah and Elliot.
• She has had dogs named Sunshine (who passed away in 2020), Rainbow Dog (Bo for short), and Bumblebee.
• She has worked as an editor.
• In addition to Erin Hunter, Tui T. Sutherland has used several other pen names. As Rob Kidd she wrote The Legends of Brethren Court series (a Pirates of the Caribbean spin-off), as Heather Williams she wrote Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls and Farmer Boy (House on the Prairie spin-offs), and as Tamara Summers she wrote He’s With Me, Save the Date, and Never Bite a Boy on the First Date.
• Her sister, Kari Sutherland is also an author. She has written dozens of romance and mystery books, and she often writes as Karen Rose Smith or Karen Hughes. Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland collaborated on the Menagerie series.

• Wings of Fire is Tui T. Sutherland’s most popular series. There are currently fifteen books in the main series, six books in the Winglets and Legends spin-off series, and several graphic novels.
• She is a huge fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.
• Some of her favourite authors include Octavia Butler, Liane Moriarty, Amy Tan, Mary Renault, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Angie Thomas.
• She enjoyed the movie Spirited Away.
• Her favourite tribe from her Wings of Fire series is the RainWings because they are mellow and happy.
• The dragon Sunny from the Wings of Fire series is named after her dog Sunshine.

More Information About Tui T. Sutherland

Why did Tui T. Sutherland write Wings of Fire?

After writing the Seekers books as Erin Hunter, she was keen to produce work in her own voice. Her agent suggested that she try a series in which dragons are the main characters, and Tui T. Sutherland immediately thought of the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey she’d enjoyed when she was younger.

The difference between writing about dragons, as opposed to about bears and cats—besides that it was all my own stories, all my own characters, and I could make it as joyful and hopeful as I wanted to—is that dragons, because of the magical element, can be closer to humans. They can have books, they can have castles, they can have music and magic spells, things that helped me build out a world that I wanted to hang out in.

Tui T. Sutherland (2019)

Who inspired Tui T. Sutherland?

As a child, she loved the book Anne of Green Gables. She was also inspired by Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong fantasy book, and she has enjoyed Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, and Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw

How can I contact Tui T. Sutherland?

Tui T. Sutherland can be contacted through her publisher, Scholastic.

The address is: Tui Sutherland
c/o Scholastic, Inc.
557 Broadway
New York, NY  10012

You stand a better chance of getting a reply to your letter if you include a SASE (a self-addressed stamped envelope).

She also has an Instagram account.

How do you pronounce Tui T. Sutherland?

It is pronounced two-ee.

How does Tui T. Sutherland write her books?

Tui T Sutherland is not a morning person, so ideally, her perfect writing schedule would be to write through the night, then sleep until noon. Her most productive hours are from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. but it is a difficult routine to maintain with a family.

She often writes between 1,000 and 3,000 words a day.

In portal fantasy books, characters are transported, via some sort of portal, to another land, realm, time period, or location. The portal can take different forms (for example a magical wardrobe, a mirror, or a rabbit hole), and characters usually travel from our world to another world. The new world is usually very different from the world they are used to, and often it is magical in some way.

The characters who travel through the portal are often regular people and they are forced to adapt to their new reality. Often they don’t go through the portal by choice, and once the characters are in the new world, the storyline often revolves around their attempts to find a way back home.

Sometimes the characters know what is on the other side of the portal, and sometimes the destination is unknown. Sometimes the characters voluntarily move through the portal, and sometimes they are forced to leave their homeworld.

Is Isekai a type of portal fantasy?

Isekai is a genre of portal fantasy from Japan. It can take the form of anime, manga, light novels, movies, and video games, and it involves a character or a group of protagonists being transported to another world and learning to survive. The new world is often a magical fantasy world, but it can also be a parallel universe, a different time period, or a virtual world.

Isekai is a popular structure for anime and manga because it allows the audience to learn about the new world as the characters do.

Often the main character who finds themselves in the new world is overpowered.

Examples of Isekai stories include So I’m a Spider, So What? by Okina Baba, Log Horizon by Mamare Touno, Lord of Goblins by Michiel Werbrouck, and Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody by Hiro Ainana.

Are LitRPG books portal fantasy?

LitRPG (literary role-playing game) is a genre of fantasy fiction where the mechanics of a role-playing game form a vital part of the story. Often, role-playing game statistics are written into the text, and the main character interacts with the game rules as the plot progresses.

In some LitRPG games, the characters start the book as part of the game, but in others, there may be in-game portions of the book and real-world storylines running side-by-side. If the main character is transported into the game world at the beginning of the book, the story could be considered an isekai story and a novel that falls under the portal fantasy umbrella.

Examples of Isekai LitRPG books and series include Summoned! by Osiin Muldowney, Isekai Magus by Han Yang, The Land by Aleron Kong, Tales of an Unlikely Wizard by CookieCrumble, and The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba.

Portal Fantasy Books for Children

Here are some examples of the portal fantasy books written for children.

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – the portal is a rabbit hole, and the new world is called Wonderland.
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis – the portal is a magical wardrobe, and the new world is called Narnia.
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – the portal is a magic tollbooth, and the new world is called the Kingdom of Wisdom.
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende – the portal is a book (The Neverending Story), and the new world is called Fantastica.
• Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins – the portal is an old air duct, and the new world is called the Underland.
• The Golden Acorn by Catherine Cooper – the portal is a golden acorn, and the new world is called the Otherworld.
• 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson – cupboards hidden behind a bedroom wall are the portals.
• Fireball by John Christopher – a fireball is the portal, and the new world is a parallel universe.

Portal Fantasy Books for Adults

Here are some examples if portal fantasy book written for adult readers.

• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R Donaldson.
• The Untold Tale by J.M. Frey
• The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
• The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams
• The Fionavar Tapestry by Gay Gavriel Kay
• The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire
• Almuric by Robert E Howard
• Magic Kingdom for Sale-Sold! by Terry Brooks
• A Sorcerer’s Treason by Sarah Zettel

Is Harry Potter a portal fantasy?

Although the Wizarding World exists alongside the world of the Muggles, it can only be observed and accessed by those in the know. There are two portals described in the first book in the series – Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station in London, and the entrance to Diagon Alley behind the Leaky Cauldron.

When Harry arrives at Hogwarts School of Withcraft and Wizardry, he certainly enters a new world, and it’s a world that the ordinary people of the world cannot enter because they can’t see it – the castle has been bewitched so that it looks to Muggle-eyes like a ruin with a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign.

However, even though portals exist in the Harry Potter books, because they aren’t the only way for magical folk to enter the Wizarding World (hiding in plain sight in the real world), the Harry Potter books aren’t strictly examples of portal fantasy books.

Born in Kumamoto, Japan, Eiichiro Oda is a famous manga artist, best known for creating the One Piece series.

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Facts About Eiichiro Oda

• When he was just four years old, Eiichiro Oda decided he wanted to become a mangaka, a manga artist.
• He created Pandaman, and the character was used by Yudetemago (the pen name of Takashi Shimada and Yoshinori Nakai) in their wrestling-themed manga, Kinnikuman. Eichiro Oda later brought Pandaman back in his own work.
• Eiichiro Oda submitted his work to Wanted! when he was 17, and he was the runner-up in the Tezuka Award.
• He was employed by the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. At first, he worked under Shinobu Kaitani on Suizan Police Gang. After that, Eiichiro Oda worked under Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan.
• When he was 19 years old, Eiichiro Oda worked as Nobuhiro Watsuki’s assistant on Rurouni Kenshin and he helped to create the character Honjō Kamatari (Great Scythe).

• Eiichiro Oda’s one-shot manga, Ikki Yakō (Night Parade of the One Demon) was published in the 1994 Shonen Jump Spring Special. It features a monk named Guko, and it won the 1994 Hop Step manga award.
• Inspired by the animated series Vicky the Viking, his favourite TV show as a teenager, Eiichiro Oda created two pirate-themed one-shots called Romance Dawn. They were published in 1996, and featured the character Monkey D. Luffy (who became the main protagonist in Oda’s One Piece series.
• One Piece began publication in 1997. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump and grew into the best-selling manga series of all time.
• Volume 67 of One Piece (published in 2012) sold over 4.05 copies in Japan alone.

• When he is working, Eiichiro Oda only sleeps three hours a night and he often works for more than 15 hours per day.
• By 2015, more than 300,000,000 copies of One Piece had been published around the world. The number now exceeds 450 million.
• He is inspired by the creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toryama.
• During periods of focused work, Eiichiro Oda rarely takes a day off. He gets up at 5 in the morning, works throughout the day with few breaks, and then he goes to bed at 2 a.m. In order to complete a chapter of One Piece for the Weekly Shonen Jump anthology relentless schedule is required. He spends Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday planning the story, dialogue and layout. Thursday, Friday and Staurday are spent drawing and inking the panels, and Sunday is spent colouring.
• At school, inspired by the Captain Tsubasa manga, Oda played soccer.
• In 1999, One Piece was adapted into an anime series. In 2021, the Toei Animation released the 1000th One Piece episode.
• Eiichiro Oda used to do oil painting as a hobby.
• In 2004, Eiichiro Oda married Chiaki Inaba, an actress. They have two daughters.
• When he was hospitalised in 2013 (due to a tonsil infection), Eiichiro Oda was seen working on the latest One Piece panels from his hospital bed.

• Eiichiro Oda is a big fan of the rapper Eminem, and it is speculated that the One Piece character Enel is based on the hip-hop artist.
• Some of Eiichiro Oda favourite movies are Seven Samurai, Young Guns, Reservoir Dogs, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. His favourite directors are Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton and Baz Luhrmann.
• He likes listening to the soul music of Brook Benton, and he also likes the music of Bryan Adams.
• Eiichiro Oda uses Copic markers to colour his pages, he also used watercolour paints, too.
• He’s had the nickname Odacchi since he was a child.
• Eiichiro Oda favourite real-life pirate is Edward Teach, more commonly known as Blackbeard.
• He is a fan of the Dragon Quest videogame role-playing series.