Riding familiar beasts to unfamiliar places, Saviour Pirotta

The first picture book I lusted after when I moved to the UK in the early 1980s' was Nigel Gray's A Balloon for Grandad, illustrated by Jane Ray. I saw a copy in a school library and I immediately fell under its spell. I loved both the picaresque story and Jane's glowing pictures which reminded me of an illuminated manuscript.

At the time I couldn't afford rent or medication let alone books but thankfully they had a copy in Swiss Cottage Library and I must have pored over it for hours. 'Do a picture book with Jane Ray' went on my bucket list.

Slow-forward thirty seven years and Orchard Books asked me if I'd be interested in doing a picture book about a unicorn. 'We've got an illustrator who can draw unicorns really well,' they said. They didn't tell me it was Jane Ray and for some reason I assumed it was a new illustrator.

I came up with three possible ideas. An original one and two folk tales. Orchard went for one of the folk tales, a little known Scottish legend. You can imagine my joy when I discovered that the illustrator was to be none other than Jane Ray.

The challenge of adapting folktales is how to bring something new to the table, something that hasn't been tackled in previous retellings. Annis, the main character in the Unicorn Prince lives with her grandma and pets in a disused castle. I focused on their self-sufficiency, their happiness at having each other rather than material goods. An act of kindness at the beginning of the tale leads to magical rewards. Half way through the story, Annis gives shelter to a family of dispossessed fairies. In return, they....well, I won't spoilt the ending for you but you can guess where I went with this. An old, largely forgotten story now has a new lease of life with a timely feel to it. There is already an Estonian co-edition and talk of more. Let's hope children everywhere will be introduced to my intrepid Annis and her family of magical creatures.

Saviour Pirotta's The Unicorn Prince is published by Orchard Books.  It was an editor's pick in The Bookseller and an editor's choice in the The Guardian in November. Saviour's novel Mark of the Cyclops, an Ancient Greek Mystery has just won the North Somerset Teachers' Award for Quality Fiction.