Madame Badobedah

Sophie Dahl is the bestselling author of four books for adults, and two for children. The Worst Sleepover In The World follows her children’s debut, the critically acclaimed, Madame Badobedah. Dahl has written non- fiction essays for US Vogue, Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. She has judged the Women’s prize for fiction and Vogue’s Young Talent Contest. She is also a contributing editor and monthly columnist at House and Garden magazine. Madame Badobedah, was nominated for a Greenaway Medal, selected as one of both The Guardian's and The Sunday Times's Children’s Books of The Year in 2019, and in the US it was awarded a Parent’s Choice Gold Award. @mssophiedahlLauren O’Hara is an illustrator from the north of England. As a child she loved reading fairy tales, painting insects and listening to her grandmother’s stories. She studied art and illustration at Kingston University and then designed window displays and props for films. Lauren’s career as an illustrator began when she and her sister, Natalia worked together on a picture book, Hortense and the Shadow. This was published in 2017 and followed in 2018 by The Bandit Queen. Lauren lives in a converted church in Dublin, Ireland with her partner, their cat Ida and assorted ghosts.

Her drawings are completely beautiful… It’s so magical and the words and the drawings really do weave together in this symbiosis which completely transported me when I read it to be being read to as a kid [...] I had completely forgotten what it’s like when you find a story that’s so vivid and imaginative and the pictures and the words align so perfectly that you literally every night feel that you are stepping into a page with your mum.