:00:15. > :00:21.The Author with Nick Hyatt. Tent macro one -- Oksa Pollock has
:00:21. > :00:29.been called the French Harry Potter. She is a 12-year-old girl with
:00:29. > :00:32.magical powers living in London. The authors could not get the book
:00:33. > :00:38.accepted by any mainstream publisher so they published it themselves and
:00:38. > :00:45.it became a success. Now the book has been translated into English.
:00:45. > :00:50.The publishers are hoping that Pollock mania, rather like Potter
:00:51. > :01:00.mania, will sweep Britain as it swept France. We invited the authors
:01:01. > :01:02.
:01:02. > :01:07.to our newsroom in broadcasting house.
:01:07. > :01:17.Oksa Pollock, she is 12, she has magical powers and she is living in
:01:17. > :01:21.
:01:21. > :01:26.London. Tell me more about her. she has problems with parents and
:01:26. > :01:35.she is a very common goal. Suddenly, one day she discovers she has
:01:35. > :01:42.magical powers. It is very hard for her not to show her powers -- she is
:01:42. > :01:50.a very common girl. Her family come from a secret parallel world which
:01:50. > :01:57.exists in our world but we cannot see. Once the revelation is made by
:01:57. > :02:02.her grandmother she understands that she is in danger. If you have
:02:02. > :02:10.magical powers you want to show them but if you do that you are in
:02:10. > :02:17.danger. So she has a good friend who is Gus, a boy of her rage. He has no
:02:17. > :02:25.power at all. But he is very important. He is brave and loyal and
:02:25. > :02:31.she also has another boy in her life who is dark and mysterious. It is a
:02:31. > :02:41.classic dilemma for a young girl, isn't it? Do you think so? !Most
:02:41. > :02:42.
:02:42. > :02:47.girls would love to have that choice. We saw that French girls at
:02:47. > :02:57.the beginning of the story immediately choose between them and
:02:57. > :03:02.they created teams to support one of the boys or the other. The story is
:03:02. > :03:08.set in London, a sort of fantasy London which does not bear much
:03:08. > :03:13.relationship to the real London, why London? It was unthinkable not to
:03:13. > :03:19.have the story in London. We are such fans of this country, its
:03:19. > :03:25.history, its culture, its monuments. It had to take place in
:03:25. > :03:31.London. There is an aesthetic, a very specific aesthetic which is
:03:31. > :03:36.very fitting to the book. London has a specific aesthetic but these books
:03:36. > :03:42.do as well. You have invented a collection of exotic magical
:03:42. > :03:48.creatures. There are some which are blue and servants and have an
:03:48. > :03:54.elaborate way of speaking. Another one clings to your wrist and calms
:03:54. > :04:02.you down. These have been imagined by artists. Where did the
:04:02. > :04:09.inspiration for these creatures come from? We wanted to do something
:04:09. > :04:13.different from other fantasy series. We wanted to create a whole series
:04:13. > :04:19.of imaginary animals, not things which you would have seen elsewhere.
:04:20. > :04:23.We had a lot of fun. We drew some small characters. We wanted one of
:04:23. > :04:30.them to have an old-fashioned way of talking, slightly different. We had
:04:30. > :04:37.a lot of fun to create these creatures. Whose idea was a
:04:37. > :04:42.character originally? Which of you came up with the idea and now that
:04:42. > :04:47.you work as collaborators, who does what? I am not sure where the idea
:04:47. > :04:52.came from but I was in my bath and it all came all of a sudden. I
:04:52. > :04:58.immediately talked to and about it and we were working on another
:04:58. > :05:02.project at the time, a picture book for children. We immediately said,
:05:02. > :05:08.let's get started. It is not who does what and how we do it, what is
:05:08. > :05:17.more important is the story and what we are saying. We do not really care
:05:17. > :05:23.who exactly did which part. What is important is the book. And do you
:05:23. > :05:30.ever have disagreements? Yes, of course! What do you disagree about?
:05:30. > :05:36.At the beginning we had many disagreements. We'd love to manage
:05:36. > :05:43.our disagreements and use them. You have to go deeper and you have to
:05:43. > :05:48.find some arguments, you have to convince the other. You published
:05:48. > :05:52.the first of these books originally yourselves and only later why you
:05:52. > :06:02.picked up by a mainstream publisher. How did that happen? Tell me that
:06:02. > :06:03.
:06:04. > :06:07.story. We proofread the book, we got a tight set, we got it distributed.
:06:08. > :06:13.We had a trolley we put the books on and we went to the book shops with
:06:13. > :06:19.it to distribute them. We were very lucky. Very soon we had a lot of
:06:19. > :06:26.readers, we had a lot of fans and word of mouth worked really well in
:06:26. > :06:30.France, in Paris and Marseille. We had young fans who were 12 years old
:06:30. > :06:36.and did not understand why we were not coming to Paris to do signings.
:06:37. > :06:41.These kids were afraid that the series would stop and they went on
:06:41. > :06:47.the Internet, looked for journalists' names and wrote these
:06:47. > :06:53.very heartfelt letters to beg for the series not finish and this
:06:54. > :07:01.weekly newspaper in France published the open letter from the two fans
:07:01. > :07:09.who were 12 years old, begging for it to continue. Three days later,
:07:09. > :07:15.this major French publisher got in touch. Four days later we signed our
:07:16. > :07:25.publishing contract. It is fabulous. We believed it and I think that is
:07:25. > :07:28.what life is about. You have to believe in things. For British
:07:28. > :07:36.English-speaking readers, the obvious comparison is with Harry
:07:36. > :07:44.Potter, JK Roland's work, are you happy with that or does it worry you