Finding his way in the city is tough for Varjak until he makes friends with Tam and Holly, two street cats who take pity on him and help him find food and shelter and avoid the cat gangs that roam the city and work for the mysterious Sally Bones. At the same time, Varjak dreams of his ancestor, Jalal, who teaches him a special cat martial art as he sleeps, making him a fearsome warrior. Will Varjak ever find a dog and bring it home? And what are the strange robotic cats he witnesses in the city? There will be a third Varjak Paw book one day – I wrote a bit about my idea for it in this blog post. In the meantime, have you read my new book Phoenix yet? It's not about Varjak Paw, but I think it might be my best book yet! Thank you for your message, and for reading Varjak Paw to Year 4 - please say hello to them, and tell them to keep the Way alive! I know you hope I like Phoenix. I promise that I will read and comment it some day, as my gratitude to you. But now i'm too confused for reading another good books by influence upon me that both Varjak-books had.

If you enjoyed the martial arts in Varjak Paw, I'd definitely recommend reading my new book Phoenix - there's a system of martial arts there that's based on the stars and constellations! There was silence in the kitchen. The munching and crunching stopped. They all watched him: one great, green, accusing eye.That's amazing to hear –thank you so much! I love their books too, especially Harry Potter. I hope you enjoy Phoenix; please let me know what you think when you've had a chance to read it. I live in South East London and I love the references to recognisable landmarks in the book. I walked past Vanbrugh Castle near Greenwich park the other day and wondered if that was the inspiration for the Contessa's house. I'd love to know if there any other locations I could visit from the book.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Phoenix too - no cats or dogs, but it comes from a very similar place... and I think it's the best book I've written so far! Don't worry about what other people think - keep reading! It's the best thing you can possibly do. And if you want some writing tips that might help you in your ambition to become an author, you can find some of mine here: We really loved your book, "Varjak Paw"! We enjoyed every single chapter (all 35 of them). We were very devastated when Tam vanished. We haven't read the second Varjak book yet, "The Outlaw Varjak Paw, but we would really love to read it. We hope that you write a third Varjak book. You are a wonderful author and we really dig your style and your expressive and descriptive word choices. We were wondering how Sally Bones knew "The Way" of Jalal and what happened to her eye. Said is a powerful advocate for making reading a more inclusive experience for more children and shares BookTrust’s ambitions to improve representation in children’s books . His books immerse children in worlds where char acters explore their identity within systems of social injustice , inequity and prejudice .

I think Sally Bones definitely had her own history... but I can't say too much about it yet, as there might be more about it in the third book... I'm not sure yet! Most of what I know about the third book I wrote here. It will happen one day, for sure - but it might not be for a while yet. There isn't a movie planned at the moment, but hopefully one day! I wrote a bit about that question here. I've read both Varjak-books six or seven years ago. They were my favorite books at all for an extremly long time - even for years. "Varjak Paw" included everything I needed and loved - fairytales, wisdom, sunny Mesopotamia, blue color, cats, cats, cats, heroes, winter, dreams... Your books and Dave's pictures made a big part of my childhood. No joke. The idea of the Seven Skills developed as I worked on the book, a process that took 17 drafts. It wasn't there in the first draft. There were some fighting skills, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that Varjak would need other skills to survive, and that having an open mind and trusting yourself are perhaps the most important skills of all. If you'd like to know more about how my writing process works, and to see some early drafts of Varjak Paw, here's a resource I made for the British Library that you might find interesting: