A. E. DALY lives and works in Edinburgh.  She has a background in art history and computer science and loves comic books, ghost stories, vintage cameras and abandoned buildings.  She received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2018.  Her previous novel, unpublished YA time travel mystery Devil-Glass, was longlisted for the 2020 Mslexia Children’s & YA Novel Competition and she has also been shortlisted for the 2020 Kelpies Prize for Writing. 

Of Dreamdogs, she writes: “The earliest seed for the book came years ago when my eldest son, then quite small, had a dream about brightly-coloured dogs.  I’d wanted to write a middle-grade adventure story for a while, and the mental image of these ‘dream dogs’ set me thinking.  The story also became a fictional love letter to the North York Moors of my childhood – I liked the apparent contradiction of setting a technological thriller in a remote and beautiful rural landscape.”

The Junior Judges said: Dreamdogs is about five kids and their dogs who have 24 hours to save everyone in their villages from a sleeping sickness. It’s a pageturner with a sinister atmosphere, real sense of mystery and was thrilling to read.

Interview with AE Daly

Read the opening of Dreamdogs

RACHEL DARWIN grew up in the Wiltshire and Somerset countryside. At eighteen, she moved to London, where she became a professional singer, performing for ten years. Nowadays, as well as being a writer, Rachel is a singing teacher. She has a master’s degree in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmith’s University and writes a column for Rock n Roll Bride Magazine. Rachel lives with her husband in southwest London.

The Doll’s House Mouse was written in 2021, after Rachel lost her beloved grandma and grandpa during the pandemic. The year before they both passed away, Rachel renovated the doll’s house her grandpa had built for her fifth birthday, to help him remember this wonderful thing he had done for her. The last time Rachel saw her grandpa— before COVID restricted any possible visits to care homes— she showed him pictures of the renovated doll’s house. He twinkled at her, more present in the room than she had seen him in years, and asked if she wanted him to build some new furniture. It was a magical moment.

This book is Rachel’s way of keeping her grandparents alive through their stories, as versions of many of their own anecdotes have been weaved into the book (as well as some of Rachel’s parents’ stories). It is an acknowledgement of the importance of allowing yourself to grieve, to take time to heal and put yourself back together again piece by piece, however you might need to, after losing someone you love. It is a reminder to all those who read it that we have the power to keep our loved ones with us, even after they’re gone. All we have to do is remember them, to talk about them, to keep on telling their stories.

The Junior Judges said: The Doll’s House Mouse is about a girl called Lottie and a little mouse her grandpa made before he died. Lottie is going through a very sad time but it is also a story of hope, repairing things and made me feel cosy and Christmassy.

Interview with Rachel Darwin

Read the opening of The Doll’s House Mouse