Sinead Moriarty

Oh, that's so nice.

That is so lovely.

She's probably the first kid to have read it, by the way.

Really?

Because it's only officially out tomorrow.

She's in there.

I know, I see she's not here.

Yeah, I really wanted to write something around the whole idea of pretty and beauty and what it means.

And so my books are for sort of 8 to 12 year olds, so just before and around the times they're getting mobile phones when suddenly how you look becomes really, really important.

So Grace has her whole life always been told she's pretty.

Oh, you're so pretty, you're so pretty, you're so pretty.

And then one Halloween night, the book opens with this, so it's not a spoiler.

On Halloween night, her costume goes on fire and she gets burnt on the side of her face.

And the whole book really is about who am I if I'm not pretty, even though she still is.

And it's about how she realizes really that beauty is about compassion and kindness and empathy.

I just wanted to explore that whole topic.

And also, when the accident happened, it doesn't just affect her, it affects her parents and her brother and affects her friends because everybody's kind of traumatised by it.

Because the party where the accident happens, that's in their friend's house.

So there's three families who all live in the same cul-de-sac and they become really good friends and the accident happens in somebody else's house.

So...