UWAP has acquired ANZ rights to a four-book junior fiction series, Ella and the Frogs, from Cassy Polimeni.

The forthcoming series is for early readers aged five to eight years, ‘exploring themes of friendship and animal protection/conservation’, with each story opening with ‘a frog-related fact that mirrors a theme in Ella’s life’. Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra, the first book in the series, introduces Ella, who ‘has moved house and is missing her old life, until she discovers a frog pond in the backyard and bonds with her new classmate, Mai, over the school frog bog’. Faced with a development project that threatens the pond, the new friends have to work together ‘to save the frogs before it’s too late’.

UWAP publisher Kate Pickard, said: ‘The remaining books in the series will explore themes of friendship, working together, bullying, kindness and finding your own voice.’

Polimeni’s debut picture book, The Garden at the End of the World (illus by Briony Stewart), was published by UQP in April 2023. Hykie Breeze, a Hong Kong–born graphic designer and illustrator living in Sydney on Dharawal Country, will illustrate the series.

UWAP plans to publish Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra in July 2024, with subsequent books in the series due to be published between 2024 and 2026.