All hail the queen of the kids

THE CARNEGIE Medal-winning Scottish author and librarian Theresa Breslin never dreamed she would one day be published. When she went to the library as a child it never occurred to her that real people wrote the books. 'As far as I was concerned they might as well all have been dead,' she says. Years later, her own writing career, with its output standing at more than 20 books, began almost by accident.

'I was driving a mobile library around remote Scottish communities. One day I was in Gartcosh, just outside Glasgow, and everybody was talking about the closure of the local steel mill. They were all so upset and nobody seemed to be listening. I thought, 'I'll write a book about this for the young people of the school'. The result was Simon's Challenge which won the Young Book Trust Fidler Award for new writers sponsored by the Scottish Book Trust in 1987. One year later, the BBC filmed it.

Further accolades followed. Breslin, likes winning prizes (they raise your profile and make an enormous difference to sales, as do translations), but even more she relishes the praise of children and her peers. In 1996, for example, she won the inaugural Angus Award for Kezzie, her poignant tale of a depression-ravaged family struggling to survive in a Scottish mining community. Third-year pupils of all eight secondary schools in the area cast their votes. She got even more pleasure from being awarded the Carnegie Medal for Whispers In The Graveyard a year earlier. 'This is the one my fellow librarians decide,' she announces proudly in a rich Scottish brogue.

But success has not always come easily. Publishers, for example, were reluctant to print Remembrance, an epic tale of World War I. 'There were an awful lot of adult books out about the war at the time,' she says. 'And apart from that they thought the content was too horrific for children. But I did the research and you know there were 15-year-old soldiers sent to die in the trenches. Children can cope with this sort of thing better than most adults realise.'

Random House imprints Corgi and Doubleday eventually published Remembrance. Breslin's works also have appeared on the lists of such publishers as Macmillan, Harper Collins, Canongate and, within anthologies, Penguin and Hodder. Breslin spends a lot of time listening to children. It can pay huge dividends. 'I went to one school and met a boy who hated writing,' she says. 'He asked me if I had ever dreamt a story and then woken up and written it down. Well I have vivid nightmares and it gave me a great idea.'

This translated into the first book of her most lucrative project so far - The Dream Master series. She had difficulty persuading publishers of the merits of the piece, but its eventual success was due to fortuitous timing and creative marketing. 'I got enormous sales on the back of people waiting for Harry Potter books,' Breslin says. 'Bookshops chose a list of books they felt eager fans would also enjoy and ran a campaign 'If you're potty about Harry, then read these . . '.' She is working on a fourth volume.