Tiger Aspect Kids & Family – which is part of Banijay Kids and Family – has secured a development deal for bestselling picture book series, What the Ladybird Heard.
The books are created by author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Lydia Monks.
The deal covers the option to create a preschool animated series, and marks the first animated series development for Julia and Lydia.
What the Ladybird Heard is published in the UK by Macmillan Children’s Books and is the first of four titles. The series has sold over four million copies and has been translated into 24 languages worldwide. The latest book – What the Ladybird Heard at the Seaside – was released in paperback in 2021 and spent three weeks at the top of the Preschool and Picture Book Nielsen bestseller charts.
Notably, the What the Ladybird Heard series is the third bestselling picture book brand in the UK this year (Nielsen, 2021), after Peppa Pig and The Gruffalo.
“Having read these books to my kids, with the brilliant rhyming verse and following the bumpy trail across every page looking for the ladybird, time and time again, I’m honoured to be working with Julia and Lydia to bring this brilliant story to screen,” commented Tom Beattie, md of Tiger Aspect Kids & Family.
Julia Donaldson added: “I am thrilled that my What The Ladybird Heard series of books is to be adapted for screen by Tiger Aspect Kids & Family. I’m sure that Lydia Monks’s characterful pictures of the clever little ladybird, the farmyard animals and the comical thieves will translate brilliantly into animation, and I can’t wait to see them all on my television.”
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