The Chocolate Box Girls: Cherry Crush Award-winning by Cathy Cassidy (author)

Cathy Cassidy’s stirring teen novels have a huge following. Their optimism, realism and empathy explain their popularity, especially with girls, and are perfect for fans of Jacqueline Wilson.

More about Cathy: “I was born in 1962 in Coventry (scarily ancient, I know!). I wrote my first picture book for my little brother when I was eight or nine. I loved making comics, too – pages and pages of picture stories, features and competitions. I’d sell my homemade comic to a friend for 5p, then claim it back and sell it again to someone else,they didn’t have photocopiers back then!

I went to Art College in Liverpool, then got a job as fiction editor on the fab and legendary Jackie magazine. Later, I married my boyfriend Liam, went back to college and trained to be an art teacher. I taught in a Coventry secondary school for a few years, which I loved, then moved to Scotland with Liam to start a family.

My kids are 13 and 14 years old now, and the four of us live in a cottage in the Galloway hills with sheep and cows for neighbours. As well as writing books, I am the agony aunt on Shout magazine and sometimes teach art in the local primary schools, which is great fun and keeps me sane. (Well, maybe!)

I’ve been veggie for 30 years, and was vegan for 8 of them – a chocolate-eating vegan, like Storm! I love old clothes, old toys, cars, books. We have three cats, two rabbits and a mad, hairy lurcher called Kelpie (the model for Leggit in my book Dizzy).

I love my family, I love living in the middle of nowhere and I love my work. Of all my jobs, writing has to be the best – it’s the perfect excuse to daydream, after all!”