* St Jenni series

* Other Meg Harper Books (published by Lion)

* Grandma's Party (published by BRF)

* Reviews

Read Kate's blog

‘The Mum’ series began because I had just spent a lot of time writing a long and rather sad book for teenagers which was going to be published but wasn’t in the end because of a change in publishing policy. I was absolutely gutted – and decided to write something funny in sheer rebellion.

I wanted to write something completely different – and then I fell in love with the characters I’d created. I also loved writing in Kate’s voice and, I’m afraid, started laughing at my own jokes.

I wanted to follow the family’s adventures further and got quite gleeful about creating challenges for them to overcome. There’s a lot of stuff in the books which is based on things that have happened me, so it was fun to inflict it all on a fictional family!

I also wanted to write about a boy and a girl who are very close friends but not boyfriend/girlfriend – or not yet anyway. I’ve always really enjoyed that sort of friendship myself and think it’s a bit sad that boys and girls often don’t relate in that way – they move onto the snogging etc too quickly!

That’s quite serious stuff to be writing about and, actually, there’s quite a lot of other serious stuff in these books too. I’m a Christian and wanted to write about things that I think are important spiritually and in the way we live our lives - like prayer, forgiveness, love etc – but I didn’t want to do it in a heavy way. And I didn’t want to make having a faith sound too easy – because it isn’t. The journal style and the humour help with all of this, I think.

I’'m really pleased to have written a fourth ‘Mum’ book and I've dedicated it to my former editor who gave me such encouragement!

I have loads of favourite passages in these books, both serious and funny. I love it in ‘Gruesome Twosome’ when Kate walks up and down the church with Comet, singing and listening to the rain and eventually, they both fall asleep. (P134-136) It’s a real ‘ah’ moment. But I love silly bits too. For some reason, I love it near the beginning of ‘Hound from Hell’ when Ben is talking to Kate with a face-pack on and in ‘Gruesome Twosome’ where she accuses him (P38) of auditioning for a boy band. They have the sort of edgy but basically good natured relationship with each other that I’d like to have had with a brother.

I don’t think there’s anything much I’d like to change about these books, although whenever you read a book you’ve written, you always find the odd bit that you realise you could have written better. I would quite like to change the titles if I could. I wanted them to be just ‘Big Bum Mum’, ‘Big Tum Mum’ and ‘Big Dumb Mum’ but they seemed a bit too rude. I suppose it’s better that the relationship between Mum and Kate gets a mention in the title as Kate is really the main character.

I’ve had some great reviews for these books but I like it best when I meet a kid who has read them and has really enjoyed them. E-mail me to let me know what you think!