London girl Isabel Adomakoh Young is set to team up with Stephen Spielberg on a major Hollywood production. The director's company Dreamworks has snapped up the rights to the young writer's literary debut, Lionboy.
Isabel is already the toast of the literary world after the book she wrote with her mother, Louisa, won a lucrative publishing deal. Puffin has agreed to pay the pair a six-figure sum for three books. The first in the trilogy is due in bookshops in October and is expected to be a massive hit.
It follows the exploits of a boy who develops the ability to speak "cat" after being scratched by a leopard. His feline linguistics, which allow him to converse with everything from tigers to tabbies, land him in a series of exciting adventures.
Comparisons are already being drawn between the pair and Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who is also a single mum. Louisa says it's no surprise that she and JK became children's authors: "When you are a single mother with only one child, you spend an awful lot of time together," she says. "Working from home, you don't waste any of that time travelling and it can all go into devising stories."
It is her co-author Isabel who is the real star of their success, however. The Dreamworks deal is set to make her a millionaire before her 11th birthday, making her one of Britain's youngest ever literary earners.
