Allen & Unwin acquires Australian and New Zealand rights to Monster Nanny!

Posted on

We are absolutely thrilled to share the wonderful news that ALLEN & UNWIN has acquired Australian and New Zealand and Oceania rights to Tuutikki Tolonen’s internationally bestselling MONSTER NANNY (Tammi 2015) and will publish the book in Australia and New Zealand in Spring 2020 with Pasi Pitkänen’s charming illustrations.

Rights are now sold in 26 territories and a feature film is in development with Scott Free Productions and Ridley Scott co-producing.

Allen & Unwin is Australia’s leading independent publisher and has been voted “Publisher of the Year” thirteen times including the inaugural award in 1992 and eleven times since 2000.

“Allen & Unwin are delighted to be publishing Tuutikki Tolonen’s MONSTER NANNY in Australia and New Zealand. Like others before us, we fell in love with the matter-of-fact way Tuutikki Tolonen’s contemporary world intersects with the fantastical. And what a delightful fantastical world it is: those non-talking dusty monsters, the oracle-like talking bathrobe, those fierce monster-piercing pixies. All very strange and yet completely believable. It’s dreamlike and funny – and very much a world I’d love to inhabit!”

– Anna McFarlane | Publisher, Books for Children and Young Adults | Allen & Unwin, Australia & New Zealand,  Publisher of the Year 2016

Rights sold: 

FINLAND, Tammi (orig.)
AUSTRALIA, Allen & Unwin
BOSNIA, Šahinpašić
BRAZIL, DarkSide Books
CHINA, Beijing Children’s Publishing House
CZECH REPUBLIC, Portál
DENMARK, Turbine
ESTONIA, Tiritamm
FRANCE, Editions Robert Laffont
GERMANY, Carl Hanser Verlag
HUNGARY, Tessloff Babilon
ITALY, Salani/Mauri Spagnol
LATVIA, Zvaigzne
NETHERLANDS, Luitingh-Sijthoff
NEW ZEALAND, Allen & Unwin
NORWAY, Gyldendal Norsk
OCEANIA, Allen & Unwin
POLAND, Vesper
PORTUGAL, Asa Editiones/Leya
ROMANIA, Editura Univers
RUSSIA, Rosman
SLOVENIA, Mladinska knjiga
SPAIN (Spanish), La Galera
SPAIN (Catalan), La Galera
SWEDEN, Rabén & Sjögren
TURKEY, SEV Redhouse Kidz
VIETNAM, Nha Nam
WORLD ENGLISH, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

FILM RIGHTS, Scott Free Productions

About author


Pasi Pitkänen

Pasi Pitkänen has become known for his richly detailed illustrative work on several children’s books such as the extremely popular Monster Nanny trilogy by Tuutikki Tolonen. He has also worked at Rovio Entertainment as an illustrator, character designer, and graphic designer. Pitkänen is the illustrator of the popular Kepler62 series and the author of two Children's titles Monster Tournament and The Island of Lost Animals.

Among Pitkänen’s hobbies are quantum physics, people-watching, B-movies, insects and baking.

Read more Author's page

About author


Tuutikki Tolonen

Tuutikki Tolonen is the author of several acclaimed children’s books, plays and academic articles. She teaches creative writing and has worked as an editor and reporter at Vinski, a Finnish literary magazine for children. For Monster Nanny she received the Arvid Lydecken award.  Her inspiration for the Monster Nanny trilogy sparked during a family breakfast. “My son Leo, then six, said: ‘I heard on the radio yesterday that all moms have to go on vacation and monsters will take their places,” she says.

Her other bestselling series is the Agnes-series, of which the first book "Agnes and the Garden of Dreams" was in 2021 nominated for the Arvid Lydecken Award, received an honorable mention for the Runeberg Junior Award, and won the Luku Varkaus Award. Tolonen tells that the inspiration for Agnes comes for her interest for weird and inexpicable tales, ghost stories and mysteries: "I wanted to write a book my daughter Aili, then nine, would like to read - not too long, not too scary, but very curious."

Read more