Huge thanks to all the wonderful people at Allen & Unwin who helped turn my manuscript into a real book, especially Anna McFarlane who could, entirely by herself, face down an army of sketters, and Kate Whitfield, who would have serious words with the mor-kits about their definition of a sandwich.

Thanks as always to my brilliant agent, Margaret Connolly, whose advice is worth its weight in minch-wiggins.

Thanks to dramaturg Peter Matheson for his generous help and keen eye, to Hannah Janzen for another of her beautiful designs, and to Sally Soweol Han for the gorgeous illustrations.

And lastly, thanks to my writing group, to whom this book is dedicated. When I showed them the very beginning of the very first uncertain draft, they said, ‘Give us more of the narrator!’

So I did.