New Beatrix Potter book announced

Ready for the brand-new, 100-year-old tale by Peter Rabbit creator Beatrix Potter?

It’s on its way.

Two years ago Jo Hanks, publisher at Penguin Random House Children’s in the U.K., came upon a reference to a mysterious Potter manuscript featuring “a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life.” Hanks tracked down three handwritten manuscripts, a rough color sketch of our hero, Kitty-in-Boots, and a pencil sketch of Kitty’s nemesis, Mr. Tod.

The award-winning illustrator Quentin Blake (think “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) has signed on to do the illustrations, and “The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots” will be published in the U.S. and the Britain in September, Penguin Random House announced Tuesday.

“The tale really is the best of Beatrix Potter. It has double identities, colorful villains and a number of favorite characters from other tales (including Mr. Tod, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Ribby and Tabitha Twitchit),” Hanks said in a press release. “And, most excitingly, our treasured, mischievous Peter Rabbit makes an appearance — albeit older, slower and portlier!”

Letters in the Victoria & Albert Museum Archives, home of many Potter items, show that Potter intended to finish the tale, but life intervened in the shape of the beginning World War I, marriage, sheep farming and colds, according to Penguin Random House.

Quentin Blake’s illustration of ‘The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots’

Award-winning illustrator Quentin Blake has signed on to do the illustrations for “The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots.” (Quentin Blake illustration)

So the publisher needed an illustrator, and, to Hanks, Blake was the obvious choice.

“It’s a challenging brief to illustrate a manuscript written over a hundred years ago by one of the world’s most beloved authors, but we knew that Quentin’s energy, rebelliousness and humor were in keeping with Beatrix’s own artistic sensibilities and therefore exactly what this fantastic book called out for,” Hanks said.

In the press release, Blake described his reaction: “It seemed almost incredible when, early in 2015, I was sent the manuscript of a story by Beatrix Potter; one which had lain unpublished for a hundred years and which, with the exception of a single drawing, she had never illustrated. I liked the story immediately — it’s full of incident and mischief and character — and I was fascinated to think that I was being asked to draw pictures for it. I have a strange feeling that it might have been waiting for me.”

Penguin Young Readers plans to publish “The Tale of Kitty-in Boots” in hardcover on Sept. 6, 150 years after Potter’s birth and just over a century after she wrote the story.