AUTHOR and publisher Patricia Borlenghi is launching not one but two children's books next month.

The Mistley-based writer is holding a special evening at the Ink@84 Bookshop in Highbury, London, on July 12 at 6.30pm to celebrate the release of A to Z – An Animal Alphabet in Five Languages and The Necklace.

Patricia has been working in publishing for more than 40 years and it was in children's books where she first started for Peter Usborne at his children's publishing company.

It was while there she came up with the idea for the alphabet book because she had noticed publishers could never sell foreign editions of  any alphabet book, so in 1992, working with artist Piers Harper, she brought out From Albatross to Zoo by ABC.

Patricia says: "The publisher who had originally brought it out went bust so the artist and I got together to re-do it.

"He re-did all the drawings and because I wanted to move away from the original concept of it being just a picture book, I set about making it more educational."

Written in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, the names of the animals all start with the same letter in each language, although Patricia had to be a little creative with some of the languages and letters.

She adds: "Normally there is no letter ‘J’ or ‘W’ in the Italian alphabet so I've had to add word starting with these letters appears alongside the name of the animal."

Alongside A to Z – An Animal Alphabet in Five Languages, Patricia has penned another book, The Necklace, which has illustrations by Jill Newton.

Patricia describes it as a modern fairytale about a princess with a difference and as an extra treat the book comes with its own limited edition necklace.

"This is another book I've been working on a long time," she smiles. "When I was nine someone gave me a book of fairy tales by Mary de Morgan and one of the stories was about a very different princess who didn't want to get married and devised a way to get out of it.

"I studied Mary de Morgan as part of my MA at Essex University and originally I tried to write my adaptation for an adult audience but then decided it would be better for children."

In Patricia's The Necklace, Princess Lucy is the most beautiful girl in the world but she isn’t interested in finding her prince charming. She prefers to dabble in magic and witchcraft with her beloved friend, a witch called Willow. Together they come up with a cunning plan so that all her suitors, the kings and princes who come from far and wide, will be prevented from marrying her.

Both books are being brought on on Patricia's own Pudding Press, an imprint of her very successful Patrician Press publishing company.

A to Z – An Animal Alphabet in Five Languages and The Necklace, both priced £7.99, follow other Pudding Press titles, Godfrey’s Clever Inventions by Mike Fryer and two other titles in the Godfrey series, and The Wallowbang Tree by Danielle Wrayton, and are available in all good bookshops and on-line.

For more information go to patricianpress.com/pudding-press