WHEN Kate Pankhurst discovered that celebrated suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst was a distant cousin, she had recently graduated from an illustration degree in Preston and was working, illustrating several other writers’ stories as well as teaching drawing workshops to primary schoolchildren.
It was fertile ground that sparked lots of ideas, she says, one of which was to address the lack of girl characters in children’s books, particularly powerful characters like Mariella, Pankhurst’s initial solo creation, first published in 2013.
