Yes, having decided on a female dominated world I still wanted to write about a boy – I had the character in my head and knew he would be fun to write. I love the Hunters (the White Witch police force) who are a sort of Amazonian SAS (with a few token men who have to be extremely good to be allowed to join).Ģ.ğurther to that, when considering witches (sweeping statement alert) we usually think of them as female (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Mildred Hubble, Hocus Pocus etc.), what made you decide to have a male protagonist?

I purposely avoided the word wizard to emphasise the importance of females. The other thing that got me excited was that I thought I could create a witchy world where women had stronger witchy powers and higher social status. I didn’t know (and still don’t) much about witches but did know there were White Witches (who were ‘good’) and Black Witches (‘bad’) and it just seemed a perfect opportunity to play around with expectations – about labels and the assumptions we make about other people.

My original idea was the Giving Ceremony and something happening when 3 gifts were given – becoming a witch seemed the obvious choice. What made you decide to write about witches? Caitlin Mehta from Children’s Book Chat asks YA author Sally Green some questions about her YA Book Prize-shortlisted novel, Half Bad:ġ.

Half wild book series