Two of our finest writers for young adults discuss their new novels and the themes that run through them.

Sally Gardner’s Maggot Moon won the 2012 Costa Children’s Book Prize. The novel is set in an alternative 1950s and is a story of courage, friendship and rebellion, featuring dyslexic Standish Treadwell and Gramps who live with the undesirables in zone 7, under the brutal regime of the Motherland. Gardner’s works have been translated into 22 languages and have sold more than two million in the UK alone.

Annabel Pitcher’s Ketchup Clouds is a tale of love and betrayal centred around 15-year-old Zoe who has a dark and terrible secret she cannot confess to anyone. She tells her story in letters to an American criminal locked up on death row. Pitcher is also author of My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece.