This is the series that keeps on giving! I loved reading Aliens Love Underpants with my own children and am so pleased that there are more adventures for new fans to enjoy. But where does Claire get her inspiration from? Read her special piece below to find out…

“Huge scaly DRAGONS roamed the land
In long gone days of olde. 
They LOVED to wear big underpants
In colours bright and bold.

With flaming holes in their undies, a pack of pant-loving dragons embark on a knicker-nicking adventure through the Kingdom of Pantasia in this hilarious new story from the creators of the bestselling Aliens Love Underpants!”

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Claire Freedman’s Inspiration for Dragons Love Underpants

Dragons Love Underpants is the eighth book in the Underpants series, so the challenge was to create something new, fresh and very different in content and style from the previous books I’d written. I thought it might be a nice idea to set the story in a different time frame. I started thinking about what that might be, and which creatures would fit in with that idea. Going back to the mythical Days of Olde, when knights fought dragons, seemed perfect! 

I really liked the idea of dragons as the main characters, and felt the concept was different enough to give the book a unique feel. I also knew that Ben Cort, who does such an amazing job illustrating our books, would be happy to have something new to inspire his work. I could almost see his colourful, funny dragon illustrations in my mind as I began to write.

Of course, I knew the book had to feature the same hilarious, pants–mad antics as the previous books. I mulled over possible storylines and let my mind go into free fall. The funnier and sillier the better! Despite the book being about underpants, I knew I still had to come up with original ‘pants’ ideas that hadn’t been done in my previous books – quite hard to do! I eventually invented the mythical Kingdom of Pantasia, ruled by pants-mad King Top-Bot. Enter the dragons, terrifying the villagers and stealing their underpants, but wanting more and more pants as they keep breathing fire and burning them to a crisp! I needed to solve the problem. So along came the idea of a cunning plan by Princess Tilly, aided by her loyal knight, Sir Y-Front! 

It all ends happily ever after for everyone – as all good fairy tales do!

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What’s next I wonder? Snowman, chicken, robots?! Whatever it is, it’s going to be totally pants-tastic!

Jo.

*Many thanks to Simon & Schuster for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour*