Sapphire & Gruntella
"A ten-year-old girl, her magnificently antisocial pig neighbour, and the spectacular chaos they cause — and somehow survive — together."
Full Synopsis
Sapphire is ten years old, sharp-witted, and would very much like a normal life. Gruntella is the large, opinionated pig who has taken up residence in the wheelie bin at Pig-Poo-Place on Muckbottom Farm — and who is so catastrophically, spectacularly smelly she could peel wallpaper at fifty feet. She steals pegs, borrows wellies, and considers any bit of chaos she can generate to be a good morning's work.
Sapphire has a secret weapon: three golden puff-puffs and a strong cup of tea activate a superpower that is magnificent, embarrassing, and extremely useful for sending scheming pigs back into their bins. When Gruntella's antics escalate — stolen pegs, missing wellies, a malfunctioning Bodge-O-Matic, a mud volcano, and one deeply unexpected giant worm — Sapphire finds herself reluctantly responsible for a pig who doesn't want to be responsible for anything. Together they are chaos. Apart they are somehow worse.
Set on Muckbottom Farm, Sapphire and Gruntella is the first book in a planned illustrated chapter book series for readers aged 6–10. It combines slapstick physical comedy with genuine emotional warmth — a friendship between two characters who absolutely shouldn't work, and absolutely do.
Themes: Friendship, self-acceptance, responsibility, the chaos of caring about someone you didn't plan to. Plus a remarkable quantity of wind.
⭐ A Note on Representation
Sapphire's mum is Ugandan — vibrant, strong, and at the warm centre of a loud kitchen full of laughter, aunties, and flavour. She is not a token or an afterthought; she is the emotional anchor of the home. This is representation built naturally into the world from the ground up.
Series Arc & Pipeline
An open-ended illustrated chapter book series with strong standalone stories and a growing emotional arc. Companion formats in development alongside the core series.
Character Reference
Sapphire · Protagonist · Age 10
Sharp, sensible, long-suffering. Messy plaits, odd socks, and a superpower she finds deeply embarrassing — three golden puff-puffs activate something magnificent and extremely useful for sending pigs back into bins. Cannot walk away from chaos she didn't ask for. Hasn't managed it yet.
Gruntella · Chaos Agent · Resident of Pig-Poo-Place
Large. Opinionated. Lives in the wheelie bin by choice and considers this perfectly reasonable. Steals pegs, borrows wellies, presses buttons she shouldn't, and can clear a village green with one well-timed blast. This is not a superpower. This is just Gruntella. She is very proud of it.
Mum · Heart of the Home
Ugandan. Early thirties. Vibrant, strong, completely unflappable. Her kitchen is loud and warm — laughter, aunties, flavour, something always on the hob. Has decided the pig is probably fine.
Jersey James · Recurring Comedy Character · Diva
A fabulously vain Jersey Giant rooster in a mustard waistcoat with an extensive scarf collection. More worried about mud on his beautiful face than anything else happening around him. His waistcoat is always in danger. He is always the most important person in any room and absolutely knows it.
Badger · The Stoic · Wrench in Hand
Short. Dark circles. Arms folded. Brew always on. Has an opinion about everything and rarely uses more than four words to share it. Watches the chaos from the hedge with the expression of someone who predicted all of this and is finding no joy in being right. Allergic to nonsense.
Farmer Bodge · Mad Inventor · Muckbottom Farm
Builds machines that are genuinely brilliant ideas and absolutely do not work. The Bodge-O-Matic Pro-Cleaner 5000 was going to revolutionise farm maintenance. It mostly revolutionised the distance mud could travel. Badger fixes everything quietly afterward. Farmer Bodge is already designing the 5001.
Wurmy-Burmy · Giant Sludge Worm · Book 1 Arc
Starts small enough to fit in a cracked teapot. Ends up the size of a small road. Gruntella finds him in the mud volcano in Chapter 5, names him immediately, and moves him into a premium water butt. His journey from teapot to the top field is the quietly devastating heart of Book 1.
Cathy · Cow · Muckbottom Farm
A highland cow. Occasionally forgets how legs work. Has strong opinions delivered entirely through timing and expression. Once resolved a crisis by sitting on a ribbon at exactly the right moment. Do not attempt to explain Cathy. She works precisely because she doesn't need explaining.
All content © Vadik Stars · Enquiries: [email protected]
Sapphire & Gruntella — Book 1
Written by Vadik Stars · Dedicated to Sapphire — the real-life superhero who can out-run, out-laugh, and definitely out-fart Gruntella any day.
Contents
- 01The Great Peg Pinch
- 02The Case of the Missing Wellies
- 03The Stolen Goggles
- 04The Day Farmer Bodge's Invention Went Bonkers!
- 05The Day the Mud Volcano Went SPLORRRP
- 06The Night of the Chicken and the Worm
- 07The Morning the Puff-Puffs Ran Out
- 08The Day the Puddles Started Moving
- 09The Worm That Vanished
- 10The Great Muckbottom Rescue
- +Recipe: Sapphire's Take-Off Fuel
Opening — Chapter 1: The Great Peg Pinch
Full manuscript available on request via [email protected]
Jersey & Badger
"Two mismatched characters finding meaning in a small world — and then discovering what happens when the world gets bigger."
The Series
Two volumes. Same farm. Completely different register.
Volume One — A collection of farm-based vignettes: ten cases, each standalone, building toward something larger. Jersey notices threats. Badger investigates. The threats are never what Jersey thinks they are. Something real is threading through all of it, and by Case #09 it arrives on a board covered in pins and string in Badger's shed.
Volume Two — A road trip. Badger and Jersey leave Muckbottom Farm and discover the wider world is less coherent and more indifferent than either of them expected. The cases get stranger. The writing gets deeper. It contains the best work in both manuscripts.
What It Really Is
Not a mysteries series in the traditional sense — the cases don't resolve, and they don't need to. The real subject is two mismatched characters finding meaning in a small world, and then discovering what happens when the world gets bigger. Comic animal fiction with genuine emotional depth. Dry, literate, warm underneath.
Jersey's hypervigilance — the pattern-seeking, the inability to stand down, the constant threat-identification where there is none — is the emotional engine of both books. It is played for comedy. It is also something sadder and more specific. You don't need to label it. Agents will feel it.
⭐ The Publishing Angle — A Built-In On-Ramp
Jersey and Badger sit within the same world as Sapphire & Gruntella. The strategy is deliberate: younger readers enter through S&G, grow up with the characters, and graduate naturally into Jersey & Badger. This cross-age-group on-ramp is a genuine publishing differentiator.
Jersey James · Jersey Giant Rooster · The Hypervigilant One
Spent years as self-appointed guardian of a flock that never needed guarding. Cannot stand down — standing down feels like the danger, not the relief. Identifies threats in empty fields. Carries prop binoculars that don't work but look very official. The comedy engine and the emotional core.
Bentley Badgerford III · Badger · The Competent One
Dry. Stoic. Wrench in one hand, mug of tea in the other, brew always on the hob. Desperately wants a quiet life and has never once had one. His backstory is hinted but never explained — the certificates in Case #09 are as close as either book gets. Keep it that way.
Series Status
Lila and Draco
Draco is a small dragon who drifts — waking somewhere different every time he sleeps, with no say in where the world puts him. Then Lila finds him in the forest. She takes him home, feeds him, and defends him from the villagers who don't understand what he is — including a goat with a personal grudge.
For the first time, Draco has somewhere that feels like his. When drifting takes him away, he has to do something he has never managed before: not just survive, but find his way back to the only place he has ever felt safe.
Series Arc
Book 1 establishes the bond between Lila and Draco and the mechanics of drifting. A longer arc — involving the Dilk bloodline and Lila's place within it — runs beneath the surface. The world and the mythology are fully planned.
Companion Formats
🐷💨 Gruntella's Gross Joke Book
Gross-out humour for early readers is a proven high-volume category. Uses the established Gruntella character as a launch vehicle. Premise document available on request.
✏️ Sapphire Activity Books
Companion format to the core series. Activity books dramatically extend IP value and shelf presence. Concept document in preparation — available shortly.
Get in Touch
Representation enquiries, submission requests, and publisher interest:
✉️ [email protected]All materials confidential. All characters and artwork © Vadik Stars.
Original illustrations by family collaborator. All rights reserved.