Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: graphic novel, Ursula Murray Husted

Growing Together by Botticelli's Apprentice's Ursula Murray Husted

Botticelli's Apprentice's Ursula Murray Husted sells world rights to Growing Together, her new graphic novel.

Published Thu, 12 Jun 2025 06:57:04 -0500

Article Summary

Ursula Murray Husted announces her new middle-grade graphic novel, Growing Together, coming summer 2028.
Growing Together follows three kids finding friendship and first love in a school gardening club setting.
Jennifer Ung at Quill Tree Books acquired world rights; Judy Hansen from Hansen Literary brokered the deal.
Ursula Murray Husted is known for A Cat Story and Botticelli’s Apprentice, and is an art and comics educator.

Growing Together by Ursula Murray Husted of Botticelli's Apprentice is a new middle-grade graphic novel that follows three kids as they navigate friendship and their first crushes when they join a gardening club at their school. Jennifer Ung at Quill Tree Books has acquired world rights to Growing Together, and publication is scheduled for the summer of 2028. Ursula Murray Husted's agent Judy Hansen at Hansen Literary negotiated the deal. Ursula Murray Husted says, "I am very excited to be working on my new comic about a group of middle schoolers making a garden in their school yard based on real victory garden plans from WW1. It is a story about first love, friendship, making mistakes, earning forgiveness, planting tomatoes, and growing hope."

: Ursula Murray Husted from PR

: Botticelli's Apprentice

Ursula Murray Husted is the creator of the graphic novels A Cat Story and Botticelli's Apprentice. A lifelong artist, former professor, and advocate for the arts and art history education, Husted teaches formal comics classes, lectures, and art history workshops ranging from graduate university seminars to pre-K . Husted received her PhD from the University of Minnesota, MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and BFA from Marshall University.

Quill Tree Books was founded in 2020 as a young readers imprint for HarperCollins Children's Books, helmed by VP and editorial director Rosemary Brosnan, with the motto "Many branches, Many voices" focusing on publishing authors with a strong point of view, as well as those who are often underrepresented.

Hansen Literary Agency specialises in graphic novelists, comic book writers and artists, with decades of clients under its belt. And one of the bodies responsible for the expansion of children's graphic novels, fuelling all manner of publishers extending into the comics medium. Right now, it seems like an infinite market that is being tapped into, and creating longstanding comic book readers for decades to come. It is not for nothing that kids' graphic novels in bookstores are being referred to as the newsstand of the twenty-first century.

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