’Genies grant wishes! That’s all anyone ever cares about. They forget that genies were imprisoned in those lamps for a reason…’

Relic Hamilton is just your average 12-year-old, living a quiet life with his grandfather above their old antiques shop in Chinatown in London.

Until one day, while polishing some mysterious brass lamps in the basement, something extraordinary happens. Relic feels spine-chillingly cold. Breathless. Scared. And suddenly, a real, live genie stands before him!

But this is no kind, benevolent genie. This genie is evil ... and it feeds on hope.

Relic finds himself catapulted to the centre of a fast-paced underground community of genie hunters, led by the excitable Professor Latimer and the tech-savvy Doctor Raphaela. Together, they travel in their one-of-a-kind jet, the Aladdin, secretly chasing rogue genies before they can wreak havoc on the world…

JOSEPH COELHO

Joseph Coelho grew up on a council estate in Roehampton and started writing poems in secondary school. After studying archaeology at university, he spent some time in Peru and, returning to the UK, started doing performance poetry in schools. With extensive experience in running dynamic creative literacy sessions, Coelho’s work aims to inspire and empower children through stories and characters they can relate to, as well as help to explore feelings and celebrate inclusivity. His laureateship seeks to promote the power of poetry and build the nation’s library membership amongst other goals. Coelho’s debut children’s poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules, came out in 2014 and won the CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award) the same year. Since then, he has written several further lyrical children’s stories and poetry collections including Overheard in a Tower Block (2017), If All the World Were... (2019) and My Beautiful Voice (2022).