Jenny Downham’s hugely successful Before I Die is destined for the big screen! Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine to star in the film adaptation Now is Good. Filming will begin this July!

The news that Jenny Downham’s critically acclaimed debut novel Before I Die will soon take to the big screen was received with great excitement here at RHCB. Heralded as ‘an extraordinary first novel’ by the Sunday Times, the book has sold over 250,000 copies across all editions following its first publication by David Fickling Books in July 2007, and a film is now in the pipeline as a BBC films project. Titled Now is Good the film will be based on Downham’s life affirming tale of a terminally ill teenage girl and her determination to live life and love to the fullest before her impending death. Hollywood starlet Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine, who will soon make his film debut in the adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, have landed the leading roles.

Filming is due to begin in July and will coincide with the release of Jenny’s arresting second novel You Against Me in paperback.

We are immensely proud to announce that we will be publishing Jenny Downham’s second novel in December this year – see here. YOU AGAINST ME arrived in its entirety a few months ago and glued us to our chairs until we’d finished reading. It is an incredibly special book. The manuscript has been recently making its way around our sales, marketing and publicity departments, and reminds me of the time we received the manuscript for Jenny’s first novel, BEFORE I DIE – we were at a Random House Children’s Books sales conference in Amsterdam (ah, those conference days are long gone) where two A4 copies were feverishly passed around about fifty people, who invariably embarrassed themselves by crying on trains and planes all the way home. More on Jenny’s new novel to follow - watch this space.