YOUNGSTERS inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s 200th birthday celebrations can find out more about the writer thanks to a new book.

The Brontës – Children Of The Moors is a children’s picture book by former Keighley resident, Mick Manning, and his wife, Brita Granström.

The pair turned to Haworth’s most famous family after gaining international success with their previous collaborations for children.

Although now living in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the couple made a return visit to Haworth to research the book.

Mick said: “Brita walked to the Brontë Waterfall in a heavy woollen skirt to feel what it was like – primary research!”

Mick and Brita also received support from Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and herself a writer.

The Brontës – Children Of The Moors introduces the three extraordinary sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – and their brother, Branwell.

Through a mix of storytelling and colour pictures, Mick and Brita relate the sisters' short lives in the remote village of Haworth.

They explore how the girls were inspired to become writers and the sensation their books caused when people realised they had been written by women.

Each of the sisters' greatest novels – Jane Eyre (Charlotte), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne) and Wuthering Heights (Emily) – are simply retold in engaging comic-strip form.

Mick grew up in Haworth and went to school in the village where, in 1966, people still used inkwells and dip pens.

He said: “It felt a bit like Jane Eyre’s school – but a little bit friendlier!

“A pride and fascination in those stubborn, wonderful northern women seems to be omnipresent in Haworth; like the wind whistling through the black moorland walls or the sound of curlews and sheep in the heather.

“After all, they did put the little moorland village of Haworth, with it’s wool trade and smoky mill chimneys, on a literary map.”

Mick played a boy shepherd in a BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 1967, and this incident introduces the book he wrote with Brita.

He said: “That experience at such an early age was formative and life-changing. I found myself developing a strong affinity with the Brontës’ books.

“I also developed a deep interest in natural history and history, too, surrounded as I was by both wild moorland and tumbledown ruins. I spent many hours roaming up on the moor with the curlews and lapwings.

“When I wrote the intro and ending to our Brontë book, I wanted to inject some of that distinct otherworldly-ness and spirit of place that is Haworth.”

Mick and his Swedish-born wife have been producing award-winning non-fiction picture books for more than 20 years.

The Brontës – Children Of The Moors is available in hardback, priced £12.99.