While I have never actually seen any fairies at the bottom of my garden, I have always assumed that if I ever discover some, they will be enchanting little creatures with shiny gossamer wings as thin as cobwebs.

Since reading Michelle Harrison’s prize winning children’s novel The 13 Treasures, I’m not sure fairies (if they exist) are as beautiful and charming as I have been led to believe. Her fairies are scary.

While studying children’s book illustrating at university. Michelle encountered some amazing fairy artwork, including pictures by Brian Froud. Through his drawings and books, she came to recognise that fairies could come in all shapes and sizes and that they were not all pleasant little creatures. Influenced by his work, she accepted that some could be sad, flirtatious or downright sinister. Over the years, Froud’s best-selling book Faeries has influenced film, general illustration and fantasy, as he channelled old Celtic folklore into his pictures.

His influence can be seen in Michelle’s debut book for young people aged from ten to 13. Michelle, who is now 29, and works for the children’s book department of Oxford University Press, has been scribbling short stories for years, but always assumed that when it came to choosing a career, she would illustrate the books rather than write them. That said, she admits she has always wanted to write a novel, which is why she began writing The 13 Treasures four years ago.

She says she knew the beginning of her tale, she also knew how it would end. What she didn’t know was what would happen in the middle.

Her central character, Tanya, is named after her young niece, who was thrilled to discover she had been named in a book. Michelle got the idea that her heroine would be psychic from a childhood memory of a family friend who made her amazement known when a fortune teller informed her that her child would have second sight.

The sinister forest that features in the book she remembers from her childhood; the rest has been pulled from her fertile imagination.

“I was read to a great deal as a child by my older sister Theresa. I remember one story about a fairy being killed by a witch and buried in the back garden. Then there were stories about mermaids and other fantastical things. But most of the books I read myself were by Enid Blyton.

“But it was definitely Brian Froud’s illustrations that fired my imagination,” she said.

The 13 Treasures is the story of Tanya, a young girl who is sent to stay at her grandmother’s house in the heart of the Essex countryside with her dog named Oberon, because her mother needs a break from her.

She is unhappy about this, particularly as it is a dusty old rambling house and she has never really got on with her grandmother; nor with Fabian, the caretaker’s son, who stays there too.

The reader is aware that Tanya communes with the fairies from the very first page and soon realises that they are not the friendly kind. In fact, some are downright evil.

The story revolves around the mystery of a girl who vanished in the woods 50 years ago, and the terrible dangers that Tanya, Fabian and her dog face when trying to unravel the mystery.

Michelle explained that at the last moment she added a character called Red. “I had centred it on another character at first, but I didn’t think that worked, so Red entered the story instead.

“Actually the story changed a great deal over the four years I worked on it, then suddenly I knew I had got it right. This was confirmed when an agent agreed to take me on,” she said proudly.

Michelle has woven the threads of this story with such insight and skill that it was won her The Waterstones Children’s Book Award 2009.

Speaking about the £500 prize, she said that she was so thrilled when an agent accepted her work that she didn’t think it could get any better – but it did.

“My win was announced in Waterstone’s flagship store in Piccadilly.

“It is amazing to have won – I am thrilled to have been awarded this prize. It has given me so much confidence,” she said, adding that she can now throw herself into the book’s sequel, which should be ready next year.

n The 13 Treasures is published by Simon and Schuster at £6.99