A former teacher, Margaret Ryan is one of Scotland's most prolific and imaginative writers for young people. She wrote the Fat Alfie and Airy Fairy series for Scholastic, the Operation Boyfriend and Little Blue series for Hodder, and two Littlest Dragon titles for HarperCollins. In 2000, she won the Scottish Arts Council Award for The Queen's Birthday Hat.

The paper boys
on Weir Street don't normally stick around for long ... It's definitely
weirder than your average street. After venturing past all the strange
houses, number 57 looks suspiciously normal. The garden is neat and the
letterbox is gleaming. But then the letterbox nearly snaps his fingers
off and the door opens to reveal the tall and imposing figure of Violet
King. If Miss King's connection with Viking warriors is only through her
ancestry then why has she got a helmet on the table?
The Weird Street mini-series
follows Jonny on his bizzare, scary and extremely unusual paper round,
where he bumps into a whole range of oddballs and mysterious neighbours.