When Queen Camilla Picked This YA Author's Book for Her Christmas List, She Was ‘Stunned' (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW When Queen Camilla announced every 10 to 11-year-old-child in the U.K. will receive Katherine Rundell's Impossible Creatures, Rundell tells PEOPLE she was 'thrilled and stunned.' Rundell says her childhood in Zimbabwe inspired the vivid world of her bestselling children's novel Disney has acquired rights to adapt Impossible Creatures into a live-action film. When Impossible Creatures author Katherine Rundell met Queen Camilla at her London residence, the Clarence House, a few years ago for lunch with a group of fellow writers, it was beyond a career highlight. 'The Queen is very warm and funny. She has a brilliant knack for getting the best out of people and putting them at their ease,' says Rundell, 38, of Queen Camilla. 'Much of the discussion was about the power of reading as a source of both delight and intellectual freedom.' Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell. Penguin Random House On July 17, Queen Camilla announced that every Year 6 and P6 child across the U.K. (equivalent to the 5th grade in the U.S) will be gifted a special edition of the bestselling book Impossible Creatures by the British author this Christmas in an effort to promote children's literacy. More than 800,000 copies of the novel will be distributed according to The Guardian. Impossible Creatures, a New York Times bestseller, is a children's novel set between Scotland and a magical world called the Archipelago. The story follows the growing friendship of the characters, Christopher Forrester and Malum 'Mal' Arvorian, a girl who can fly, as the two band together to save the Archipelago from destruction. The novel was awarded the 2024 Children's Fiction Book of the Year by the British Book Awards. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! Rundell, 38, tells PEOPLE in an interview that she's a 'huge fan' of the Queen, who has been 'wonderfully supportive' of the series. 'I was so thrilled and so stunned when I was told. She's a real delight,' says the YA author, whose new book in the Impossible Creatures series, The Neverfear, (the third in the series of five books) was recently released. 'And I love that she is using her role as queen to speak about things that are so fundamental to a child's childhood, to their wellbeing.' 'I think she has a real sense that books can transform a child's life if we can get books into their hands and the ability to read confidently and well, that those things can put a child on a path that can lead them towards delight,' she continued. This isn't the first time Rundell's books have been noticed by the Queen. The Queen's Reading Room — a book club and charity — has featured her nonfiction book, Vanishing Treasures, about endangered creatures, as a book of the month pick. Rundell tells PEOPLE that part of the inspiration for Impossible Creatures comes from her 'extraordinary' time growing up in Zimbabwe as a child. The daughter of a British diplomat, she moved there with her family, before relocating to Brussels for high school at age 14. Describing the lush and vivid landscape of her home and the different animals she encountered, Rundell says, 'Zimbabwe gave me my first vision of the world as full of living things. You might see snakes. There were monkeys by one of the shopping centers, but then even the smaller things, the insects, the extraordinary variety of tiny rodents, the butterflies, and above all, the birds, the dozens and dozens of colors of birds.' 'I think that was absolutely formative to my childhood. And I think it is very much where Christopher's story in the Impossible Creatures books comes from,' she adds. Disney recently bought the rights to the Impossible Creatures series to adapt into a live-action film according to Deadline. The Neverfear is now available for purchase, wherever books are sold.