Picture Books / Younger Readers
Not So Younger Readers
Teenage Fiction / Adult Fiction
It’s not so bad having only one parent, but how would you like to be the only person in the entire class who’s an only child? Binky thinks it’s like being the only star in the sky, and decides to invent an older sister.
It was Thursday, Dana Bindle’s least favourite day of the week. On Thursdays Dana had her cello lesson. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Dana was keen on the cello. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the bus stop wasn’t so far away. It still wouldn’t have been so bad if Dana had got on the right bus that Thursday evening. But she didn’t.
Adam’s brother Keith tells him that he comes from another planet. Keith has been known to tell Adam some whoppers in the past, but there is something about this story that makes Adam think it’s true. Maybe Keith does need a new Walkman for intergalactic communications. Maybe those really are extraterrestrial vaccination scars on the back of his knee. Maybe he really does need Adam’s help so he can stay on the Earth…
Adam doesn’t much like being Keith’s little brother. Keith is so brilliant at everything you’d think he was in training to be a superhero. But Keith isn’t the only person making Adam’s life tough. Adam and his best friend Midge are being bullied by the teenagers from hell. But Adam decides to stand up to them. This is just the chance he needs to prove that he’s as good as his brother.
“A lighthearted, enjoyable read” Sunday Telegraph
A friend of mine said she saw a spaceship over her head at three in the morning when she was hanging out the wash. For a long time after she told me this I wanted to write a story about a girl meeting an alien who has landed in her garden, but I could never make it work because I couldn’t picture the alien. Then one night I was having supper with this same friend and my cat came into the room and just stood there scowling at us. My friend said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if he said, ‘I’m bored’?” And Harry, the talking cat from another planet, was born.
One rainy, half-term afternoon while Chicken is doing a jigsaw puzzle and wishing her best friend hadn’t moved away, Harry, the extraterrestrial cat announces that he’s bored. Before Chicken knows what’s happening, the back garden has turned into the lake in her puzzle and she and Harry are rowing across it in a boat.
Harry isn’t meant to go on a camping holiday with Chicken and her family. He’s meant to stay home. But Harry, of course, never does what he’s meant to do.
I was sitting in the kitchen with my friends, Lizzie and Charlie, and Charlie said, “Are you ever going to write a book about us?” And I said, “If I did, I’d have to call it Lizzie and Charlie go shopping, because that’s pretty much all you like to do.” Only in my version of a Lizzie and Charlie shopping trip not only did I spell Charlie’s name wrong, but they end up on another planet, not at the mall.
“Fast, funny and thought-provoking” The Times - London
They also liked to go to the movies.
Lizzie and Charley have a weekend that is, literally, out of this world.
My friend, Sue (an artist and a bike rider) and I went to a vintage motorcycle show one day. We both liked the Vincent Black Shadow. Sue said, “I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to write a story about a nun on a motorcycle.” I thought it was a good idea, too.
Elmo Blue admires his neighbours, the Bamber because they’re so nice and normal. Unlike Elmo’s family. Especially Elmo’s mother, who has declared war on Mr Bamber over his plans to turn the local woods into a golf course. Elmo pins his hopes of being part of the normal world of the Bambers on making friends with the Bambers’ new adopted child, an orphan from South America. But when the kid arrives, claiming to be an undercover angel, Elmo realizes that his life is going to become even weirder.
“Another thoroughly good read from a reliably entertaining author” Kids Out
“An enjoyable comedy” Books for Keeps
“A very funny tale” Children’s Book News
Elmo Blue’s neighbour Kuba is a little angel (literally) and is making Elmo’s life very difficult. All he wants to do is fit in and be normal, but Kuba has other ideas. When the class goes on a history trip to a remote part of Wales, Elmo, thanks to Kuba, finds himself embroiled in a war against bully Eddie Kilgour and his sidekick Mark. It looks as though Elmo himself could be history, unless Kuba can come up with some heavenly intervention.
Trish and Kiki live in a stunningly unattractive tower block on a London estate. (I have to say here that this tower block is not dissimilar to the one I lived in when I first came to London - it was a long time ago now, but the memory is still astoundingly vivid.) It's the sort of place that can make you believe that things can't get much worse - or much better. Trish and Kiki, whose story this is, come together (perhaps) by chance - and (perhaps by chance) make the acquaintance of a very odd old woman, Betty Friedman, and her cat. It is through Betty Friedman (who Kiki thinks must be a shaman and who Trish thinks is simply gaga) that Kiki and Trish have an adventure they could never have imagined - one that, amongst other things, teaches them that things can always get both much worse and much better.
This is a Time Travel novel. It came about, I reckon, because I've always had a bit of an obsession with the past. It had many false starts (and at least one nearly finished start) before Trish and Kiki found me and I was able to make it work, but the idea of time - of the past and its memories - being lost was always central to it. Time really did once move more slowly, and people's remembrances went back further than a few years or a few months. I am not the only person who believes that you can't know where you're going if you don't remember where you've been. And that the past is as important as the present.
On a different note, the green glass ball with the mushroom made of bubbles at its centre that Kiki and Trish see in Betty Friedman's parlour actually belonged to my grandmother. She called it her crystal ball, but though she did tell fortunes she didn't use the ball for that, she used tealeaves.
Picture Books / Younger Readers
Not So Younger Readers
Teenage Fiction / Adult Fiction
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