PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- When Christopher is sent to his unknown Scottish grandfather, he is unimpressed. That is, until he climbs a forbidden hill and a horde of impossible creatures appear. He’s found the entrance to the Archipelago, where all the animals of myth and peril are safe, and where Mal, a flying girl, lives. But the realm’s magic is dimming and the special beasts are beginning to sicken and die. When Christopher crosses into the Archipelago, the two join together to fight the evil force that threatens the world - and what adventures await them both! Absolutely marvellous! Ages 10-13 Lindy
Katherine Rundell is a bestselling author whose novels for children include Rooftoppers, The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer and The Good Thieves. She has won the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, amongst many others. She was a 2021 World Book Day author and has also published two picture books for children and three non-fiction books for adults, including Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, winner of the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize, and The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure, shortlisted for the 2022 Waterstones Book of the Year. Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Katherine spent her childhood in Africa and Europe before taking her degree at the University of Oxford and becoming a Fellow of All Souls College. As well as writing, she studies Renaissance literature and occasionally goes climbing on the rooftops late at night.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- When Christopher is sent to his unknown Scottish grandfather, he is unimpressed. That is, until he climbs a forbidden hill and a horde of impossible creatures appear. He’s found the entrance to the Archipelago, where all the animals of myth and peril are safe, and where Mal, a flying girl, lives. But the realm’s magic is dimming and the special beasts are beginning to sicken and die. When Christopher crosses into the Archipelago, the two join together to fight the evil force that threatens the world - and what adventures await them both! Absolutely marvellous! Ages 10-13 Lindy
There was Tolkien, there is Pullman and now there is Katherine Rundell. Wondrous invention, marvellous writing. This book is her best yet, and that's saying something. Just riveting, quite extraordinary. * Michael Morpurgo * A marvellous imaginative fantasy told with great style and sparkle - a book to race through in a day and keep for a lifetime. * Jacqueline Wilson * Katherine Rundell is a phenomenon. She not only understands what fantasy is for and why children (and the rest of us) need it, but she crafts original and brilliant books that delight readers of all ages and kinds, while stretching our minds and filling our hearts. * Neil Gaiman * Katherine Rundell is a prodigiously gifted storyteller and IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES is wildly good. Spectacularly inventive, it is both a thrilling and page-turning epic and a clarion call to young readers to use the special gifts of childhood- love, courage, imagination and open-heartedness - to fight to save precious creatures of all kinds before they vanish before our eyes. My Book of the Year. * Lauren St. John * Fantastically exuberant, wildly imaginative, impossibly brilliant. Rundell’s best, which is something to be marvelled at. It made me want to yell, or laugh, or bite something. * Kiran Millwood Hargrave * A rare and remarkable feat of glittering imagination from a truly masterful storyteller. * Catherine Doyle * A fierce, fantastic, wild-hearted adventure that roars and bristles with imagination. I devoured it like a hungry dragon * Sam Sedgman * One of our most talented writers for children * Observer * A menagerie of delights. So packed with magic you'll want to take notes. Impossible Creatures is a world you'll want to move into. * Patrick Ness * Between the covers of Impossible Creatures is a world as enchanting, as perilous, as richly imagined as Narnia or Middle Earth. * Frank Cottrell-Boyce * Flickers with a rare and fierce beauty - unputdownable. * Abi Elphinstone *
