'Swallows and Amazons for ever!' The Walker children - also known as Captain John, Mate Susan, Able-seaman Titty, and Ship's Boy Roger - set sail on the Swallow and head for Wild Cat Island. There th
Rebecca Solnit retells ‘Cinderella’. A Fairy Tale Revolution is here to remix and revive our favourite stories.‘She looked like a girl who was evening, and an evening that had become a girl…’In the ki
Jeanette Winterson retells 'Hansel and Gretel'. A Fairy Tale Revolution is here to remix and revive our favourite stories. These twists on familiar tales make the perfect Christmas gift.'Deep in the w
Haroun: What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? I asked that question and the Unthinkable Thing happened: my father can’t tell stories anymore. That means no more laughter in the city of Alif
The Swallows are staying on the Suffolk coast whilst they wait for their father to return home from China. But although the harbour is bursting with bobbing yachts, barges and steamers, this year ther
Few attend Mrs Alice Drablow's funeral, and not one blood relative amongst them. There are undertakers with shovels, of course, a local official who would rather be anywhere else, and one Mr Arthur Ki
The little boy Jack discovers a big green book of magic in the attic, and learns all sorts of spells - spells to change the look of things, spells to make him old and grey, or disappear entirely! Of c
Maria is the orphan mistress of a crumbling manor four times as long as Buckingham Palace. Her grounds are so vast and overgrown that Maria is already ten years old before she discovers that a communi
Once upon a time there was a book, and inside the book were princes who had been turned into frogs or ferocious beasts, princesses so beautiful they astonished the sun, faithful sweethearts and evil s
It's Christmas time in the Stanton family house: carol singing, good cheer. But for eleven-year-old Will Stanton something sinister has begun, inching round his subconscious, shouting silent warnings
Come bathe in stew, and dine on meals of eels or worms or jellied gnats, See shoes and ships and sealing wax and fuzzy bears and owls and cats, Depart for the Land where the Bong Tree grows or the Lan
You may think you know all about King Arthur, the young boy who plucked the sword from the stone. You've probably heard stories about Merlin's magic powers and the Knights of the round table. These ar
Brighton is braced for war. It's a time in history that never happened, and England's coast has become the front line of the Second World War. Rolls of barbed wire line Brighton Beach, soldiers scan t
‘A classic’ Financial TimesThe trouble with being a daydreamer who doesn’t say much, like Peter Fortune, is that people are likely to think you are rather stupid or dull. No one can see the amazing th
Little Matt becomes King Matt when he is just a young boy. He can barely even read or write and he certainly doesn't know anything about governing a country. But ruling turns out to be a much trickier
Poor Mrs Flittersnoop! It's not easy being Professor Branestawm's housekeeper. People may say he's a genius, but all his inventions always make life more complicated, alarming and extraordinary than i
'It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge'. Offred is a Handmaid. She has only one function: to b
'Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.' Sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best eve
'My dear girls, stop your mud-pies and hear the news!' Ten years after Little Men, the boys that Jo raised are all grown-up. But that certainly doesn’t mean that they no longer need her help and advic
