Feather Boy (Essential Modern Classics)

Description

Essential Modern Classics are relaunched in gorgeous new covers bringing these timeless story to a new generation. Robert is a boy who can do anything - or so old Edith Sorrel at the nursing home tells him. Robert doesn't think so, knowing as he does that he is the school geek. But something compels him to do what Edith asks - to visit old Chance House, where a boy once fell to his death from the top floor flat, to confront his fears and find some answers. Niker the bully thinks this is a great laugh. He challenges Robert to spend the night at Chance House with him - but there the balance of power changes, and it is Robert who proves to be the stronger. Niker feels threatened by the change - and when he finds out Robert's secret obsession, to make the dying Edith Sorrel a coat of feathers like in the old legend of the Firebird, he knows just how to wrest his old power back. But just how important is the coat of feathers? Could it really save Edith's life?

Nicky Singer was born in 1956 and has worked in publishing, the arts and television. She began her writing career at the age of 15, with lyrics for a cantata Jonah and the Whale, and has since written four adult novels - To Still the Child, To Have and to Hold, What She Wanted and My Mother's Daughter - and two works of non-fiction - The Tiny Book of Time (with Kim Pickin) and The Little Book of the Millennium (with Jackie Singer). She was co-founder and co-director (1987-1996) of Performing Arts Labs, a charity dedicated to training new writers for theatre, screen and opera. In 1995 she presented BBC2's highly acclaimed documentary series on women's fertility, Labours of Eve, and wrote the preface to the book which accompanied the series. Feather Boy, Nicky's first novel for the younger market, won the Blue Peter Book Award in 2002. It is a compelling, utterly convincing account of young teen life, written in an unforgettable voice. Her agent, Clare Conville, described Feather Boy as, "One of the best children's books I have read since becoming an agent." Nicky Singer lives in Brighton with her husband, their two sons and a daughter.

"...a brilliant debut novel that really does merit the category title of Book You Cannot Put Down." Ian Hislop, Blue Peter Awards Judge "Each copy should come with a torch for a spellbinding midnight conclusion." Telegraph "Inventive, original and full of surprises, it's the sort of dazzling debut novel that most publishers would fall over themselves to snap up..." T2 "Feather Boy is the most intelligent book for youngsters I've read for a very long time. Every 12-year-old will see a bit of themselves in Robert and won't be able to put this book down until Feather Boy's emotional, thought-provoking climax. Fabulous." Funday Times "This first children's book is a winner." Publishing News