From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. There's much more to being an author than writing books: to be able to go to schools and festivals and meeting readers is one of my favourite things to do. Fans of Emma Carroll will lap this up – and, by taking a slightly different tack, I hope it will bring lots of new readers to her books. Polly is resourceful and kind, worried about her brother who is being bullied at school and she is also dealing with her cooling relationship with her best friend Sasha.

Carroll is truly a unique voice in children’s literature and her writing repertoire never fails to amaze me. I have already started to recommend The Tale of Truthwater Lake to friends and colleagues, and feel sure that it will feature on many forthcoming awards lists. The children in each setting - the past and near future - are facing challenges; flooding for a reservoir in the past, and high temperatures in the future due to climate change. She has been nominated for and the winner of numerous national, regional and schools awards – including the Books Are My Bag Readers’ Award, Branford Boase, CILIP Carnegie Medal, Young Quills, Teach Primary and the Waterstones Book Prize.When a champion swimmer visits her club, she realises she just might have a chance – unless a new boy and his family succeed in taking everything away from her.

She has martialled all her skills in this latest novel, The Tale of Truthwater Lake, and added to them by setting part of the tale in the future, where climate change is wreaking increasing havoc. Once told by poet Ted Hughes her writing was ‘dangerous’, it took Emma Carroll twenty years of English teaching and a life-changing cancer diagnosis to feel brave enough to give her dream of being an author a try. The story makes many pleasing nods to Philippa Pearce’s classic novel Tom’s Midnight Garden, both Tom and Polly time travel while away from home in the summer holidays and both, rather touchingly, in the end, connect with the older people in their community whose voices might otherwise have gone unheard. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes.Swimming over the rooftops at midnight, Polly dives down and is suddenly able to breathe, to hear church bells and bird song . This is not, by any means though, an instructive novel about how things were better in the good old days, both periods have their ups and downs, and both Nellie and Polly have much to navigate and much to celebrate. Polly and her brother go to stay at their Aunties and whilst swimming in the lake to cool off Polly transports to the life of Nellie in 1952. Milton needs a holiday - but his trip to Hawaii isn't as relaxing as he thought it would be, thanks to an unscrupulous billionaire, an endangered spider species, and an active volcano! This is a change of style for Carroll, as she is known as the Queen of Historical Fiction – but here we have a look to the future through the lens of the past.

Whilst she can’t talk to Joel about it, she learns a great deal about determination, friendship, and channel swimming!Emma Carroll has written another winning tale that is highly recommended to readers of 9-12 and certainly will recommended to my colleagues in Ks 2 teaching . The Tale of Truthwater Lake is sure to join my list of most recommended books for Key Stage Two classrooms and for families to share at home. Discover what happens when Polly's swim in the reservoir near her aunt's house during a long, hot, future summer, and finds herself travelling back in time, to when the villagers discover that their homes are to be destroyed to make way for the new reservoir.