I am teaching this to my year 6 class and it has been a great success as it totally engages its readers and is topical and relevant. The Raven Mysteries are full of humour and mad-cap action, which is quite different from your novels for older readers. Was this a conscious decision of yours when setting out to write this series? Zoe, left behind in the confusion when her parents escaped, survives there as best she can. Alone and desperate among marauding gangs, she manages to dig a derelict boat out of the mud and gets away to Eels Island. But Eels Island, whose raggle-taggle inhabitants are dominated by the strange boy Dooby, is full of danger too. Set on the east coast of England after the sea has risen and flooded much of East Anglia, Floodland tells the story of ten year old Zoe who has lost her parents in a confusing rescue mission from her home island of Norwich. She is determined to set out and search for her parents and when she finds an old boat, she makes her escape.

I have a pet raven called Edgar, though he doesn’t say much, eat much, or indeed, move much. There’s a possibility that he’s stuffed, I guess. Floodland has a powerful and emotive theme, handled with warmth and humanity. About This Edition ISBN:A middle-grade short novel about a post-global-warming world in which much of what was England is now under water. Ten-year-old Zoe and her parents struggle to survive in Norwich, now an island, until the last supply ship is set to take them away. But Zoe gets separated from her parents and misses the boat. Months later she finds a small boat and sets out to try to find them. With both your publisher and author hat on, what advice can you give would-be children's authors in getting published? This was hailed as one of the most extraordinary debuts when it was first published in 2000. Set in the near future on the east coast of England that has been reclaimed by the sea it tells the story of a girl who, having been mistakenly left behind by her parents escaping from the flood, she heads off to find them but ends up in the hands of a mob of nasty men on a small island.

Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments This book takes a look at one of the possible futures in our path if we continue on the destructive route humans are currently on. I started to write as a teenager a bit, but properly when I was in my mid-twenties. It took a few years to think it might actually happen! Marcus has been shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal five times, the Edgar Allan Poe Award (twice) and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize (four times). He is also the most noted author in the history of the Printz Award, with one win and two honour books,for Revolver, The Ghosts of Heaven and Midwinter Blood.

I write at the weekends, and mostly in the study in my loft, but also sometimes I travel to write - eg much of Revolver was written on trips to Sweden. Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. Home > The doom that prevails is beautifully crafted as is the glimmer of hope that pulls us through the book with its magnetism.