Why did you decide to tell the story through the perspective of a teenage girl, Gloria, and a dog called Heinz? The newspaper is important to the plot. It gives us a glance, now and then, at what's happening in the city, drops hints, pumps up the danger level, influences public opinion. The anagrams are actually clues of a sort for the reader - though it doesn't matter if you don't stay to solve them. I love that the illustrator, Keith Robinson, captured the 1920s period style perfectly. It also serves to say, 'Look, we're not talking 21st century here.'

This is a thrilling adventure story with plenty of twists and turns, but it also has depth and breadth with an underlying social and political commentary on greed, corruption, manipulation, exploitation and mobs --- and also courage and the willingness to stand up for what is right and true.

Geraldine McCaughrean was born and educated in Enfield, North London, the third and youngest child of a fireman and a teacher. She attended Christ Church College of Education but instead of teaching chose to work for a magazine publishing house. She became a full time writer in 1988. I so wanted to like this book. The premise intrigues, and I'd heard great things about the author. But the first third somewhat disappoints. It drags on, most of the characters and their actions feel false or even ridiculous, and the writing jumps around so much at times that I had to reread several parts more than once to find what I had missed, but I was none the wiser. And yet, I had to know what happened. David Almond introduces his new picture book, A Way to the Stars, a story about perseverance and finding a way to make dreams come true. It's not just the perspective that is so well-done here: there is so much in the imagery too. The fact that the government base is situated on a distant, gated hill. The way the Suprema wears a veil that obscures her true appearance. The irony of the cutlery factories churning out knives and forks despite there being no food to eat. It all works to illustrate the ubiquity of the Praesto government's lies.

Currently? Painting or sawing things in the garden. Needlework. Reading, of course. I write longhand, so sitting at my computer spotting scams, being pelted with ads, and having the wi-fi go off and on will never beat sitting somewhere comfortable, scribbling away at a play or a poem ... or a novel, of course - even if it will never see the light of day.Since then, Geraldine has written over 180 books and plays for both adults and children and is one of today's most successful and highly regarded children's authors. She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, in 1988 and 2018, the Whitbread Children's Book Award (three times), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Smarties Bronze Award (four times) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. In 2005 she was chosen from over 100 other authors to write the official sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published in 2006 to wide critical acclaim.

Hugely enjoyable, another triumph from Geraldine McCaughrean. (Reading an interview with Geraldine McCaughrean, she mentions a natural disaster that was the seed for The Supreme Lie; The 1928 flood of the Mississippi Basin. Well that piqued my interest! Be sure to enter that in your search engine, it's an absorbing read.) And there was Peter Pan in Scarlet, of course: a terrifyingly important commission which I won in a competition and which went on to sell in 50 countries. It was useful, since it was in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. You can't often say a work of fiction is useful.

Genre

I suppose I'll be out and about, talking about my book, but it's become a strange thought. Going places? What, further than Tesco? Won't I fall over the edge of the planet or be carried off by giant eagles? Diving in, the book was a slow start, introducing the characters and fictional land known as Afalia. The Supreme Leader wears a veil to cover her face so no one knows what she looks like. She comes across as selfish and cruel. The land is in danger from the constant rain and other towns and cities are flooding and wanting help from Afalia. Determined to escape, she boards a train. Anne Finnis, Fiction Deputy Director, Usborne says “ Geraldine never ceases to surprise with her incredible imagination and ability to find a totally unique story to tell, and this blistering new novel is no exception. What remains constant in her writing however is her ability to create totally relatable characters, her complete and utter mastery of the English language, offering up some of the most glorious sentences I’ve ever read.” About This Edition ISBN: