David Almond

Award-winning author David Almond reintroduces readers to the perceptive, sensitive Mina before the events of Skellig in this lyrical and fantastical work. My Name is Mina is not only a pleasure to read, it is an intimate and enlightening look at a character whose open mind and heart have much to teach us about life, love, and the mysteries that surround us.
Mina loves the night. While everyone else is in a deep slumber, she gazes...

Thirteen-year-old Kit goes to live with his grandfather in the decaying coal mining town of Stoneygate, England, and finds both the old man and the town haunted by ghosts of the past.

Coming of age in the shadow of northern England's shipyards, young Dominic is torn between the extremes of his shipbuilder family's lifestyle, a complex bully to whom he finds himself irresistibly drawn, and the tightrope-walking girl he loves.

Led to an abandoned baby by a raven, fourteen-year-old Liam seems fated to meet two foster children who have experienced the world's violence in very different ways as he struggles to understand war, family problems, and friends who grow apart.

Before a great dam is finished and water submerges the valley behind it, a father and daughter fill the abandoned houses in the valley with music for the last time.

One hot summer morning, only weeks after his father's death, Davie steps out his front door into the familiar streets of the Tyneside town that has always been his home. But this seemingly ordinary day takes on an air of mystery and tragedy as the residents learn that a boy has been killed. Despite the threat of a murderer on the loose, Davie turns away from the gossip and sets off toward the sunlit hill above town, where the real and imaginary worlds...

Writers of this collection of short stories were inspired to write about the First World War by physical objects associated with the war.