From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Treacle Walker and the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children's Fiction Prize-winning classic, The Owl Service.
The definitive collection of traditional folk tales, selected and retold by the renowned Alan Garner.
A collection of Alan's folk tales, told with his unique storytelling skill and inimitably clear voice. Essential reading for young and old alike.
Among the stories collected here are: * Kate Crackernuts * Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree * Yallery Brown
The stories are written in a variety of voices, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place... And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, I trust that they will find this book in one, and take it to a quiet corner and read. Neil Gaiman
...the great collections of British folk-tales, such as this one, should be treated in two ways: first, they should be bound in gold and brought out on special occasions as national treasures; and second, they should be printed in editions of hundreds of thousands, at the public expense, and given away free to every young teacher and every new parent. Philip Pullman
Author
About Alan Garner
Alan Garner, the son of Colin and Marjorie Garner, was born ("with the cord wrapped twice round my throat") in his grandmother's front room in Congleton, Cheshire on 17th October 1934, and grew up in Alderley Edge, where his father's family have lived for more than three hundred years, being craftsmen in the area. He completed two years' national service in the Royal Artillery as a Second Lieutenant. He began writing his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, at the age of twenty-two.
