Robert Nobel, the school pariah, triumphs over his own fears and the school bully, in this extraordinary tale of self-empowerment, legend and death. Robert is a boy who can do anything - or so old Edith Sorrel at the nursing home tells him. Robert doesn't think so, knowing as he does that he is the school geek. But something compels him to do what Edith asks - to visit old Chance House, where a boy once fell to his death from the top floor flat, to confront his fears and find some answers. Niker the bully thinks this is a great laugh. He challenges Robert to spend the night at Chance House with him - but there the balance of power changes, and it is Robert who proves to be the stronger. Niker feels threatened by the change - and when he finds out Robert's secret obsession, to make the dying Edith Sorrel a coat of feathers like in the old legend of the Firebird, he knows just how to wrest his old power back. But just how important is the coat of feathers? Could it really save Edith's life?
...a brilliant debut novel that really does merit the category title of Book You Cannot Put Down. Ian Hislop, Blue Peter Awards Judge Each copy should come with a torch for a spellbinding midnight conclusion. Telegraph Inventive, original and full of surprises, it's the sort of dazzling debut novel that most publishers would fall over themselves to snap up... T2 Feather Boy is the most intelligent book for youngsters I've read for a very long time. Every 12-year-old will see a bit of themselves in Robert and won't be able to put this book down until Feather Boy's emotional, thought-provoking climax. Fabulous. Funday Times This first children's book is a winner. Publishing News
Author
About Nicky Singer
Nicky Singer has written four novels for adults, two books of non-fiction and six works for young people. Her first children’s novel Feather Boy won the Blue Peter ‘Book of the Year’ Award, was adapted for TV (winning a BAFTA for Best Children’s Drama) and then commissioned by the National Theatre’s Shell Connections series as a musical with lyrics by Don Black and music by Debbie Wiseman. In 2010 Nicky was asked by Glyndebourne to adapt her novel Knight Crew (a re-telling of the King Arthur legend set in contemporary gangland) for an opera with music by Julian Philips. 2012 saw both the publication of The Flask (‘a nourishing and uplifting story, with big themes and a big heart,’ The Guardian) and the premiere of her play Island (about ice-bears and the nature of reality) at the National Theatre. She has just published Island as a novel.
Nicky Singer lives in Brighton with her husband, their two sons and a daughter.
