Be warned! Don’t go for a walk in the shadow forest lest you might not return. Poor Samuel Blink must go into the dreaded woods to somehow find his sister and bring her back alive somehow. With fast-flowing action and encounters with fantastical creatures throughout, the author skilfully manages to maintain a strong sense of foreboding and suspense right up until the dramatic conclusion of this creepy tale.
Shortlisted for the Blue Peter Award for ‘the book I couldn’t put down’. The winner will be announced on World Book Day at the beginning of March 2009. Other titles on the shortlist will be found in the prizewinners section.
Samuel Blink is the hero of this story, but he doesn't know it yet. Right now, he and his sister Martha are in the back of his parents car. He has no idea a giant log is about to fall from the sky and change his life forever. He doesn't know that he and Martha will be forced to move to Norway and eat their Aunt Eda's smelly brown cheese. He hasn't the slightest clue Martha will disappear into Shadow Forest. It is a forest full of one-eyed trolls, the sinister huldre-folk, deadly Truth Pixies and a witch who steals shadows - a forest ruled by the evil Changemaker. It is a forest so dangerous that people who enter never return. No. Samuel Blink doesn't know any of this. So don't tell him. It might ruin the book ...
Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, including How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys. He has also written many books for children, including most recently the Sunday Times bestseller, The Truth Pixie, and he has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. He has sold more than a million books in the UK and his work has been translated into over forty languages.