By turns thrilling adventure and enchanting fantasy, this novel brims with music and magic as Sylvie tries to understand why her dog has lost its bark, the birds have stopped singing and her music-making father has disappeared. As she sets off on her journey with best-friend, but tone deaf, George, they are drawn into the haunting world of the Songman. This is definitely a classic in the making; a compelling and original story with vivid writing and some truly unforgettable scenes.
Sylvie Bartram lives alone with Mr. Jackson the dog and her eccentric composer father who invents strange and wonderful musical instruments. One day she returns from school to find a message left in toothpaste on the bathroom mirror; her father has been kidnapped. Later that night, the house is visited by a terrifying apparition - a half-man/half-creature who is searching for something and will not rest until he has found it ...Sylvie uncovers an underground world of magic and evil, and with help from her friends, she must hold off a power that threatens the lives of all beings in the world. The Songman is at large, and is determined to steal music and use it for his own evil ends ...An exhilarating and magical story that will appeal to all readers aged 9-14.
Novelist Tim Binding was born in Germany in 1947. A former editor at Penguin Books in London, he is a part-time commissioning editor at London publishers Simon & Schuster. He is the author of the novels, In the Kingdom of Air (1993), A Perfect Execution (1996) (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Island Madness (1998), set on Guernsey during the Second World War, and Man Overboard (2005).
He co-wrote a comedy drama series for BBC television in 1998, entitled The Last Salute, working with Simon Nye, creator of the Men Behaving Badly comedy series. On Ilkley Moor: The Story of an English Town (2001), is a memoir and history of the area where he grew up. Anthem, a moving and entertaining story of the horror of war and its consequences, was published in 2003. His latest book is Sylvie and the Songman (2008), his first book for children.
Tim Binding lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
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