September 2016 Debut of the Month There’s an air of fairy tale in this beautiful and touching picture book, but its foundations are firmly in family relationships. A young boy lives with his grandma, who was an architect. She’s old and getting older, until one day she’s not there anymore. The house she was building is now just a collection of rooms, so the boy gets to work himself, creating a giant model of his grandma. True to fairy tale convention, this comes to life and carries him across the countryside to their half-finished home, which it completes. Ross Montgomery’s text subtly leaves gaps for the readers to fill in, and David Litchfield’s illustrations are full of life, humour and light.
All at once, it was as if the stars leapt closer. Grandma grabbed the boy, raising him high above the rooftiles on her head. She was alive! The boy's grandma was a famous architect. Her garden is still full of old building materials. Unwilling to accept she has gone, the boy builds a giant structure from the bricks and girders he finds. And then ...Grandma comes to life! The boy is whisked away on an epic adventure across fields, through oceans and atop roofs. But where is Grandma taking him?
Beautiful, thrilling and extremely moving: the extraordinary debut picture book from much-loved author, Ross Montgomery.
‘Quirky and life affirming with a sense of the surreal’ Bookseller
Author
About Ross Montgomery
Ross Montgomery started writing stories as a teenager, when he should have been doing homework, and continued doing so at university. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book of the Year award twice, with his debut novel Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door and The Midnight Guardians. His books have also been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Award while his picture book Space Tortoise was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Award and included in The Guardian's Best New Children’s Books of 2018. He lives in London with his wife and their cat, called Fun Bobby.
