Sally Gardner is a formidable talent as she manages so successfully to entrance, engage and grip the reader in a historical setting and in the originality of the storyline. The richness of the prose will delight adult and child alike leaving you gasping for breath and clamoring for more.
The story is told by Coriander, daughter of a silk merchant in 1650s London. Her idyllic childhood ends when her mother dies and her father goes away, leaving Coriander with her stepmother, a widow who is in cahoots with a fundamentalist Puritan preacher. She is shut away in a chest and left to die, but emerges into the fairy world from which her mother came, and where time has no meaning. When she returns, charged with a task that will transform her life, she is seventeen.;This is a book filled with enchantments - a pair of silver shoes, a fairy shadow, a prince transformed into a fox - that contrast with the heartbreaking loss and cruelty of Coriander's life in the real world. With its brilliantly realized setting of old London Bridge, and underpinned by the conflict between Royalists and Puritans, it is a terrific page turner, involving kidnapping, murder and romance, and an abundance of vivid characters.;Coriander is a heroine to love. Her story will establish Sally Gardner as a children's writer of boundless imagination and originality.
'A glorious, beautifully written novel... This story entranced me from page one and didn't let me go until the last sentence.' The Bookseller
Author
About Sally Gardner
Sally Gardner is a multi-award-winning novelist, whose books have sold over 2 million copies in the UK and been translated into more than 25 languages. Sally earned a First-Class Honours degree from Central St. Martin’s Art School and worked for many years as a theatre designer, working on some notable productions. After her twin daughters and her son were born, she started to illustrate children’s books, and then turned to writing. Sally won both the Costa Children’s Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal for Maggot Moon (2012). Sally is an avid spokesperson for dyslexia. Having been branded ‘unteachable’ by some and sent to various schools, Sally was eventually diagnosed at the age of twelve as being severely dyslexic and is passionately trying to change how dyslexia is perceived by society.
Her historical novel for older readers, I, Coriander, won the Smarties Children's Book Prize in 2005. Two thrillers both set at the time of the French Revolution, The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2009, followed. Actor Dominic West (The Wire) has bought the film rights to both titles.
Her YA novel,The Double Shadow, was published in 2011 to critical acclaim. Sally Gardner's stories for middle readers includeLucy Willow and the popular Magical Children series of six titles: The Strongest Girl in the World, The Invisible Boy, The Boy with Magic Numbers, The Smallest Girl in the World, The Boy with the Lightning Feet, and The Boy who could Fly, which are also available as audio books. She has also written and illustrated picture books including The Fairy Catalogue, The Glass Heart, The Book of Princesses and Playtime Rhymes. Sally Gardner continues to be an avid spokesperson for dyslexia, working to change the way it is perceived by society. She is dyslexic and argues that it is not a disability, but a gift.
If you'd love to know more about Sally, click here to download a more detailed biography and Q&A.
To see a video of Sally talking about her book Fairy Shopping - CLICK HERE
Or watch a video of her talking about The Silver Blade:
