Interest Age Teen Reading Age 8+ Award-winning Sally Nicholls tenderly captures the loneliness of two girls without families as they share their experiences of being outsiders. Clare’s been in foster care for most of her life; she likes her foster mother Lyn but hates being bullied at school. After a horrible day there, she meets Maddy who lives in a children’s home. Like Clare, Maddy is 14 and the two girls seem to have much in common. But who is Maddy? Sally Nicholls deftly adds a surprising twist.
Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 12+
Clare knows she's at least partly to blame for her problems at school, but she's learned that it hurts to make friends when you're a foster kid and you'll just be moved on again. It's a relief to meet Maddy, who knows exactly what it's like to be in the system. But then Maddy disappears. Clare has opened her heart at last, and she can't let it go - will she find her friend?
Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 12+
Sally Nicholls grew up in Stockton-on-Tees, and after school, travelled the world, working for a period at a Red Cross hospital in Japan. Sally's first novel, Ways to Live Forever, won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and she has been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Costa Children's Book Award, and the Carnegie Medal, twice.
She lives in Liverpool with her husband and two sons.
