Double Dare and Other Stories
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Cover Story
On our cover this issue we feature an illustration by Charles Keeping from Beowulf (OUP, 0 19 279770 0, £4.50), a new picture book version for 9-13s of the Anglo-Saxon hero tale. The story is retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland. We are most grateful to Oxford University Press for their help in using this illustration.
Double Dare and Other Stories
Simon Willby
Four longish stories (30+ pages each) with a multi-ethnic cast of characters and a taste of the supernatural in each of them. Lorraine, desperate for a pet, finds a box of silkworms and strikes up a friendship with an old lady with a mulberry tree. One a demolition site Charlie swings himself into the past and is mistaken for a runaway slave. Terry Singh from the children's home in trouble with a double dare has some strange encounters with an old Indian man. And Maggie helps old Mr Winterbourne who seems to be haunted by a soldier from his past. Four nicely resolved endings to stories where the strange and the ordinary co-exist quite naturally.