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Penelope Lively is an author with a shelf full of awards. For her book, A Stitch in Time, she scooped the Whitbread award; The Ghost of Thomas Kempe earned her the Carnegie Medal in 1973 and she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize several times for her adult novels. Penelope has written a number of Yellow Banana books for Egmont including Dragon Trouble and Debbie and the Little Devil.
Penelope regularly reviews books and writes articles for the national papers. She has also written radio and TV scripts; and acted as presenter for a Radio 4 programme on children's literature.
Penelope Lively was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent her childhood there. She came to England at the age of twelve, in 1945, and after boarding school she studied Modern History at Oxford University.
In 1957 Penelope married Jack Lively (who died in 1998) and they had two children, Josephine and Adam. Penelope now lives in London close to her four grandchildren. With her great sense of humour, Penelope describes herself as a working nanny!
Julia Eccleshare's Pick of the Month June 2016 Award-winning Penelope Lively’s classic story humorously captures the dreamy and imaginary world of eleven year old Maria. An only child, Maria is used to quietly observing the world around her. When her parents rent a house by the sea full of the objects and curios of previous occupants, Maria finds herself drawn into the life of Harriet, a child who lived there previously. Imaginative Maria, who can converse with the grumpy and opinionated cat, weaves a story around Maria but is it what really happened? Penelope Lively elegantly explores how the lives of children are effected by lives in the past. ~ Julia Eccleshare Julia Eccleshare's Picks of the Month for June 2016 The World's Worst Children by David Walliams Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively Street Child by Berlie Doherty Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero by Francesca Armour-Chelu The Bubble Boy by Stewart Foster
Winner of the 1973 CILIP Carnegie Medal The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a timeless and haunting story, critically acclaimed, this Carnegie award winning novel also made it into The Independent’s ‘Top Ten Ghost Stories of all time’. Penelope Lively is the only author to have won both the Booker Prize and the Carnegie Medal, the two most prestigious awards, one for an adult book and the other for a children’s book. It was this novel, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, that won the Carnegie Medal. It is a story that will keep the reader gripped to the page as it builds to an incredibly exciting climax as Thomas Kempe the ghost seems intent on getting James into awful trouble with his family and yet whatever James does his family won't believe in ghosts!
Julia Eccleshare's Pick of the Month June 2016 Award-winning Penelope Lively’s classic story humorously captures the dreamy and imaginary world of eleven year old Maria. An only child, Maria is used to quietly observing the world around her. When her parents rent a house by the sea full of the objects and curios of previous occupants, Maria finds herself drawn into the life of Harriet, a child who lived there previously. Imaginative Maria, who can converse with the grumpy and opinionated cat, weaves a story around Maria but is it what really happened? Penelope Lively elegantly explores how the lives of children are effected by lives in the past. ~ Julia Eccleshare Julia Eccleshare's Picks of the Month for June 2016 The World's Worst Children by David Walliams Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively Street Child by Berlie Doherty Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero by Francesca Armour-Chelu The Bubble Boy by Stewart Foster
Penelope Lively is the only author to have won both the Booker Prize and the Carnegie Medal, the two most prestigious awards, one for an adult book and the other for a children’s book. It was this novel, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, that won the Carnegie Medal and if you read it you’ll know why. This is a story that will keep the reader gripped to the page as it builds to an incredibly exciting climax as Thomas Kempe the ghost seems intent on getting James into awful trouble with his family.
Since being wiped out in the 14th century by the Black Death, the village of Astercote has been overgrown by forest, but its past still haunts the local Cotswold folk. Soon, villagers fall ill, crosses are marked on the doors and the modern village is taken over by a medieval consciousness. Astercote village is dead, its ruins lie hidden in the murky wood. Mair and her brother, Peter, come upon the deserted village by accident and there meet a youth who tells how the village was destroyed by the Black Death. They also learn of a long-guarded secret, and they are caught up in a superstitious fear as strange events unfold.
Maria is always getting lost in the secret world of her imagination... A ghostly mystery and winner of the Whitbread Award,republished in the Collins Modern Classics range. Maria likes to be alone with her thoughts. She talks to animals and objects, and generally prefers them to people. But whilst on holiday she begins to hear things that aren't there - a swing creaking, a dog barking - and when she sees a Victorian embroidered picture, Maria feels a strange connection with the ten-year-old, Harriet, who stitched it. But what happened to her? As Maria becomes more lost in Harriet's world, she grows convinced that something tragic occurred... Perfect for fans of ghostly mysteries like `Tom's Midnight Garden'.
The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike. James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage - with grounds that are great for excavations, and trees that are perfect for climbing - and stuff is happening. Stuff that is normally the kind of thing he does. But it's not him who's writing strange things on shopping lists and fences. It's not him who smashes bottles and pours tea in the Vicar's lap. It's a ghost - honestly. Thomas Kempe the 17th century apothecary has returned and he wants James to be his apprentice. No one else believes in ghosts. It's up to James to get rid of him. Or he'll have no pocket money or pudding ever again. An iconic ghost story for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is adored by generations of readers.
No.40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. The house is a huge Victorian monstrosity, with rooms all full of old furniture, old papers, old clothes, memorabilia - it is like a living museum. Clare discovers in a junk room the vividly painted shield which her great-grandfather, an eminent anthropologist, had brought back from New Guinea. She becomes obsessed with its past and determined to find out more about its strange tribal origins. Dreams begin to haunt her - dreams of another country, another culture, another time, and of shadowy people whom she feels are watching her. Who are they, and what do they want?
Aeneas flees from the sacked city of Troy, entrusted by his goddess-mother Venus with a daunting mission: to find a new homeland for his people. Over 2000 years after Virgil wrote his epic The Aeneid, Penelope Lively retells Aeneas' story with pace poignancy and drama, while Ian Andrew's illustrations bring the characters beautifully to life. Together they create an introduction to The Aeneid which takes its place alongside Rosemary Sutcliff's classic retellings of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. The book includes a Latin pronunciation guide and a map of Aeneas' long, arduous, death-defying journey.
The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike. James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage - with grounds that are great for excavations, and trees that are perfect for climbing - and stuff is happening. Stuff that is normally the kind of thing he does. And he's getting blamed for it. But it's not him who's writing strange things on shopping lists and fences. It's not him who smashes bottles and pours tea in the Vicar's lap. It's a ghost - honestly. Thomas Kempe the apothecary has returned and he wants James to be his apprentice. No one else believes in ghosts. It's up to James to get rid of him. Or he'll have no pocket money or pudding ever again. An iconic ghost story for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is adored by thousands of children.
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