Sympathetic, touching, and surprisingly funny, Ways To Live Forever is a fantastic debut from Sally Nicholls. Sam loves facts. He wants to know about UFOs horror movies and airships and ghosts and scientists, and how it feels to kiss a girl. And because he has leukaemia he wants to know the facts about dying. Sam needs answers for the questions nobody will answer. This diary account of a young boy dying of Leukaemia will pull on heartstrings and have you in fits of laughter at the same time.
Winner of Glen Dimplex Prize for New Writers 2008 Winner of Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2008 Winner of Luchs Prize (Germany) for best children’s book published in Germany in the last year Longlisted for Branford Boase Award 2009
My name is Sam. I am eleven years old. I collect stories and fantastic facts. By the time you read this I will probably be dead. Sam loves facts. He wants to know about UFOs horror movies and airships and ghosts and scientists, and how it feels to kiss a girl. And because he has leukaemia he wants to know the facts about dying. Sam needs answers for the questions nobody will answer.
"A hugely impressive achievement ... elegant, intelligent, moving." Guardian
"Wonderful. Moving and funny and, yes, sad." Eva Ibbotson
"A Jodi Picoult for teens that pulls no punches." Bookseller
"Deeply affecting and life-affirming read. Impressive." Nikki Gamble, Write Away
"Supremely confident and very moving ... a writer with a great future" John McLay
"Handled tactfully, death need not be an inappropriate theme for children. On the contrary, it can be quite uplifting." Amanda Craig, The Times
"I search for novels that send electrical tingles up my spine. Reading this was more like being plugged into a 1000-volt socket. This is a story for everyone, whatever their age." Marion Lloyd, Publisher
Author
About Sally Nicholls
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.
