By Linda Newbery (author)
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Grace is intrigued by the idea of spending the summer in the ancient house that is an important part of her family history. As she learns to heal herself following a life-changing accident and a family breakdown, Grace finds she is also able to help new friends. Like the original Flambards books, this offers at several levels from great story to psychological insights.
Linda Newbery brings K.M. Peyton's legendary Flambards series into the present day. Fourteen-year-old Grace, recovering from a life-changing accident and her parents' divorce, reluctantly spends the summer at Flambards, a remote country house.
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Despite herself, she befriends two local boys: Jamie, who is friendly and obsessed with wildlife, and Marcus, who is struggling to deal with his moody, potentially violent father. In this beautiful but threatened landscape, Grace unearths her own extraordinary ties to the house and - importantly - discovers her own place in the world.
Linda Newbery always wanted to be a writer, filling exercise books with stories which she hid in her wardrobe, but only began submitting her work once she became a secondary school teacher. She had her first novel published in 1988 and is now a full-time writer. Linda writes for various age groups and has twice been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, for The Shell House and Sisterland and in 2006 won the Costa Children’s Book Award for Set in Stone. Linda lives in a Northamptonshire village with her husband and three cats. She is an active member of the SAS and on the committee of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group of the Society of Authors. Linda on Linda When I was a child, dreaming that one day I might be an author, I used to gaze longingly at the N shelves in bookshops and libraries, and imagine my own books parked next to E. Nesbit’s. She’s still there, with her classic stories The Railway Children, Five Children and It, and others. Philip Pullman, nearby, takes up an awful lot of space, but sometimes there’s room for me between them.
As a child I used to do a lot of secret writing in my bedroom. I rarely showed anyone, and certainly not my teachers. At that time I was rather unwisely trying to write complete novels. Later, when exams got in the way, I began writing poetry - because poems could be short!
When I was a teenager, there was no such thing as teenage fiction – you went straight from children’s books to adult books. It wasn’t until much later, when I was training to be an English teacher, that I came across teenage fiction, and excellent writers such as K. M. Peyton, Aidan Chambers and Jill Paton Walsh. Before long I wanted to have a go.
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Linda Newbery brings K.M. Peyton's legendary Flambards series into the present day.
The LoveReading4Kids Editorial Team have read and reviewed The Key to Flambards and determined it is suitable for children aged 11-12 years old
The Key to Flambards features in the following genres: Featured Books for 11+ readers, Recommendations, Animal Stories, Children's and Young Adult Fiction, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Stories about Family and Friends
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
The Key to Flambards was written by Linda Newbery and published by David Fickling Books
The Key to Flambards has 310 pages
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