By Linda Newbery (author)
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Early readers will enjoy Linda Newbery’s Cat Tales series. In Smoke Cat, Blue is a shadowy cat who seems to vanish into a puff of smoke whenever he is called. The old lady who is his owner is mysterious, too. Simon enjoys the detective work of finding out just what is going on. In her Cat Tales titles Linda Newbery gives her cats strong roles and real personalities. Why not check out Shop Cat as well.
When Simon's family moves home he is baffled by the elderly lady next-door, who has the rather strange habit of talking to her plants. Then one night, as he watches her calling into her garden, she is surrounded by shadowy, purring forms, and he realizes that only he can see this ghostly neighbour and her spooky feline friends.
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.
The LoveReading4Kids Editorial Team have read and reviewed Cat Tales: Smoke Cat and determined it is suitable for children aged 7-8 years old
Cat Tales: Smoke Cat features in the following genres: Featured Books for 7+ readers, Recommendations
Paperback. Not Available.
Cat Tales: Smoke Cat was written by Linda Newbery and published by Usborne Publishing Ltd
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