When Jamie's mysterious art teacher sends him to the old Maskmaker's shop, he is faced with a terrible decision. He must choose a disguise that will take him into mortal danger, with only a taking cat to help him. In the deserts of Africa, the frozen glaciers of Greenland, and the Great Wall of China, Jamie will need all his intelligence and courage if he is to save his friends and fmily. Will the perilous tasks he faces help him solve the strange problems in his own life? Or will a dark web of sorcery stop him from ever coming home again. 'Extremely well written, highly inventive and with really funny jokes' - Eva Ibbotson.
Jane Johnson is from Cornwall in the far west of England.
She loves to 'meet' her readers: you can visit her website at www.janejohnsonbooks.com.
Or come and join my author page on Facebook (cut and paste into your browser)
https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Jane-Johnson-writer/59201258923
In 2005 she was in Morocco researching the story of a distant family member who was abducted from a Cornish church in 1625 by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa (which formed the basis for THE TENTH GIFT), when a near-fatal climbing incident (which makes an appearance in THE SALT ROAD) caused her to rethink her future.
She returned home, gave up her office job in London, sold her flat and shipped the contents to Morocco. In October she married her own 'Berber pirate' and now they split their time between Cornwall and a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains.
The next novel, THE SULTAN'S WIFE, which she is currently working on, is set in Morocco in the 17th century and is the story of a eunuch at the court of Sultan Moulay Ismail.
She worked on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, spending many months in New Zealand with cast and crew. Under the pseudonym of Jude Fisher she wrote three bestselling Visual Companions to the films. She has also written several books for children, the latest being GOLDSEEKERS.
'"My name is Jude Lanyon and I was born in Cornwall in the year in which they cut the head off a king and turned the natural order of the world upside down."
So begins Jane Johnson's GOLDSEEKERS, and by the end of the first page we know that our hero is "destined to be a finder, and a rich man"; that his mother is a witch or a wise woman, and that this is going to be the kind of magical adventure a child of 8 will find impossible to put down...
...To say more would be to spoil a story that unfolds confidently in clear, captivating language and which involves some unexpected magical people. This is Johnson's fifth book for children and her best yet, with a kitten so brave and imperious as to be irresistible. It's stuffed with great scenes and well-drawn characters.
THE TIMES (26/03/2011)
