Nathan has always dreamed about pirates. So when Tamo White, the son of a pirate, suggests that Nathan go home with him to Madagascar, it is too good a chance to miss. But dreams are one thing, and reality another - is Nathan ready to meet real pirates? And then there's his sister, Mousy Maud - how will she survive in a strange land full of savages and cut-throats? Geraldine McCaughrean is one of the most highly-acclaimed living children's writers. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Novel Award (twice), the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, and the inaugural Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. This book has a stunning new cover design for all of Geraldine McCaughrean's novels - this title is being issued simultaneously with new matching edition of "Forever X". The piratical theme will appeal to all lovers of adventure stories.
`told with a swashbuckling bravado that leaves you laughing and breathless.' TES
`not to be missed!' The Daily Telegraph
`This must be the fines adventure story for years...A brilliant read.' The Guardian
About the Author
Geraldine McCaughrean is a prize-winning author - winner of Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children's Fiction Award, Whitbread Award (twice) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award.
It's 30 years now since I first got published, and 50 since I found out how writing let me step outside my little, everyday world and go wherever I chose - way back in Time, to far distant shores, towards my own, home-made happy ending. Not that all my books are an easy ride. I write adventure, first and foremost, because that's what I enjoyed reading as a child. But since I have published over 150 books now, there are all manner of books in among that number - gorgeously illustated picture books, easy readers, prize winners, teenage books and five adult novels. The White Darkness won the Printz Award in the USA, which, for as Englishwoman, was the most amazing, startling thrill. Then there was Peter Pan in Scarlet - official sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan, written on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hopsital for Sick Children. I won the chance to write that in a worldwide competition, and because Peter Pan is loved everywhere, my book sold worldwide too. I can't say I expected that when, as a child, I dreamed of being like my older brother and getting a book published one day. These days I have a husband (who's good at continuity and spelling) and a daughter who is an excellent editor. But she's at the Royal Academy of Dramtic Art now, studying to become an actor. So, naturally, I have turned my hand to writing plays. (So many actors, so few plays!) My Mum told me, "Never boil your cabbages twice, dear," which was her way of saying, "Don't repeat yourself." So I have tried never to write the same book twice. You'll find all my novels quite different from one another. I have also done lots of retellings of myth, legend, folk and fairy tales, and adapted indigestible classics such as El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and the Pilgrim's Progress. Something for everyone, you see, my dear young, not-so-young, eccentric, middle-of-the-road, poetical, sad, cheerful, timid or reckless reader. All they have in common is that they all contain words. If you are allergic to words, you'd best not open the covers.