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DAVID ALMOND - Counting Stars , in hardback , First Edition / Impression published by Hodder Children's Books in 2000 .

This book is signed by the author - I met David at the Cheltenham Literature Festival .

By the author of The Savage and Skellig - this is a collection of short stories .

" In the elegant , hypnotic , thoroughly engaging Counting Stars , British author David Almond , winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Kit's Wilderness and a Printz honor for Skellig , shares a collection of stories about his childhood ' in a small steep town overlooking the River Tyne ' . Echoing the bright , witty banter of his large family in pages of fascinating dialogue , Almond recounts tales of his Catholic upbringing ( where counting stars in the sky past 100 is a blasphemous attempt to know the unknown ) , the deaths of his father and sister , poignant stories of local boys and girls with bitter plights , a lonely old woman who keeps her lost baby in a jar , stolen kisses , whispered rumours , dreams of angels , sensual memories of warm grass and sunshine , lemon curd and marmalade . The stories are not chronological , but thematic , and they are simply beautiful . No one captures the mysticism of childhood like Almond , and his readers will be overjoyed to see the ways in which his own history is mirrored in the odd , magical worlds created in his novels . In the author's words , the stories ' merge memory and dream , the real and the imagined , truth and lies . And , perhaps , like all stories , they are an attempt to reassemble what is fragmented , to rediscover what has been lost ' . Almond paints a landscape of the soul and shows his readers the magic of humanity . It seems he can do no less ! (Ages 13 and older) "

About David Almond

David Almond was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1951 and grew up in the small mining town of Felling .

He was educated at the University of East Anglia and Newcastle Polytechnic . After graduating he worked as a teacher for five years before moving to a remote artists' commune in Norfolk to concentrate on his writing . He then returned to Newcastle , where he worked as a part-time Special Needs teacher and edited the literary fiction journal Panurge . He is an experienced creative writing teacher and has worked for the Arvon Foundation and for schools , colleges and universities and is in demand as a speaker at festivals and conferences around the world .

Very good condition - some slight creasing to the dust jacket - quite a nice copy .

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