On the Summerhouse Steps

Description

A young girl begins to grow up and discover the meaning of life and love in this delicious comedy of manners from multi-award-winning author Anne Fine. Ione Muffett is alone in the summerhouse when she meets Ned Hump - a wacky student who is in love with her professor father's secretary, Caroline. In a zany and uninhibited twenty-four hours, Ione helps bring the two together, culminating in a wonderfully anarchic picnic. And as Ned then helps Ione with her plan to help famine victims by running a bring and buy sale, Ione's confidence in herself slowly begins to grow . . .

Anne Fine has been an acknowledged top author in the children's book world since her first book was published in the mid l970s, and has now written more than forty books and won virtually every major award going, including the Carnegie Medal (more than once), the Whitbread Children's Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize and others. The Children's Laureate from 2001-2003, Anne is also very funny and young readers love her lack of hypocrisy about the family and her honesty about how people can behave. She lives in the North-East. 'One of the sharpest and most humorous observers of the human condition writing today for the young' School Librarian 'She is translated into 26 languages and has regularly won every major children's literary award in the land, including the Carnegie Medal twice and the Whitbread Children's Novel award twice . . . There are few more influential, or more unfailingly intelligent, authors at work' Scotsman 'A subversively wicked gift for exploring family tensions' Independent

Extraordinary and hilarious events * Guardian * Mischievous, inventive and very funny * TLS * The dialogue crackles . . . Full of energy and wit * TES *