The Goalkeeper's Revenge and Other Stories

Bill Naughton

Puffin, 1993 (first published in 1961)

Paperback. 119pp. illustrated by Dick de Wilde

£3.99

Thirteen short stories set in the 1930s. With warmth and fun, Bill Naughton describes the good-humoured exploits of a lively group of boys, such as Spit Nolan who was the champion trolley-rider.

Badger on The Barge

Janni Howker

Walker Books, 1996 (first published in 1984)

Paperback. 288pp

£3.99

These five stories abound with absorbing situations and memorable characters. Meet cussed, rebellious Miss Brady, who lives with a badger on a barge; the reviled old shepherd Reicker; Sally Beck, topiary gardener with an extraordinary past; the reclusive Egg Man; proudly independent Jakey... and the young people whose lives they profoundly affect.

Badger On The Barge was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's Novel Award and the Carnegie Medal; it was the winner of the International Reading Association Children's Book Award.

Counting Stars

David Almond

Hodder, 2000

Paperback. 182pp

£4.99

These short stories encapsulate David Almond's endless sense of mystery and wonderment, as they weave a tangible tapestry of growing up in a large Catholic family. Here are the kernels of his novels - joy and fear, darkness and light, love, death, the bonds of ignorance and prejudice, the healing power of memory and the imagination - a collection of exquisite sensitivity and tenderness.

"These stories are about my childhood. They're about the people I grew up with, our hopes and fears, our tragedies and joys... And perhaps like all stories, they are an attempt to reassemble what is fragmented, to rediscover what has been lost." - DAVID ALMOND