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Product Description
The first novel in a gripping trilogy about 11-year-old Midge and her discovery of the Various, a tribe of fairies whose livelihood and existence is becoming increasingly threatened.
A gritty and captivating story of courage and strength against terrible odds, this is the story of Midge, left to stay with her eccentric uncle during the holidays, and her adventures with the Various, a band of fairies. The existence of the Various, who are strange, wild, and sometimes even deadly, has been kept secret since the beginning of time. But when their world begins to clash with the human world, they are threatened with extinction.
This wonderfully imaginative story of love and loyalty is the first in a powerful trilogy that readers won’t be able to put down.
Amazon.com Review
The idea of a race of little people (fairies) living secretly among us has had a powerful hold on the imaginations of writers from Shakespeare to Terry Pratchett and Eoin Colfer. In The Various, Steve Augarde has used this fascination brilliantly to craft the first novel of a trilogy full of breathless action and wonder. When twelve-year-old Midge is sent by her concert-violinist mother to spend the summer at the farm of her sweet but bungling Uncle Brian, her initial resentment gives way to delight in the freedom of exploring the countryside. When she discovers a tiny winged horse lying wounded in an outbuilding, she is awestruck to find out that he comes from a civilization of five various tribes of little people living in a nearby wood—-something readers will have already learned from alternate chapters set in the fairy world. Disaster threatens when Uncle Brian plans to sell the wood to a developer, and Midge and her cousins find (to their own peril), that some of the little people are not as helpless as they seem. Steve Augarde draws on his visual and auditory skills as a BBC animator and picture book author/illustrator for vividly realized detail—-the dumpy and addled fairy queen, the smells and moods of the English summer, the sharply differentiated accents and personalities of each of the five tribes—-in an entrancing debut fantasy. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell
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