Storm by Kevin Crossley-Holland won the Carnegie Medal in 1985. I have a bit of an ongoing personal project going, to read as many of these medal winners as I can. This one has been utilised as a Reading Ladder book, presumably some sort of educational tool. This has whittled the pages down to just 46 and as it’s heavily illustrated it’s a very quick read indeed, and unlike any of the other Carnegie Medal winners that I’ve previously read.
Annie is a young girl who lives with her parents in a remote country area, her much older sister Willa is married and living in a town three bus journeys away, but she is going to be having a baby soon, and her husband who works away from home isn’t able to get home in time for the birth. It’s almost Christmas and Willa makes the journey to her parents’ house.Despite the age difference the sisters get on well, and Willa is able to tell Annie the details of a local ghost story about a man who had been murdered by highwaymen near the ford – hundreds of years ago.
Three days later a terrific storm arrives, and it looks like Willa’s baby is determined to arrive too, but the phone lines are down so they can’t get through to the hospital.
Annie is sent out into the storm to fetch the local doctor, she’s frightened of meeting the ghost, but a horseman picks her up and takes her to the doctor’s house, and all is well.
I think that this book has been somewhat shortened, edited to fit the Reading Ladder. It’s a well written story, and I like the illustrations which are by Alan Marks, but I’m not sure about pushing ghost stories onto children, so I find it to be a strange choice for the Carnegie Medal. I hope their teachers tell them that ghosts aren’t real!
Bill’s New Frock by Anne Fine was published in 1989. When Bill Simpson woke up on Monday morning, he found he was a girl. It doesn’t seem to puzzle his mother when she enters his bedroom, gives him a pink dress with shell buttons to wear, and drops it over his head! Bill’s father is late for work and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before he rushes out of the house. It’s all very confusing and mortifying to Bill. At school nobody seems to be surprised at the change in Bill.
The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden was first published in 1969 and it’s one of my 
Redheads at the Chalet School by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was first published in 1964, but my copy is a very recent reprint by Girls Gone By. This one is a bit of a departure from the usual Chalet School series as it’s more of a thriller than boarding school story.
Operation Sippacik by Rumer Godden was published in 1969. The setting is Cyprus. Rumer Godden was on holiday there when she was told the story of a brave donkey and she decided to write it.
A Christmas Card by Paul Theroux was published in 1978. This is one of the books that I was reading to try to get me into the mood for Christmas, but so far non of them have been exactly what I expected, anyway, this was still a good read, certainly a very quick read at just 73 pages and is probabbly aimed at older children really. It’s very slightly spooky. It has some black and white illustrations by John Lawrence.
Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop was first published in 1975. The setting is the Scottish Border Country, but it begins in London’s King’s Cross Station where Elizabeth has just boarded a train bound for Scotland. She’s not at all happy, her parents are going to America for months and Elizabeth had been desperate to go with them, but it couldn’t be afforded and Elizabeth is having to go to stay with her aunt, a historian who usually lives in Oxford but at the moment she’s doing research at Robinsheugh into the family that lived there during the 18th century.
October, October by Katya Balen was published in 2020 and it won the 
The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff was published in 1970. The setting is England in the reign of Henry I. Lovel is a young lad, just eleven years old, and his grandmother has just died. She had been the local healer and herbalist so she had been tolerated in the village. But Lovel was born with a crooked back and his mother had died when he was born, his father is dead too, so he’s all alone in the world and the villagers hound him out. They think that his crooked back means he must be a witch.
The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken is The Complete Armitage Family Stories. I must admit that I had never read any of this series, nor even heard of them, but what a delight they are. Joan Aiken had such a wild imagination and a great sense of humour, these stories although aimed at younger readers, like all well written books are entertaining for all ages. I got the impression that writing these stories was the author’s happy place, and that she must have been very attached to the characters. It turns out that the family was based on her own family, she told the stories to her younger brother and the children featured in the stories were based on their older brother and sister who were away at school.