Books with author Lynn Reid Banks

From the author of The Indian in the Cupboard and The L-Shaped Room comes a fascinating story of a wartime childhood, heavily influenced by her own experience.In 1940 as war rages across Europe, ten-year-old Lindy, waves goodbye to England and makes the long journey to Saskatoon, Canada, along with her Mother and her cousin Cameron. They may be far from the war but they are also far from home and everyone they know and love. Life in Canada is very different but it is also full of exciting new adventures…This captivating story is inspired by Lynne Reid Banks’ own childhood experience and her time in Canada.

Houdini is no ordinary hamster. He is an escapologist with an exceptional talent for getting out of cages and urge to escape leads him to all kinds of adventures…Published into the First Modern Classics list, fantastic stories for young readers.He may look like a small, furry pet, but really he is a Wild Creature – a freedom-loving hamster with a life-long passion for escape and a yearning for the Great Outside, leaving chaos and destruction as he goes.He tells his hilarious adventures with great intelligence and no modesty – for the world beyond carpets and floorboards can be a terrifying place…

The Indian in the Cupboard is the first of five gripping books about Omri and his plastic North American Indian - Little Bull - who comes alive when Omri puts him in a cupboardFor Omri, it is a dream come true when the plastic American Indian he locks into the old cupboard comes to life. Little Bull is everything an Indian brave should be - proud, fearless and defiant.But being in charge of a real, live, human being is a heavy responsibility, as Omri soon discovers. And when his best friend, Patrick, is let in on the secret, he soon realises that life-changing decisions lie ahead.

It's been over a year since Omri discovered in The Indian in the Cupboard that, with the turn of a key, he could magically bring to life the three-inch-high Indian figure he placed inside his cupboard. Omri and his Indian, Little Bear, create a fantastic world together until one day, Omri realizes the terrible consequences if Little Bear ever got trapped in his "giant" world. Reluctantly, Omri sends the Indian back through the cupboard, giving his mother the magic key to wear around her neck so that he will never be tempted to bring Little Bear back to life.But one year later, full of exciting news, Omri gives way to temptation when he finds that his mother has left the magic key lying on the bathroom sink.A whole new series of adventures awaits Omri as he discovers that his Indian has been critically wounded during the French and Indian Wars and desperately needs Omri's help.Now, helplessly caught between his own life and his cupboard life of war and death, Omri must act decisively if he is to save Little Bear and his village from being completely destroyed. What began as a harmless game has tumed into a horrible nightmare, a nightmare in which Omri is irrevocably involved, and from which he may never escape.

Nine-year-old Alice must write about herself for a school assignment, and in doing so, she sorts out her feelings about her somewhat prickly single mother, the father she has never met, her flamboyant paternal grandmother and the rest of her sometimes confusing life.Alice doesn’t see how she can write her life story as a class assignment.. How can she fit nine years into a couple of pages? Her pets have died and the only family she has is her mother. Until recently she had a beloved interfering grandmother – Gene – but she’s gone from Alice’s life. Besides, Alice discovered ages ago she was born by accident, and that’s the sort of private thing you don’t write about for school. Alice does the assignment but she thinks it’s boring, until she discovers a need to write about her true life – the exciting, complicated and private of her life. She writes how Gene came along, how she changed Alice’s life, making it richer in experience but also more complicated. She records ongoing quarrels between Gene and her mother which ended with the Big Row and now she can’t see Gene any more.Lynne Reid Banks has written a truly compelling story of a creative child caught in the middle of a difficult but very real and increasingly common situation.

The Fairy Queen strictly forbids fairies from using their magic power on humans. But after Tiki accidentally meets Jan, a woman who is desperate for a baby daughter, she finds it impossible to resist fulfilling her wish. Now up against the dark and vicious power of evil, this fairy rebel must face the Queen’s fury with frightening and possibly fatal results. From the Hardcover Library Binding edition.

From Dakin’s bedroom window, the farthest-away mountain looks quite close, its peak capped with pink and purple and green snow rising above the pine wood just beyond the village.No one knows why the snow isn’t white, because no one has ever been there; for though the mountain looks close, however far you travel it never gets any closer.Until one morning, Dakin is woken by a voice calling, summoning her through the wicked wood and over the sea of spikes, to fight the evil on the mountain and set it free…