Rosie's Magic Horse

Description

This is a story that could have come only from the imagination of Russell Hoban, brought vividly to life by the picture-book supremo Quentin Blake. This story begins with an ice-lolly stick. Its sweetness gone, it lies discarded and lonely...until a little girl called Rosie comes along. She places it carefully in her cigar box, full of other sticks. "Without our ice-lollies we are nothing," says an old stick. But this new stick wants to BE something and into the minds of all the old sticks he plants dreams...maybe they can be something, too. What about Rosie? That night she dreams of helping her parents pay the bills. And so, at the stroke of midnight, magic and dreams collide and a HORSE gallops out of the cigar box! His name is Stickerino. "Where to?" he asks Rosie. "Anywhere with treasure!" she answers and hops on his back. Then begins an adventure like no other...ice-lolly mountains by the sea, caskets of gold, and pirates foiled by a stickling ice-cream van. Inventive and original, this is an another gem from Russell Hoban's upside-down imaginative landscape. Quentin Blake's hallmark illustration style breathes energy and mischief into something as small and ordinary as a disused ice-lolly stick. If an ice-lolly stick can be a horse...then YOU can be anything you wish to be!

Author description

Russell Hoban is the renowned author of many famous novels, including Turtle Diary and Riddley Walker, which won the John W. Campbell Award for science fiction. He has also written over 50 children's books, including such classics as The Mouse and His Child, Bedtime for Frances and The Sea-Thing Child. Born in Pennsylvania in 1925, he moved in 1969 to London, where he lived until his death in 2011. Quentin Blake was the first ever Children's Laureate and is recognized as "a national institution". He is best known for his collaboration with writers such as Russell Hoban, Michael Rosen and, most famously, Roald Dahl. His books have won numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal and the prestigious 2002 Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration. In 1999 he was appointed the first ever Children's Laureate, in 2005 was created a CBE and in 2013 received a knighthood for his services to illustration. He lives in London.