What is The Tiger Who Came to Tea really about?How is Meg and Mog related to Polish embroidery?And why does death in picture books involve being eaten?Fierce Bad Rabbits explores the stories behind our favourite picture books, weaving in tales of Clare Pollard's childhood reading and her re-discovery of the classic tales as a parent. Because the best picture books are far more complex than they seem - and dar...

Under the bloody rule of King Arthur – as the cruel knights of the round table wage wars and hunt magical creatures – the ordinary people of Camelot are getting sick. Really sick. Something is poisoning the land. No one in Arthur's court seems to care, but a spark of hope remains... The Holy Grail could save them all, and two children embark on a quest to find it.Shy, gentle Roan, a young dog keeper who works for the knights, is desperate to find a cure for his mum. He befriends El...

AN ORIGINAL RETELLING OF THE CLASSIC GREEK MYTH OF JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS FOR YOUNG READERS WITH A FRESH AND FUNNY TWIST, PERFECT FOR FANS OF LOKI AND DAVID SOLOMONS."This witty, original, irreverent take on Greek myth will delight 8+ Loki fans" - THE GUARDIANMeet Phoebe. She's eleven years old and desperate to escape the boring island where she lives. Enter the Argonauts - a crew of so-called heroes on a quest t...

'Vivid as fireworks ... Both terrifying and exhilarating' Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat'Funny and sharp ... A hungry book, looking everywhere and seeing everything' ObserverIn a time more turbulent than any of us could have ever imagined, a woman is attempting to write a book about prophecy in the ancient world.Navigating the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-o...

Clare Pollard thumbs her nose at Dr Johnson’s all-male Lives of the Poets in chronicling her own life and theirs in her Lives of the Female Poets.These portraits and self portraits offer glimpses into the poet’s own everyday life – from nit-combing and laundry to pollen counts and cocktails, watching school plays to shopping on Rye Lane – all whilst in conversation with female poets through the ages. Playing with forms from the version to the ...

Brought to you by Penguin.What is The Tiger Who Came to Tea really about?What has Meg and Mog got to do with Polish embroidery?Why is death in picture books so often represented by being eaten?Fierce Bad Rabbits takes us on an eye-opening journey in a pea-green boat through the history of picture books. From Edward Lear through to Julia Donaldson, Clare Poll...

Although Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf has lived in exile in the UK for 20 years, she is fast emerging as one of the most outstanding Somali poets, as well as a powerful woman poet in a literary tradition still largely dominated by men. She is a master of the major Somali poetic forms, including the prestigious gabay, by which she presents compelling arguments with astonishing feats of alliteration. The key to her international popularity is in her spirit and message: her poems are classical in c...

Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Clare Pollard's fourth collection is steeped in folktale and ballads, and looks at the stories we tell about ourselves. From the Pendle witch-trials in 17th-century Lancashire to the gangs of modern-day east London, Changeling takes on our myths and monsters. These are poems of place that journey from Zennor to Whitby, Broadstairs to Brick Lane. Whether relocating the traditional ballad 'The Twa Corbies' to war-torn Iraq, introducing us to the bearded la...

AN ORIGINAL RETELLING OF THE CLASSIC GREEK MYTH OF JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS FOR YOUNG READERS WITH A FRESH AND FUNNY TWIST, PERFECT FOR FANS OF LOKI AND DAVID SOLOMONS."This witty, original, irreverent take on Greek myth will delight 8+ Loki fans" - THE GUARDIANMeet Phoebe. She's eleven years old and desperate to escape the boring island where she lives. Enter the Argonauts - a crew of so-called heroes on a quest t...

Ovid's Heroides, written in Rome some time between 25 and 16 BC, was once his most popular work. The title translates as Heroines. It is a series of poems in the voices of women from Greek and Roman myth -including Phaedra, Medea, Penelope and Ariadne -addressed to the men they love. Claimed as both the first book of dramatic monologues and the first of epistolary fiction, Heroines is also a radical text in its literary transvestism, and in presenting the same story from often very differe...

**Brought to you by Penguin.Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?**Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV's fever dream. It's a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you'll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matte...

Brought to you by Penguin.'I am sick of the future. Up to here with the future. I don't want anything to do with it; don't want it near me.'This is a story about now.It's a story about a woman, and the family she has made for herself. It's about the dramas unfolding on our screens and behind the curtains of our homes in a world more turbulent than any of us could have imagined.But it's also about before. And what comes next. It's ab...