Published to tie in with Mick Jackson's appointment as the first writer-in-residence at the Science Museum, Junior Science comprises three stories - 'Zero Gravity', 'The Answering Machine', and 'Back to School'. Commissioned by BBC Radio 4, they were originally broadcast in November 2011.Full of wonder, pathos and mystery, the stories are marked by Jackson's unique sensibility, as they explore the way children start to become aware of the world around them.

A newly-widowed woman has done a runner. She just jumped in her car, abandoned her (very nice) house in north London and kept on driving until she reached the Norfolk coast. Now she's rented a tiny cottage and holed herself away there, if only to escape the ceaseless sympathy and insincere concern.She's not quite sure, but thinks she may be having a bit of a breakdown. Or perhaps this sense of dislocation is perfectly normal in the circumstances. All she knows is that she can't sle...

Something strange is going on in the village. A dead pig is carried through the lanes in a coffin, a heap of signposts are buried in a field and a mummy walks the streets late at night, scaring the local ladies half to death. Things have never been the same since the evacuee arrived and the Five Boys mistook him for a Nazi spy. It is as if someone is out for revenge. The village has had a whole host of visitors since: the Americans are down the road preparing for D-Day and a deserter is hi...

One of the most acclaimed novels of recent times, The Underground Man is the fictionalised diary of a deeply eccentric English aristocrat.The duke has just completed a network of tunnels beneath his estate. His health is failing, but his imagination seems to know no bounds. And while he spends more time underground and retreats ever deeper into the darker corners of his house there are some ghosts that demand to be acknowledged and some memories which insist on mak...

From the pen of Mick Jackson, author of The Underground Man and Five Boys, come these ten acclaimed tales. Featuring undertakers, dark forests, resurrected butterflies and a singularly mean-spirited horse, the stories are nevertheless rooted in the realistic and all too recognisable world of retirement, loneliness, and childhood boredom.By turns funny, scary and heartbreaking, they are always illuminating, and further evidence of one of the most or...

'They both stop and stare for a moment. Yuki feels she's spent about half her adult life thinking about snow, but when it starts, even now, it always arresting, bewildering. Each snowflake skating along some invisible plane. Always circuitous, as if looking for the best place to land...'Yukiko tragically lost her mother ten years ago. After visiting her sister in London, she goes on the run, and heads for Haworth, West Yorkshire, the last place her mother visited before he...

When Bobby is evacuated from London to a remote Devonshire village, a strange new chapter of his life begins. Empty of its menfolk, the village is given over to the “stay behinds”: the women, the old and young, and five terrifying boys who accuse Bobby of being a Nazi spy. Then, there is the enigmatic Bee King, a mysterious figure who exercises a powerful, hypnotic influence on the village, and especially the boys.As the days wind down to the D-day invasion and the Allied soldiers ...

'There is no category of bear whose story makes for more depressing reading, and whose miserable existence heaps more shame on humanity than that which follows...'Taking in these bears in chains, the circus bears of Bristol, the Victorian sewer bears and the spirit bears of the early years, among others, Mick Jackson's strange beast of a book explores some little known chapters in England's past. Mixing folk tale with fantasy, and history with myth, the narrative that unfo...

WINNER OF THE V&A ILLUSTRATION AWARD 2026**SHORTLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR ILLUSTRATIONThere is a train which has beds in their own small cabins so that you can sleep while the train rolls through the night. I went on one, not long ago…**Just as it’s starting to get dark, a little girl and her family board the sleeper train – they’ll travel all through the night, and reach their destination in the morning. But as the train rocks from ...

When a child is too excited to fall asleep on the night train, she tries thinking about all the places she’s ever slept in this comforting moonlit adventure.Just as it’s starting to get dark, a child and her family board the sleeper train, where they’ll travel through the night and reach their destination in the morning. But as the train rocks from side to side, rolling through the vast Indian countryside, the child can’t sleep. It’s all too thrilling! So instead, ...

Any young child anticipating a move will connect with—and smile at—this fanciful, warmly humorous picture book debut from a literary author and an award-winning illustrator.When a little boy learns that his family will be moving house, he’s curious and excited. What else could that mean but having their house hoisted up by cranes and moved from one location to another? He imagines his wonderful house winding its way through narrow streets, maybe even sailing down t...

The second children’s book from the wonderful illustrator John Broadley, working with Booker-shortlisted novelist Mick Jackson, following their glorious debut While You’re Sleeping.The second children’s book from the wonderful illustrator John Broadley, working with Booker-shortlisted novelist Mick Jackson, following their glorious debut picture book While You’re Sleeping.Mick Jackson’s poetic prose and John Broadley’s detailed and unique ...