The Burning

Judy Allen

Eph 2011 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Hodder Children's Books

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In the cottages around The Green sleeps a memory of long-dead hands that once wielded a terrible power. Now it is only slumbering, waiting for somewhere to feed and grow, someone to embrace its awesome power and turn it to new purposes. On the eve of Bonfire Night it is nudged to wakefulness: a stranger all the way from Canada on a quest for family history; friends Jan and Kate's sortie into a long-closed attic to find debris for the bonfire on The Green. This is a community holding an uneasy truce between tourist interest in legends of witchcraft and the terrible reality of a fire that burned scores of cottages and their inhabitants years before. Bonfire Night looms; objectors say there hasn't been a bonfire on The Green since The Fire and there shouldn't ever be again. The waking power feeds on the anxieties, puts out tendrils in search of a mind to sieze - and finds Jan. Into her hands will flow the deadly malevolence that once made The Burning. Into her mind will flow the hatred that once consumed everything ....

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Judy Allen's Awaiting Developments won the Whitbread Award, the Friends of the Earth Earthworm Award, and was commended for the Carnegie Medal. Author of more than 30 books for children published to critical acclaim - and frequently reaching prize shortlists - she also writes for radio; 5 plays for BBC Radio 4, dramatisations of The Secret Garden, Tom's Midnight Garden, and Philippa Pearce for BBC Radio. Her award-winning adult fiction December Flower was televised by Granada in 1985, adapted for BBC Radio and televised in the US.