Kit has just moved to Stoneygate with his family, to live with his ageing grandfather who is gradually succumbing to Alzheimer’s Disease. Stoneygate is an insular place, scarred by its mining history – by the danger and death it has brought them. Where the coal mine used to be there is now a wilderness.
Here Kit meets Askew, a surly and threatening figure who masterminds the game called Death, a frightening ritual of hypnotism; and Kit makes friends with Allie, the clever school troublemaker. As Kit struggles to adjust to his new life and the gradual failing of his beloved grandfather, these two friendships pull him towards a terrifying resolution. Haunted by ghosts of the past, Kit must confront death and – ultimately – life.
A stunning novel from the author of the modern children’s classic Skellig – winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award. David Almond is also winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen award.
Here Kit meets Askew, a surly and threatening figure who masterminds the game called Death, a frightening ritual of hypnotism; and Kit makes friends with Allie, the clever school troublemaker. As Kit struggles to adjust to his new life and the gradual failing of his beloved grandfather, these two friendships pull him towards a terrifying resolution. Haunted by ghosts of the past, Kit must confront death and – ultimately – life.
A stunning novel from the author of the modern children’s classic Skellig – winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award. David Almond is also winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen award.
Reviews
Could a children's book win the Booker? The best writing is the kind that defies categories, and Almond's Kit's Wilderness makes the grade.
You can feel the chill from the ghosts that haunt its pages. An essential read from an original voice in children's books.
An essential read from an original voice.
Deeper and more unsettling than Almond's breakthrough book.
An enthralling, multi-layered and complex story with a tension that builds and grips the reader. A wonder ful read.
Very touching.
A moving rites-of-passage novel.
A children's book of stunning freshness and individuality.
The book treats all the great universal themes of literature - love, loss, redemption, mortality - with elegant, tender simplicity, and it is bound to touch any reader of whatever age.
Dark and gripping.
Has the same mesmerising quality of writing and a hauntingly intense plot.
Extremely good. Written with an acute sense of place plus a touch of the supernatural.
David Almond is a writer of subtle, page-turning and daring exactness, and he applies the same potent poetic and emphatic skills in his equally moving new novel.
This superb piece of lyrically-written literary fiction captivates teenagers and their parents alike.
A writer of subtle, page-turning and daring exactness.
Almond's magic is subtle, breath-taking, redemptive.
Gripping, convincing and effortlessly well-written
A haunting read for thoughtful readers.
Sensitive and absorbing.
Almond's masterpiece: Kit's Wilderness is one of those rare works that changes how we see the world
Magic of a very different kind
Dark and gripping.