Storm (Red Bananas)

A gripping story from Kevin Crossley-Holland for Egmont’s red banana series.

Every day Annie walks by the lonely marsh from her remote cottage to school. Only in winter, when the wind howls in the trees, is Annie ever afraid. Her sister Willa is pregnant and Annie is overjoyed when she comes home to have her baby. Annie tells Willa the names of local plants and Willa tells Annie about the ghost, murdered by highwaymen, who is said to haunt the old forge nearby. Then, on a terrible night, with the phone lines down, Willa goes into labour. Annie is terrified of the ghost, but knows she must brave the storm to fetch help. As she ventures into the night, a horseman swings into view. He offers to take Annie to town. But who is this horseman?

Red bananas are chapter books for newly fluent readers, suitable for NC Level 3 readers. They are carefully designed illustrated books for both entertainment and education, supporting children’s understanding of how to read longer books. Red bananas introduce similes and wordplay to encourage an understanding of more literary concepts.

Kevin Crossley-Holland is President of the School Library Association (2012 – 2015). He is a prize-winning writer for children, a well-known poet and author of a memoir of childhood, The Hidden Roads, praised by Rowan Williams as 'A lovely, poignant book, not wasting a word and evoking place in a deep way.' His most recent books are the highly praised Viking Sagas and his new and selected poems The Mountains of Norfolk.

His ghost story Storm was awarded the Carnegie Medal while The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal, and the Tir na n-Og Award. The Arthur trilogy has won worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into twenty-five languages and its successor, Gatty's Tale was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, as well as writing a version for children illustrated by Charles Keeping acknowledged as a modern classic, and his retellings of traditional tale include The Penguin Book of Norse Myths and British Folk Tales (reissued as The Magic Lands). His collaborations with composers include two operas with Nicola Lefanu (The Green Children and The Wildman); song cycles with Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias, settings by Bob Chilcott, Giles Swayne and Bernard Hughes, and a carol with Stephen Paulus for King’s College, Cambridge.

He has a Minnesotan wife, Linda, two sons (Kieran and Dominic) and two daughters (Oenone and Eleanor). He is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society for Storytelling, the European Storytelling Archive, and the Story Museum, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Worcester.

Alan Marks has illustrated books for many children's authors, including classics such as Lesley Sims' 'The Secret Garden', Rob Lloyd Jones' 'Robin Hood' and Anna Sewell's 'Black Beauty'.