Literary agent for children's books
LAURA CECIL
THE BEAST OF WHIXALL MOSS by Pauline Fisk
Age range: 11 plus
"For a brief instant, the head stared back. Even at a distance, Jack would see its bright blue eyes, glinting at him like finely cut jewels. Then - he couldn't think of any other way of putting it - then the eyes seemed to smile, as if his watching it was all right. The beast turned back into the long, wet grass, and the girl turned towards it, her face alive and bright - and Jack could quite see why. The beast was fabulous. In all his life, nothing had prepared him for a thing like this."
At the age of eleven, Jack is resigned to his world. So what if he can never satisfy his mother’s desire for perfection and his brother can? So what if he’s lonely out on Whixall Moss, with nobody living nearby and nothing to do?
He doesn’t care, or so he likes to tell himself.
Then one day Jack finds a boat hidden on the creek - and in the boat a fabulous beast. At once he is filled with a wild longing: he must own it.
But the boat’s mysterious inhabitants have other ideas and in the stuggles that follow, Jack's world is changed forever.
Pauline Fisk's novel deals with obsession, about people who are prepared to give up everything in order to possess something, at the cost of everything else in their lives, even their freedom.
Rights : Laura Cecil
Publishers
UK : Faber Finds
“A strange but evocative blend of myth and adventure”
BBC FAMILY LIFE
“A very unusual, imaginative book”
BOOKS FOR KEEPS