Billy the Kid
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover, illustrated by David Wyatt, is from Geraldine McCaughrean’s The Kite Rider (0 19 271860 6, £6.99 pbk) due to be published in March. Geraldine McCaughrean is interviewed by Stephanie Nettell. Thanks to Oxford University Press for their help in producing this January cover.
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Billy the Kid
Michael Foreman
A clever blend of football and the major events of twentieth-century history is engagingly presented in this collaboration of picture-book style format and short story length text. It makes for a highly recommended mix for any boy. The text shuttles between past and present as Chelsea Pensioner Billy sits and recalls his long, eventful life on the day of his eightieth birthday. A football career with Chelsea was curtailed by World War II, the horrors of which changed lives and minds in cruel ways. But the present and future are happy for Billy and he is in for a tremendous birthday surprise! An octogenarian as the main character of a children's book is novel. The two Ms have skilfully managed to create a book of surprises that is uncompromisingly rich in emotional integrity and human triumph and tragedy.