Six Storey House

From the opening sentence and its description of the Six Storey House standing ‘like a potted palm: tall and thin and brownly dusty’ this is a joy to read. Geraldine McCaughrean has retold hundreds of fairy tales and folk tales and here she draws on those storytelling traditions to transform an apparently simple tale of a house and its six sets of inhabitants into a magical and hugely beguiling story.

The Six Storey House residents live separate lives, none of them entirely happily. Young Dexi, the book’s central character, is friends with all of them except Mrs Groner who lives in determined isolation on the top floor. But by persuading Mrs Groner to move to another floor Dexi changes the whole house and with that the lives of everyone who lives in it: as the inhabitants of the house are shuffled from floor to floor they swap more than flats, while their different stories intertwine and reach their happy ever afters.

Ross Collins’ illustrations perfectly complement the book reflecting its humour and inventiveness.