LOW FLAT RATE AUST-WIDE $9.90 DELIVERY INFO
Chris d'Lacey was born in Malta. However, he has lived the majority of his life in Leicester. After graduating from York University with a biology degree, he went to Leicester University where he has worked for the past twenty-two years as a research scientist. Chris never had plans to become a writer - his teenage wish was to become a famous songwriter! Chris has published books with Orchard Books, Transworld, Scholastic and Egmont. His first children's book Fly, Cherokee, Fly was highly commended for the 1999 Carnegie Medal. However, Chris claims his own favourite is The Fire Within which took him fifteen years to write and is a mixture of stories, one of which he was writing for his wife, Jay, as a surprise present. Chris lives with Jay in Leicester. He is a keen Leicester City fan and has ambitions to visit the Arctic, fly in a space shuttle, own a racehorse, have a record on Top of the Pops and beat his five-year-old nephew on the Playstation!
D'Lacey mixes up a lovely bag of dragons, squirrels and a strangely appropriate adult protagonist. Twenty-year-old David comes to live in Liz and Lucy's extra room in a house full of ceramic dragons. Liz sculpts them, but what's the Hrrr coming from her studio and how does she fire them without a kiln? Liz's young daughter Lucy knows the dragon secrets but isn't allowed to tell. Lucy latches on to David and pulls him into her search for an injured squirrel in the backyard and the nearby library gardens. She practically forces David to write a book for her about the squirrels she knows. Liz gives David a dragon named Gadzooks that seems to be helping him write somehow. Liz is an appealing mix of secretly magic-loving adult and disciplinarian. Two stories-within-the-story are inexplicably blander than the main narrative. Infused with a gentle sense of wonder. (Fantasy. 7-11) (Kirkus Reviews)
