Half Moon Farm - Frank English

. .

Résumé :
Born in 1946 in the West Riding of Yorkshire's coal fields around Wakefield, he attended grammar school, where he enjoyed sport rather more than academic work. After three years at teacher training college in Leeds, he became a teacher in 1967. He spent a lot of time during his teaching career entertaining children of all ages, a large part of which was through telling stories, and encouraging them to escape into a world of imagination and wonder. Some of his most disturbed youngsters he found to be very talented poets, for example. He has always had a wicked sense of humour, which has blossomed only during the time he has spent with his wife, Denise. This sense of humour also allowed many youngsters to survive often difficult and brutalising home environments. In 2006, he retired after forty years working in schools with young people who had significantly disrupted lives because of behaviour disorders and poor social adjustment, generally brought about through circumstances beyond their control. At the same time as moving from leafy lane suburban middle-class school teaching in Leeds to residential schooling for emotional and behavioural disturbance in the early 1990s, changed family circumstance provided the spur to achieve ambitions. Supported by his wife, Denise, he achieved a Master's degree in his mid-forties and a PhD at the age of fifty-six, because he had always wanted to do so....

Sommaire:

Although brother and sister, ten-year-old James and nine-year-old Olivia couldn't be more different. James is the action man, with interests in everything sporty and adventurous. Olivia, on the other hand, spends most of her time in her own fantasy world that she takes with her wherever she goes.

The beginning of their summer holiday is here, a time when they don't have to get up early to go to school. This is their favourite part of the year because they usually spend the first week or two with their Nanny Josie and Grandpa Jack on their wonderful farm in the country.

Nanny and Grandpa seemed to be ordinary farming folk ... until strange things began to happen in and around the farm and the nearby forest.

Something ... different ... always happens in the forest. Olivia is sure that Grandpa Jack can explain, or maybe...