Cloud Boy

Marcia Williams is famous for her retellings of classic stories. From Shakespeare and Dickens to the Canterbury Tales and Greek Myths, her humorous comic-strip illustrations are hugely popular all over the world. Recent titles include The Romans: Gods, Emperors and Dormice, Archie's War, My Secret War Diary and The Tudors: Kings, Queens, Scribes and Ferrets. She lives in London. www.marciawilliams.co.uk

In her extraordinary and brilliant debut as a novelist Marcia Williams has written a truly memorable book. Well known and loved already for her unique comic book style stories, woven often with historical truth, Cloud Boy is without pictures entirely, and is told instead in diary form and in letters, but all written with great insight into a child’s mind as she lives through clouds of joys and sadnesses, all echoed by her grandmother’s letters to her lost cat as she lived through her own childhood times, spent as a prisoner of the Japanese in Changi Prison, in Singapore, during WW2. And all this, the story of a today’s child and the story of a yesterday’s child are woven into two quilts, one made in Changi all those years ago, and the other made now.This book is a wondrous weaving. In it you will find a line in the diary of today’s diary writing girl which goes, ‘I’m not really a writing person’.Marcia Williams, I’m telling you, you are a marvellous writing person!