Boy lives in a caravan on his own in the woods. His dad, John, is in prison and promises to get out soon. All the boy needs to do is survive alone for a little while longer. But dark forces are circling – like the dangerous man in the Range Rover, who is looking for his stolen money. And then there are the ancient forces that have lain asleep in the woods for an age, which, as the outside world begins to close in, are roused into defending their territory.
We Were Wolves is a truly original and affecting piece of work. Unsettling but beautiful, sparse but packed with heart, it’s a real invasion of the senses. It was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal for its illustrations, and the longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
‘I wrote We Were Wolves as a response to the death of my father, and fundamentally it’s a book about the love between a father and son, and how that can be compromised by the complexities of life, especially when mental health issues are involved. My father wasn’t John, he didn’t live in the woods and although he performed his National Service, he wasn’t a veteran suffering from PTSD. But for a long time, he was a mystery to me, like John is to the unnamed hero of my book. Adults are often mysteries to their children, not because the child hasn’t the necessary experience to understand the parent, but because by the time we become adults we have learned not to tell the truth, and clothe ourselves in self-protective narratives that to a child ring hollow. And inevitably, such narratives fail to protect, and only bring further pain. It’s a book about beauty and nature, too, but there’s danger and risk in the landscape, as there is any family. It’s hard to love a parent when sometimes they don’t make the best decisions, and that’s what the boy in my book has to face up to, and finally what he has to overcome.’
Praise and Reviews
‘A classic of its kind, squeezing every drop of tension out of the reader until the final, hallucinatory climax … beautifully written, taut and tense.’ MELVIN BURGESS, author of Junk.
‘What a joy to see Jason’s pictures matched by such an unsentimental but tender story.’ GERALDINE MCAUGHREAN, author of Where The World Ends.
‘This powerful, unsentimental novel calls to mind the work of Patrick Ness and David Almond, and their capacity to be both topical and timeless.’ THE IRISH TIMES
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Rabbit and his mum have moved to the coast to run a small caravan park. Rabbit has been struggling since he saw his father die – he finds it hard to speak. When he befriends a local boy, Joe, he begins to recover, but the strange dreams of a frightened white horse threaten this new peace. When Joe leads them on a hunt for such a horse, the two boys stumble across something much more dangerous: a man being held hostage by a criminal gang. Their discovery will set them on a path that will put everything and everyone Rabbit has come to hold dear in danger.
Running With Horses is a tender and bold book that champions love in all its forms in the face of a sometimes violent and complacent world. It was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for writing, and won the York Book Award in 2024.
‘All my books are personal, and relate very directly to my own experience in life. I was bullied throughout my childhood, and the loneliness and desperation bullying provokes lies at the heart of Running With Horses. Like its predecessor, We Were Wolves, it happens to be about love, too. This time the love between friends that grows into something stronger and more powerful. It’s a story with working class characters, which I think is important. More often than not, the lives that are portrayed in books and films and tv now are ‘aspirational’. Which means everybody seems to live in an enormous house in the suburbs, and everyone is rich. I wanted to write about the sort of people I grew up with, and the places I grew up in. There is as much magic to be found in caravan parks and council houses as there is in any number of castles and mansions, and that’s what I wanted to make clear. Love is magic. Nature is magic. The inexplicable connection between two souls is magic. And these are to be found anywhere we choose to look.’
Praise and Reviews
‘Beautifully illustrated sequel to We Were Wolves. A traumatized boy, a friend he loves and trusts with a frightening older brother, a horse to be saved. I cried. I want a sequel.’ PATRICE LAWRENCE, author of Orangeboy.
‘A work that takes the inevitability of loss and trauma in one’s life, and makes it beautiful through magic and nature in a poetic language that lingers long after the book is finished.’ ERIKA MEZA, author of To The Other Side.
‘Powerful … this is a writer following in the footsteps of Westall, Brooks and Almond.’ BOOKS FOR KEEPS
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In the darkness just before sunrise, a sleepy boy and his grandfather set off on Grandma’s favourite walk to find her favoruite place. Is it the woods where multi-coloured moths flutter? Or the stream with its leaping frogs and flashing trout? The hidden hollow where a mother deer lives with her fawn? As grandfather and grandchild stand gazing over the water to the horizon, and the sun begins to rise, it becomes clear to the boy that they’ve finally reached Grandma’s favourite place—and it’s the perfect spot to remember her. With stunning illustrations evoking the wonder of wild creatures, the chill of the air at dawn, and the golden light of the sun as it rises, author-illustrator Jason Cockcroft captures a quiet moment in one child’s life that will long reverberate.
This tender intergenerational story about loss and remembrance is set against the extraordinary beauty of the natural world.
‘[An] ethereal picture book about grief and remembrance.’ FOREWORD REVIEWS
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A seemingly endless road trip for Lula and her father only seems to get worse when the car breaks down in the middle of the desert. Things are too boring and too orange until Lula encounters a mysterious painter who shows her that the desert is full of so much more to explore, and learns something in return.
A Song Of Sun And Sky is an exploration of colour, lighting, and the magic of art and nature, filtered through the lens of a fictional interaction with the artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
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