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Tinder

On sale

4th September 2014

Price: £9.99

CILIP Kate Greenaway Children's Book Award, 2015

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Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781780621494

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Otto Hundebiss is tired of war, but when he defies Death he walks a dangerous path. A half beast half man gives him shoes and dice which will lead him deep into a web of dark magic and mystery. He meets the beautiful Safire – pure of heart and spirit, the scheming Mistress Jabber and the terrifying Lady of the Nail. He learns the powers of the tinderbox and the wolves whose master he becomes. But will all the riches in the world bring him the thing he most desires?

Fairy tales are often the cruellest stories of all; in this exquisite novel Sally Gardner writes about great love and great loss.

What's Inside

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Reviews

The School Librarian
A powerful blend of timeslip fantasy, science fiction and coming of age novel, its central theme is memory and the part it plays in constructing who we are.
GUARDIAN ONLINE
Sally Gardner has achieved yet another masterpiece, crafting an amazing story world on paper.
CAROUSEL
a complex story with constantly changing plots. Some emotionally challenging, but, when all the connections are made, the reader is taken on an exciting, and fulfilling, journey.
The Times
Tinder explores addiction, passion, greed, love & psychological injuries of war. It is another jewel in Gardner's crown
The Bookseller
Gardner follows up her Costa-Carnegie double with an exquisite reworking of The Tinderbox fairytale, as dark and captivating as you would hope.
Reading Zone
The Carnegie Medal-winning author has produced another astonishing tour de force and one that could not be more different from the dystopian Maggot Moon and yet is almost certainly bound for similar glory.
Financial Times
David Roberts' elegant illustrations are integral to the beautiful design - almost every page is embellished. A volume to treasure and reread.
Books For Keeps
This luminously written story re-introduces all the erotic and macabre features of traditional fairy tales...in rich and rewarding writing.
The Bookbag
Tinder is, as ever, with Ms Gardner's books, beautifully written, moving and engrossing, and for lovers of the dark and doom-ridden, it is well worth reading.
Books for Keeps
...Rich and rewarding writing, reminding readers never to take any fairy tales, ancient or modern, simple for granted.
Telegraph.co.uk
Boys and girls will find something to love in its pages; all will be transfixed by its ancient charm.
Haverhill Echo, Newmarket Journal & Suffolk Free Press
Expect more award nominations for this.
Domestic Sluttery
Tinder is just a whoosh of magic, beauty, and cruel, confident storytelling
Stylist
Gardner's narrative is fast-paced and gripping, but most of all it manages to mix in witches, wolves and black magic, all the while being though provoking.
The Guardian
She [Gardner] has noted and exploited, ingeniously and powerfully, the connection between The Tinderbox and the story of Prometheus, and this mythic underpinning gives her pell-mell fantasy both coherence and a satisfying richness... It's a beauty.
Bookwitch Blog
Sally has really worked magic on this old story, and it is fascinating and exciting, as well as creepy. You can barely put it down.
Inis Magazine
Her use of language is intensely visual as she evokes her sumptuous and macabre scenarios... Ultimately we are in the hands of a consummate storyteller.
Metro
Gardner's language is as simple and clear as a forest spring. Delicate images ('a moth's meal of a cloak') meet big coarse ones ('a spit-roasted sort of face') to create a tapestried, intricate landscape, full of mystery, grief, terror and seduction.
The Herald
...The truly breathtaking publication of this season is Sally Gardner's Tinder, a book that is both a dark, haunting fairytale with werewolves and treasures, but also a horrifying exploration of war and its impact on young men.
Tinder retells Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox as a dark dream- an exploration of memory, grief, fear, lust and love. Gardner's delicate, eerie rendering lends it a new grace...
John Millen, Young Post, China
an extraordinary piece of older teen fiction, full of menace, excitement and beauty. This is one book that cannot be recommended highly enough
Eve Seymour, Cheltenham Standard
Written primarily for young adults, the beautifully crafted narrative is one of those rare, haunting pieces of fiction that, as soon as you finish, you want to return to and read it again ....... It's a love story, a tale of epic courage and endurance, a fairy tale with sorcery and secrets, and a ghost story. But at its hearts Tinder is about the true cost of war, the terrible damage it inflicts and the high personal price paid by those caught in its jaws.
The Best New Children's Books 2015
Dazzling and haunting...a dark and deliciously macabre read with an unexpected twist
Stylist
Fast-paced and gripping
INIS Magazine
Profoundly beautiful and thought-provoking ... mesmeric ... ultimately, we are in the hands of a consummate storyteller who provides her readers with nothing less than a meditation on desire, maturation, reality and death.
Books For Keeps
Luminously written ... rich and rewarding
SFX Magazine
A dark but delightful read
The Bookseller
Exquisite ... as dark and captivating as you would hope
Recommended Reads
Profoundly beautiful
Financial Times
David Roberts' elegant illustrations are integral to the beautiful design ... A volume to treasure and re-read
The Times
Mesmeric ... another jewel in Gardner's crown
Books For Keeps
The natural elegance of Roberts' style marries perfectly with the supernatural elements of Gardner's powerful narrative -- by turns ghostly, tender, dramatic
School Zone
Exquisite
The Daily Telegraph
A dark dream -- an exploration of memory, grief, fear, lust and love. Gardner's delicate, eerie rendering lends it a new grace
The Guardian
Gardner's prose in Tinder is adventurous and hugely energetic ... Its a beauty
The Daily Telegraph
An exquisitely macabre fairy story for teenagers