Paper Boat, Paper Bird

This wonderful tale transports Mina to Kyoto, Japan, an entirely new and different cultural landscape, where she encounters the magic of origami and an older magic, too. She accepts an origami paper boat from a woman on the bus. ''Ko-ni-chi-wa,'' says the woman, ''Take it.'' And then, ''Float it.''

Mina watches as the woman''s fingers fold another elaborate paper form: creased, tugged and teased into the shape of a paper bird. She imagines what it would be like to be a sheet of paper in the woman''s hands, to become a paper Mina. The crowds around her disappear and Kyoto is gone.

This is a beautiful story from one of the masters of magical realism, David Almond, with stunning illustrations from Kirsti Beautyman.

"Spell-binding... impossible to resist... breathless, intoxicating prose. [Almond''s] books seem to exist in their own otherworldly universe, outside all the trends in modern publishing, yet resolutely of the now." The Glasgow Herald

"David Almond''s books are strange, unsettling wild things - unfettered by the normal constraints of children''s literature. They are, like all great literature, beyond classification." The Guardian

"[David Almond] is that rare thing - a writer of lucid, mature elegance, who can still see the world through adolescent eyes." The Daily Telegraph

"A writer of visionary Blakean intensity." The Times

"A master storyteller." The Independent