Lively, Penelope - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe - ( Item 137661 )
To buy this item online using any major credit or debit card or Paypal, click the appropriate delivery option below
depending on where you are in the world.
Option 1 - Buy item for 29.40 with 1st class post TO A UK ADDRESS ONLY
Option 2 - Buy item for 28.90 with 2nd class post TO A UK ADDRESS ONLY
Option 3 - Buy item for 49.90 with Airmail TO AN ADDRESS IN USA OR CANADA
Option 4 - Buy item for 49.90 with Airmail TO AN ADDRESS IN THE REST OF THE WORLD (including the EU)
Lively, Penelope - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe - ( Item 137661 )
Published in London by Folio Society. 2014. First Thus. Fine Hardback. No inscriptions or bookplates. Fine slipcase. Illustrated by Pam Smy. With a new introduction by the author, this brilliantly funny ghost story for children features integrated illustrations by artist Pam Smy. Someone is causing havoc in East End Cottage, and for once it isn't James. When strange scrawled notes start appearing all over his new family home in the old Oxfordshire village of Ledsham, 10-year-old James seems the obvious culprit. But only he knows the troublemaker's true identity – Thomas Kempe, a petulant 17th-century sorcerer who has taken up residence as a poltergeist in his new bedroom. And to make matters worse, no one will believe him. So, to avoid missing out on pocket money and pudding for the rest of his life, it will be up to James to find out why Thos. Kempe Esq., Sorcerer, has returned, and how to get rid of him. 'The Ghost Of Thomas Kempe is a glorious reminder of the fun of being a boy' . GUARDIAN. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe book. Bound in buckram, blocked with a design by Pam Smy. Set in Adobe Caslon with Blackadder display. 168 pages with 26 black & white illustrations. Printed endpapers. 9" × 5.75". More than just a simple ghost story. First published in 1973, and winner of the Carnegie Medal, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a brilliantly funny ghost story for children, from one of the great writers of modern British fiction. But, as Penelope Lively explains in her new introduction that there is 'intriguing hidden ballast' to James's quest to rid Ledsham of its troublesome ghost. Uncovering dusty diaries and investigating local folklore, James delves deeper into the past and slowly comes to realise that there is an undiscovered world around him, one filled with the memories of lives lived before his own. Lively's own interest in social history and memory, which suffuses much of her later adult fiction, informs James's own adventure as he begins to realise his place in the passage of time, and that we can't all be ten forever. Pam Smy has created over two dozen whimsical illustrations for this edition. Characters such as Mrs Verity, Tim the dog and Bert – the builder-cum-exorcist – are brought vividly to life. Many of the images are integrated with the text, whisking the reader along with James around the streets of Ledsham and the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside. Penelope Lively recalls the humble origins of Thomas Kempe. An extract from the author's new introduction to this edition. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe was published in 1973. It is over 40 years since it was written – by some alter ego, or so it seems. Read today, it is familiar to me, but also strange; I couldn't write like that now – indeed, writing for children left me long ago, to my regret. But what is intriguing, reading with some detachment, is that I can recognise with absolute clarity the prompts, the sources, for the story, and they are just the same as those for adult fiction, later in a writing life. Inspirational triggers, for me, have been a curious marriage of something read, something seen or found, and all the encircling clamour of life as lived. The something found was the stem and bowl of a clay pipe. Thomas Kempe's clay pipe, I suppose. Many bits of clay pipe, indeed. We were living at the time in a 16th-century former rectory; the garden there threw up fascinating domestic detritus – broken crockery from medieval potsherds to Victorian flowered china, the curved glass bases of 18th-century wine bottles, and all those clay pipes. Gardening acquired an extra level of interest. Clay pipes, I learned, date from the end of the 16th century to the 19th, and vary from decade to decade, so that archaeologists can often use them to date a level of excavation. The stems are extremely brittle; the past must echo to expletives as yet another damn pipe fell to bits. I collected all this stuff – a cake tin full of garden archaeology which I still possess – and at some point the ghost of Thomas Kempe, or someone like him, came smoking out of one of those pipes. From the Folio Society description. ISBN: None .
Price 28.90 (inc UK postage) Other items you may like
Others by the same author
Safe and Secure Online Buying
To buy online, please click the appropriate button above. You will be transferred to secure pages hosted by Paypal, the largest online transaction processor in the world. You can pay with any major credit or debit card or by Paypal.
Money Back Guarantee, Secure Packaging and Fast Response
We are a major online trader with excellent feedback from satisfied customers on Ebay (over 25,000 customers). We will refund your costs for items returned within seven days for any reason. If we are at fault we will also refund your return postage. Items are sent in top grade book boxes for protection. Large items or multiple purchases may be boxed. Items will be despatched within a day of receipt of your order, usually on the same day if ordered before noon.
