Product Description

There have been stories of the 'little people' ever since the world began - piskies, kelpies, Jack O'Lanterns - call them what you will. Quiet rumours and whispered hearsay are all these stories amount to, until a twelve-year-old child discovers the truth, hidden away among the briars and brambles, high above the Somerset wetlands.

The truth is strange and wild and sometimes deadly.

This exciting book - the first in a trilogy - is currently shortlisted for the Smarties Award.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13588 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 259 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The idea of a race of little people (fairies) living secretly among us has had a powerful hold on the imaginations of writers from Shakespeare to Terry Pratchettand Eoin Colfer. In The Various, Steve Augarde has used this fascination brilliantly to craft the first novel of a trilogy full of breathless action and wonder. When 12-year-old Midge is sent by her concert-violinist mother to spend the summer at the farm of her sweet but bungling Uncle Brian, her initial resentment gives way to delight in the freedom of exploring the countryside. When she discovers a tiny winged horse lying wounded in an outbuilding, she is awestruck to find out that he comes from a civilisation of five various tribes of little people living in a nearby wood—-something readers will have already learned from alternate chapters set in the fairy world.

Disaster threatens when Uncle Brian plans to sell the wood to a developer, and Midge and her cousins find (to their peril), that some of the little people are not as helpless as they seem. Steve Augarde draws on his visual and auditory skills as a BBC animator and picture book author/illustrator for vividly realised detail--the dumpy and addled fairy queen, the smells and moods of the English summer, the sharply differentiated accents and personalities of each of the five tribes--in an entrancing debut fantasy. The book is recommended for ages 10-14. --Patty Campbell, Amazon.com

Red House Books (readers reviews)
'The Various is the best book in the entire universe.' (Naomi Vibert)

The Guardian Ostober 25 2003
...the narrative pace never falters...the reader is drawn gladly into the enchantment.

Customer Reviews

Timeless Classic
Steve Augarde's trilogy, beginning with The Various and now complete after this years publication of Winter Wood, is a must for every child's collection of 'Most Loved Books'. No spoliers here though....just buy them all. You'll be reading them to your own kids, and to their kids too.

Outstanding!
Twelve-year-old Midge despairs when she is sent to live with `Mad' Uncle Brian in the countryside while her mother works. However, the dreaded holiday turns out to be fun and Midge enjoys the freedom of the farm. When Midge rescues a tiny winged horse her games are destroyed by the reality of the `little people' living in the wood about to have their habitat destroyed. Unfortunately, they are in no mood to listen to Midge and she and her cousins find themselves threatened by tiny fairies equipped with lethal bows. More mysteriously, the whole business is shadowed by memories of a girl named Celandine. This book is very interesting, mixing humour with the seriousness of a race threatened.

Wonderful
This is the first of a trilogy (the third installment is just out now) and it's just so wonderful I have told everyone I can think of to buy it and read it and read it again as I am doing now!

Plenty of other reviews have gone into detail so I won't repeat them here, except to say that his portrayal of the various and their world is so utterly convincing that now when I go into the woods with my dog I find myself wondering if that really is frog spittle and what I can hear really is just a woodpecker or perhaps something more mysterious.

It's a mystery to me why Steve Augard's work is not as feted and famous as Philip Pullman's - it's as well written even though rather different. And don't start me on the clunking fist of J K Rowling's prose.......