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The Song That Sings Us

by Nicola Davies

Interest age: 7 to 11
Reading age: 8+

Published by Firefly Press, 2021

  • Adventure
  • Fantasy
  • Thriller
  • Dystopia

About this book

The Automators have come, just like Ma always knew they would, and they don’t plan on taking any prisoners.

Ma can return their fire and hold them off for a while – hopefully long enough for Harlon, Ash and Xeno to escape – by snowboarding down Skull Gully: a 6,000-foot sheer slope, studded with rocks, that is just as likely to kill them as the hail of bullets currently peppering the house.

When the siblings are separated, they must each find a way to follow Ma’s final, mysterious instruction. Their lives, and perhaps the future of humanity, depend on it.

The world in this complex, dystopian, eco-thriller is a more extreme version of the climate crisis currently facing humankind. The slogan of the dominant Automators is to ‘escape the tyranny of nature’ and anything non-industrial is being actively destroyed.

The delineation between humans and animals is blurred and there are some interesting ideas around bionetworks and the interconnectivity of species. But this is not just a book for ecowarriors. Anyone who enjoys a really good adventure thriller will love it – and readers may never feel quite the same way about elephants ever again.

About the author

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.

Find out what Nicola Davies is up to as our Writer in Residence

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