An Episode of Sparrows

Someone has been digging in the private garden in the Square, and taking earth away. Miss Angela Chesney of the Garden Committee is certain that a gang of local children (or 'sparrows' as she and her sister Olivia call them) are guilty of this crime. But Olivia isn't so certain that Angela has understood what is really going on - and her journey to discover the truth takes her beyond the genteel Square, to the run-down Catford Street, a struggling restaurant, a bombed-out church and the secret garden it conceals.

Republished by Virago Modern Classics to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the addition of children's books to their list, this is the story of Lovejoy Mason - a fierce, lonely little girl whose life changes when she steals a packet of seeds, and then sets out to make her own garden in a bomb crater. With hints of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, it is a powerful, thought-provoking and subtle story, with plenty to offer to adult readers, as well as children themselves.

This new edition comes with a foreword from Jacqueline Wilson, who characterises it as 'a captivating classic novel of a poor girl striving to create beauty among the bombsites of postwar London'.