A Box of Nothing

(Paperback)

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Description

For one young boy, a box full of nothing is a ticket to adventure

While skipping school, James sees his mother on the street. He ducks inside an abandoned store, where an aged shopkeeper asks what he wants to buy. When James says nothing, the old man sells it to him: a heavy cardboard box stuffed full of top-quality nothing. James tries to explain this to his mother, but she doesnt believe him and throws the box over the fence and into the dump. He sneaks in to retrieve his new possessionand finds himself trapped in another world.

The dump is an eerie place populated by hyperintelligent rats, monstrous seagulls, and a very clever pile of garbage called the Burra. Once it was a thriving community, but something strange has happened, and the dump has become stuck in time. To get back home, James must help the Burra save the dumpusing all the nothing he can find.

Reviews

A dazzling story... Subtle, intelligent and, most of all, fun. Publishers Weekly

A stimulating, multi-layered story, fast moving and pleasantly free of long explanations. School Library Journal

One of the real masters of childrens literature. Philip Pullman

Author Bio

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff ofPunch,and since then earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for children and adults. His books have been published in several languages throughout the world.

The author of twenty-one crime and mystery novels for adults, Dickinson was the first to win the Gold Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association for two books running: The Glass-Sided Ants Nest (1968) and The Old English Peepshow (1969). Dickinson was shortlisted nine times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for childrens literature and was the first author to win it twice.

Dickinson served as chairman of the Society of Authors and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for services to literature. Peter Dickinson died on December 16, 2015, at the age of eighty-eight.