How stupid do you have to be to fall out of a top floor window? Or was Stolly trying something else - up on cloud nine, even then? Stolly has always been soalive, so inspiring, taking risks, hiding nothing, notorious for being the school's most imaginative liar (or fantatist, as he calls it). But now he's lying in a hospital bed and Ian, his best friend who's as close as a brother, is watching, waiting and remembering . . . A characteristically funny, moving, life-affirming novel about a most remarkable character and the truly inspirational effect he has on everyone he meets.

Anne Fine has been an acknowledged top author in the children's book world since her first book was published in the mid l970s, and has now written more than forty books and won virtually every major award going, including the Carnegie Medal (more than once), the Whitbread Children's Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize and others. The Children's Laureate from 2001-2003, Anne is also very funny and young readers love her lack of hypocrisy about the family and her honesty about how people can behave. She lives in the North-East.

'One of the sharpest and most humorous observers of the human condition writing today for the young'School Librarian

'She is translated into 26 languages and has regularly won every major children's literary award in the land, including the Carnegie Medal twice and the Whitbread Children's Novel award twice . . . There are few more influential, or more unfailingly intelligent, authors at work'Scotsman

'A subversively wicked gift for exploring family tensions'Independent