The incoming family consists of a little girl, Jenny Hawthorn, and her father (she has lost her mother in a car crash), and a cat named Thomas (p. The story begins with the arrival of new tenants at Number Six, an end-house in Cumberland Place, which is a poky town-centre street sandwiched between a railway and a warehouse.

The story concerns a small group of children living in English town, sandwiched between a railway and a warehouse, in a row of rented, white-painted terraced houses, where the landlord will allow no pets. It’s just such a classy, solid story and such lovely stuff.No One Must Know is a 1962 children's novel by the English writer Barbara Sleigh. The chapters are self-contained and deeply satisfying in their own right and although a more modern audience might be unfamiliar with some of the vocabulary of the time, it’s written so tightly that the reader just rolls along with it. She’s clearly familiar with what it takes to write a story but also, I think, in what it takes to read a story. There’s something very classic and confident about this, Sleigh’s debut. Give me a slightly stroppy partner in crime who will do anything for their friend and I’m there. There’s also something very particular about a slightly sarcastic and curmudgeonly magical chum. There’s something very particularly British (and very particularly mid-twentieth century British) about magic being found on your doorstep. What I liked, however, was how immediate and everyday this magic was. The spell must be broken by Rosemary who, in trying to find extra money to bring home to her impoverished mother, finds herself embroiled in mysterious and magical goings on. I like the way that libraries do that sometimes they give you the things that you did not quite mean to get and yet knew you always wanted.Ĭarbonel is a cat and he is under a spell. Carbonel has been on my radar for some time and so when I spotted it, I grabbed. I had prepared for this day with a visit to the library, picking things that I thought might be in my wheelhouse and things that I had been meaning to read for some while and yet never got around to it. When it is a hot day, we turn to the shadows and we read the books. Carbonel: The King of the Cats by Barbara Sleigh

Barbara sleigh