Rowan the Strange

How does a doctor examine a person's brain? They won't use any knives on me, will they?Rowan knows he is strange.But dangerous?He didn't mean to scare his sister. In his right mind, he wouldn't hurt a fly. But there's a place he can go where they say they can fix his mind . . .Beyond the bars on the window, England is at war.Behind them, Rowan's own battle is only just beginning.This amazing story gives a thought-provoking look at life in an asylum and the experimental treatments practised at the start of the Second World War. For Rowan, nobody could ever have predicted the effect these treatments would have . .

Hearn is skilled at conveying the place and the time, but it is in the detail of human interactions that her novel is particularly remarkable, An original story with an unusual and many-layered background, I couldn't put this book down . . . This is quite possibly the most amazing work of children's fiction I've read in the last two years . . . The characters are absolutely fantastic, stunningly realised and brought to the page with such gusto that I didn't want it to end

Other titles: Follow Me Down, The Merrybegot, Ivy, Hazel Follow Me Down was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award The Merrybegot was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize Julie Hearn has been writing all her life. After training as a journalist, she went to Australia, where she worked on a daily tabloid newspaper. She then lived in Spain for a while before returning to England, where she worked as a features editor and freelance features writer. After her daughter was born she went back to her studies and obtained a BA in English and an MSt in women's studies. She is now a full-time writer.