Excerpt from The Tightrope Walkers by David Almond, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And to write, to be allowed to write words of my own, sentences of my own, tales of my own. Once there was a boy carled Dominic, who warked acros the waystland to have an advencher. I loved to learn that waystlandmust turn to wasteland,to learn the power of a comma and a full stop, to love the patterns made on paper by strings of sentences, blocks of paragraphs. There were many who couldn't do this. I sat for some time beside a boy called Norman Dobson. I was mystified by the way his words were scrawls across the page, no spaces between them, how they made no sense at all, how punctuation was random, meaningless, how he bent breathing wetly over his work as if in great pain. I would try to help him.

"Remember finger spaces, Norman," I'd whisper. "Stay on the lines."

He'd turn to me with furrowed brow and with snot trickling to his upper lip.

"You can do it, Norman," I'd whisper.

"I can't," he'd say. "I just bliddy cannot, Dom."

I'd watch his hands trembling with the struggle of it, the fear of it.

Holly knew the joy of it. I loved the times we were allowed to work together, to see the pictures that she drew to supplement and intensify my words, to make our shared creation. Sum people said Don't go. It is too danjerus. But the boy was very brayv. And to see a boy shaped just like me setting out across the page's snowy waste.


The school, Saint Lawrence's, was a stone-built place towards the river. It stood upon earth that was riddled with ancient mines. We were close to the wailing and shuddering of engines in the facto-ries and shipyards down here. We could smell oil and weird sweet chemicals and the foulness of the river when it was low. On hot days we gagged at the stench of the boneyard on the opposite bank.

The school was a place of ghosts. The older children told us tales of the children who had died below a hundred years ago, chil-dren killed in rockfalls and explosions. They rose to haunt this place above.

Beware of certain corridors,we were told.Beware of that cupboard, of turning that corner.

Try this. Count the kids in your classroom. Sometimes you'll be counting more than there really are. You're counting ghosts. They come up from the dark to sit here in the light, especially with you, the younger ones. You haven't seen them yet? Keep your eyes peeled. Watch and be prepared. There, look! Oh no. Just a shadow. There! Run!

And worse. Monsters roamed the schoolyard at night when we children were away. They that hid in the daytime in lairs in the earth.

They're things half human and half beast.

We'd stare and wonder. How could that be so?

You'll come to understand, when you're old enough to know.

They sniggered, rolled their eyes.Dogs and women, mares and men.

Ask your fathers, if you're brave enough, but be ready to get clouted.

Holly was a sceptic, even in her infancy.

"All a load of nonsense," she would say.

I didn't dare to contradict her, didn't dare agree.

She put her hand up in class one day.

"Yes, Holly?" said Miss Fagan.

"There are no such things as ghosts, are there, Miss Fagan?"

Miss Fagan smiled.

"Some say yes, some say no."

"But there are n't,are there, Miss?"

"Well, I don't believe so, Holly. I believe God sends us on our proper way once life is done."

"And there are no such things as monsters, are there? They're just things for stories, aren't they?"

"Hmm. Jesus himself encountered demons, Holly. In truth, there are things we cannot really know and understand. That is why we need the Church and prayer."

"The Church and prayer!" Holly muttered.

The Tightrope Walkers Copyright © 2014 by David Almond. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.