The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson

Winner of the prestigious Swedish August Prize 2020. 

A bright, contemporary and fearless novel about an ordinary extraordinary eleven-year-old trying to win back her best friend and get her mother to stop sighing.   

Cricket Karlsson is going to become an artist just like her aunt, who loves cheese and art and always speaks her mind. Not like Cricket’s mother, who is dieting and sighs at everything. But now Aunt Frannie has lost her joy and Cricket’s best friend has dumped her for the horse girls.   

Eleven-year-old Cricket Karlsson is a warm and complex character with an artistic soul. Written as a diary, tween readers will fall in love with Cricket’s tough yet charming voice as she shares her secret thoughts about her best friend break-up, her Aunt’s breakdown and experimental chewing gum sculptures. Punkish and surprising comic-style illustrations perfectly compliment this coming of age story.   

‘The humorously blunt first-person narrative, which includes Cricket’s numerous revealing lists…offers a sympathetic portrait of an idiosyncratic, thoughtful preteen in a period of turmoil.’  Publishers Weekly