My Name is Mina

From the winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award the Carnegie Medal and the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award comes the extraordinary prequel to the award-winning Skellig. Shortlisted for the 2012 Carnegie Medal.

There’s an empty notebook lying on the table in the moonlight. It’s been there for an age. I keep on saying that I’ll write a journal. So I’ll start right here, right now. I open the book and write the very first words: My name is Mina and I love the night. Then what shall I write I can’t just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I’ll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or a beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line
. And so Mina writes and writes in her notebook, and here is her journal, Mina’s life in Mina’s own words: her stories and dreams, experiences and thoughts, her scribblings and nonsense, poems and songs. Her vivid account of her vivid life.

In this stunning book, David Almond revisits Mina before she has met Michael, before she has met Skellig.