Monday, November 05, 2007

Fictional sheds - Lionboy

Lionboy by Zizou Corder is a great children's novel about a young boy called Charlie Ashanti who can talk to cats (of all sizes). Charlie gets caught up in an international web of intrigue after his scientist parents are kidnapped. His mother has a laboratory in the garden and here's how it is described in the book.
"He loved the lab too. Because it was in a separate shed in the backyard, it had always seemed like a different world. Pushing open the door he now got a waft of the smell of it: somewhere between a cake baking, old books, sweet strong incense, and underneath it all the hard cold smell of science. It looked like it smelt. The walls were old and panelled with well-polished dark wood. The benches to the left were gleaming steel with glass cupboards, VDU screens and instruments of the most precise and modern specifications...Along the back wall were stacked shelf upon shelf of books - ancient leatherbound tomes, colourful paperbacks, smart-looking hardbacks, parchments laid out flat, and scrolls rolled tight and piled carefully...It seemed to Charlie that all the knowledge in the world, past and present, lived in his mother's laboratory, and if it didn't, you could find out here where it did live."

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