Sometimes you have to break the rules, particularly when those rules are based on prejudice. Naidoo breaks the rules, producing books for young people which recognize that they want to know about the real world

Naidoo shows her ability to take stories that are hot off the press, give them emotional depth and raise questions about society and our own responsibilities to each other

A wonderfully accessible story laced with powerful messages of family commitment and human rights. Beverley Naidoo's own South African origins and subsequent exile in London provide heartfelt spine to this book

This outstanding first novel arcs beautifully to its terrible climax and is deeply moving

Every now and then a book comes along that's unusual, compelling and deeply absorbing yet is so tragically simple, it leaves an indelible trace on the memory. The Year the Gypsies Came is one of these

All demand to be read in translation of the originals and not sanitized retellings. Here, by examining letters, journals, annotations and posthumously unavailable papers, Zipes found some hitherto untranslated "ironic and macabre fables, humorous anecdotes, stories about the crusades, Norwegian legend, one 'feminist' tale among other things