How to Live Forever (15 page)

Born in Ealing, London, in 1942, Colin Thompson has worked as a silk-screen printer, graphic designer, theatre stage manager and BBC documentary maker, and lived in Majorca, Cumbria, and a tiny island off the north-west coast of Scotland.

Colin started writing and illustrating children's books in 1990. Since then he has published over 40 books, reaching cult status for his extraordinary picture books, which include
Falling Angels
,
The Last Alchemist
,
The Paradise Garden
and
How to Live Forever
(the inspiration for this story). Most recently Colin has been writing books about The Floods, a family of witches and wizards who are hiding out in a notso-ordinary house in an ordinary town.

In 1995 Colin visited a school in Sydney and fell so much in love with the place that two weeks later he came to Australia to live. Colin and his wife Anne now live in Bellingen with his whippet Max 2. (The first Max appears in most of Colin's picture books, and you can even find him in this book if you look carefully.)

You can read more about Colin on his website at
http://www.colinthompson.com
or send a message to him at
[email protected]

Everybody needs good neighbours …

The Floods aren't like other families – for a start, they're all witches and wizards. And they weren't made in the traditional way like you or me. Some of Nerlin and Mordonna Flood's six eldest children were made in the cellar, using an ancient recipe book and a very big turbocharged wand. The youngest child, Betty, is a normal, pretty little girl – but her attempts at magic never go the way she plans.

The next-door neighbours should have known better than to annoy a family of witches and wizards. But they did, and they're about to find out what the Floods do to bad neighbours.

Available now at all good retailers