Penelope Farmer – författare

It is Charlotte's first night at boarding school, and as she's settling down to sleep, she sees the corner of the new building from her window. But when she wakes up, instead of the building there is a huge, dark cedar tree, and the girl in the next bed is not the girl who slept there last night. Somehow, Charlotte has slipped back forty years to 1918 and has swapped places with a girl called Clare. Charlotte and Clare swap places ever night until one day Charlotte becomes trapped in 1918 and must find a way to return to her own time before the end of term.

Charlotte is new, lonely and far from home. Then she wakes up forty years in the past. Charlotte Makepeace’s first day at boarding school is a blur of unfamiliar faces, timetables, rules and whispers. All the other girls know the routine and each other. Charlotte feels lonely, uncertain and out of place. Then, on her very first night, something mysterious happens. She wakes in the same bed, in the same dormitory, in the same school, but not in the same time. Somehow Charlotte has slipped back to 1918, where everyone believes she is another girl called Clare. As Charlotte moves between her own time and the final months of the First World War, she must learn how to live another girl’s life without losing her own. Charlotte Sometimes is one of the great children’s time-slip novels: a boarding-school story shadowed by the First World War. Penelope Farmer captures the strangeness of being new, the ache of being needed by people who do not truly know you, and the fear of being left behind in another girl’s life.

It is Charlotte's first night at boarding school, and as she's settling down to sleep, she sees the corner of the new building from her window. But when she wakes up, instead of the building there is a huge, dark cedar tree, and the girl in the next bed is not the girl who slept there last night. Somehow, Charlotte has slipped back forty years to 1918 and has swapped places with a girl called Clare. Charlotte and Clare swap places ever night until one day Charlotte becomes trapped in 1918 and must find a way to return to her own time before the end of term.

When Hugh is given a new cupboard, little does he know the secret it holds or how it will affect him and all his friends. Because the cupboard changes things - sometimes dangerously - and if it has the power to change a wallet into a pig, imagine what it can turn Hugh's friend Penn into! . . . And then there are Hugh's dreams; or are they really dreams?

Penelope's mother died when she was a very young child and she was subsequently adopted by her mum's best friend, Aunt Jo. On the surface her life seems as normal as anyone's and yet underneath she is deeply confused. Why does she suffer such painful headaches, why does she remember things that can't possibly have happened to her, and why can she speak phrases of Latin when she has never been taught the subject?!. Sometimes she really believes she is going mad. And then when even her best friend, Piloo, starts talking about reincarnation it's almost more than she can bear. Penelope only wants to be herself, but in order to achieve that she has to look to her past and discover just who she really is. . . . .

Charlotte is new, lonely and far from home. Then she wakes up forty years in the past. Charlotte Makepeace’s first day at boarding school is a blur of unfamiliar faces, timetables, rules and whispers. All the other girls know the routine and each other. Charlotte feels lonely, uncertain and out of place. Then, on her very first night, something mysterious happens. She wakes in the same bed, in the same dormitory, in the same school, but not in the same time. Somehow Charlotte has slipped back to 1918, where everyone believes she is another girl called Clare. As Charlotte moves between her own time and the final months of the First World War, she must learn how to live another girl’s life without losing her own. Charlotte Sometimes is one of the great children’s time-slip novels: a boarding-school story shadowed by the First World War. Penelope Farmer captures the strangeness of being new, the ache of being needed by people who do not truly know you, and the fear of being left behind in another girl’s life.

Penelope Farmer, a twin herself, bravely and beautifully uses her own story to introduce and define a collection from over 250 authors. She draws on popular myth, poetry, fiction, psychology and science in her look at the fascination, envy and horror which the freak coupledom inspires, and at the crisis of separation and death, and the love and hate that binds two souls.'A celebration of twinship and duality...this anthology remains both valuable and enjoyable' THE LANCET