Philippa Dowding – författare

2014 Red Cedar Book Award — Shortlisted2014 Forest of Reading, Silver Birch Express — Shortlisted, Fiction2013 Diamond Willow Award — Shortlisted2013 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award — Shortlisted2013 Saskatchewan Young Reader’s Choice Award — Shortlisted2013 White Ravens Award — CommendedWhat do you do when the park next door is inhabited by 400-year-old creatures?Christopher has a problem. He has just moved to Toronto. He has a new school and no friends. But even worse, the park next door is creepy: voices whisper in the bushes, and something throws apples at his window and howls at the moon. But what? Gargoyles! Their names are Gargoth and Ambergine, and they need help. An evil thief called the Collector is after them and wants to lock them away in his dark mansion, forever. Befriending a gargoyle takes courage, but it’s worth it. Once he does, Christopher suddenly has more friends than he ever imagined, including Katherine, a girl from his class who knows the gargoyles, as well. When the Collector steals Ambergine, it’s up to Christopher and Katherine to get her back, as long as something else doesn’t catch them along the way. This is the third book in the award-nominated Lost Gargoyle series.

This morning, I woke up on the ceiling … So begins the strange story of Gwendolyn Golden. One perfectly ordinary day for no apparent reason, she wakes up floating around her room like one of her little brother’s Batman balloons.Puberty is weird enough. Everyone already thinks she’s an oddball with anger issues because her father vanished in a mysterious storm one night when she was six. Then there are the mean, false rumours people are spreading about her at school. On top of all that, now she’s a flying freak.How can she tell her best friend or her mother? How can she live her life? After Gwendolyn almost meets disaster flying too high and too fast one night, help arrives from the most unexpected place. And stranger still? She’s not alone.

The first in a series of scary tall tales from award-winning children’s novelist Philippa Dowding.Why is Grandpa acting so weird? And why are there so many giant flies?Jake spends every summer on his grandpa’s farm. But this year, things are a little weird. First, there are huge flies everywhere. Second, Grandpa is acting kind of funny. And third, Jake’s friend Kate keeps trying to scare him with creepy stories. Last year’s tale about the swamp creature was bad enough, but this year’s story about a hand that someone found in a farmer’s field is even worse. And it wasn’t just any hand either. It was a giant’s hand!It might just be the creepiest story of all. It can’t be real. Can it?

2017 Silver Birch Express Award Honour Book • 2017 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award — Shortlisted • 2017 Diamond Willow Award — ShortlistedThe second instalment in a series of scary tall tales from acclaimed children’s novelist Philippa Dowding.I will never leave this car, the back seat reeks of everything my little brother has ever eaten, and that thing is still out there …Myles and his family have been driving for four days. It’s their final night on the road, but Myles knows they will never arrive at their new house. It will never stop raining. And even if they do get there (which is doubtful), he knows he will never have friends again.He also knows that something is following them in the dark, rainy fields outside their car. Something monstrous.Once the monster arrives, things go very wrong. Myles and his family get lost, their car keeps breaking down, and a strange old man and his dog turn up, again and again. Then things get really weird. Myles is pretty sure it’s all his fault: he’s the only one who can see the monster. He’s the only one who can hear the monster.And hardest of all? He’s the only one who can make it go away.

Carter discovers a creepy maze at the fair and travels farther and farther back in time. How will he ever get back to the present?The fair is dull, dull, dull, and nothing interesting will ever happen to Carter again … until Carter discovers the curious maze.Nothing has ever happened here in the history of the world, he thinks. But the maze has some strange secrets, and the spot Carter stands upon has seen some very exciting events over the centuries.Once Carter enters the maze, odd people begin to appear. First he meets Mr. Green, the mysterious, creepy maze-keeper, then a leaf-covered girl, a lost little boy in old-fashioned clothes, a wounded British soldier, and finally an eighteenth-century Native boy who seems very authentic, indeed.When Carter eventually escapes the curious maze, the fair is all wrong. There are too many horses, ladies in bonnets, and what’s a freak show doing there? Carter begins his travels through time, and his dull afternoon is about to get very, very interesting.

The sequel to The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden, shortlisted for the OLA Red Maple Award.I wander around like any normal, paranoid, self-absorbed teenager. Do we all think we’re being chased by deadly entities, I wonder? Probably, but how many of us actually are?Gwendolyn Golden, Night Flyer, floats over the cornfields all summer. What draws her to the same spot, night after night? All she knows is that change is coming: she’s starting high school plus there’s a strange new boy in town.He’s Everton Miles and he’s a Night Flyer, too.Soon the mismatched teenagers face dangers they never imagined, including a fallen Spirit Flyer, a kidnapping, and the eternal darkness of The Shade. How will Gwendolyn handle her new life and grade nine? With help from the Night Flyer’s Handbook and her strange new friend, it might not be that hard.CCBC’s Best Books for Kids & Teens (Spring 2017) Selection

Beware The Other …Alex is the loneliest boy at school. Not only are his parents away (again), but his beloved cat is missing. Plus, one morning his reflection in the haunted bathroom mirror at school starts talking to him. Then two mysterious strangers in overcoats and sunglasses appear, whispering the same message, over and over: Beware The Other.…But, worse than all that, is the girl with the braid. She looks just like Alex. She’s better than him at everything, and they even share the same name. Soon, she’s the only Alex anyone can see, at school, at work, even at home. In no time, it’s almost as though the real Alex never existed at all.Can the real Alex outsmart his evil twin and get his life back before she replaces him for good? And, more importantly, who is the real Alex, anyway?

Do you hear the distant drums? And what about that weird screaming … Emma Blackwell used to love mermaids. Jonah Blackwell used to love pirates. And William Blackwell tried to be a good captain. Which he would be, if he could get his twin brother and sister to stop fighting long enough to sail their boat, the Peregrine, across the bay. But after the Blackwells see a phantom ship, barely survive a terrible storm, and then mysteriously wake up with seaweed in their mouths, everything changes. They’re becalmed in fog. They run aground on a strange island. They hear distant drums, and their weird adventure begins! The Blackwells face zombie pirates, terrifying mermaids, and a shipwrecked group of cursed ship’s figureheads, including a Roman gladiator and an English knight, all led by the strange dolphin-boy, Finn. It’ll make a great sea yarn one day, if they can just survive it.

Quinn might get used to the food, Work Bots, and creating the Blue Brick™ … but why are children all around him turning blue?Quinn Fleet, twelve, Packager (QF12P) has only been at the Work Centre for three days, but he’s already seen a Caver run away, faced interrogation, and been made to stand in front of a crowd of children in the Grand Hall to apologize for breaking a Blue Brick™.That's when he notices that all the children at the Work Centre look so thin, ragged, and blue.Why are the children turning blue? Why can they make the strange blue spark when they snap their fingers? What’s the blue shimmer in the air? And why do a renegade Work Bot and an Officer want Quinn to lead the NewBlues to the sanctuary of the Quiet, Quiet?But more than all that, what is the Quiet, Quiet, anyway?

Winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature — TextWinner of the 2022 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book AwardFirefly lived in the park across from her mother’s home. It was safer there. But after the bad night happens, and her baseball-bat-wielding mother is taken away, social services sends Firefly to live with her Aunt Gayle. She hardly knows Gayle, but discovers that she owns a costume shop. Yes, Firefly might be suffering from PTSD, but she can get used to taking baths, sleeping on a bed again, and wearing as many costumes as she can to school. But where is “home”? What is “family”? Who is Firefly, for that matter … and which costume is the real one?

“A new friend is a scary thing, sometimes. You may have to change and adapt a little to make your friendship work …”So says Bat to her new friend Mr. Byrd on one perfect summer twilight. They’ve both landed, quite unexpectedly, on the same branch of the same red maple tree at the same time, and this story begins …They agree to meet at twilight all summer long. Soon, they realize they are more alike than different, and friendship takes many forms. Together, they discover the danger of cats, the beauty of fireflies, the meaning of loss, love, fun, joy, family, and more. With autumn comes change for these unlikely summer friends, and for Mr. Byrd, it brings the sweetest song of all.