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Set in the Dublin tenements of 1911, a young girl trying to save her family gets caught up in an exciting adventure when the circus comes to town.
When Eliza Kane and her brother Jonty move from the leafy suburbs of Rathmines to a tenement flat on Henrietta Street in Dublin’s city centre they are in for a shock. Pigs and ponies in the yard, rats in the hallways and cockroaches or ‘clocks’ underfoot! But then they meet their new neighbour, Annie, and her brothers, and begin to settle in. And when a travelling circus comes to town, with acrobats, wild animals, performing dogs – and Madam Ada, the bee charmer – things really start to look up. Then a tragedy happens in the tenements, and Eliza, Jonty and their tenement family learn the true power of friendship. A tale of family, friends and finding magic everywhere.
SARAH WEBB is an award-winning children’s writer. Her books include Blazing a Trail: Irish Women who Changed the World, illustrated by Lauren O’Neill and A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea: Favourite Rhymes from an Irish Childhood, illustrated by Steve McCarthy, both winners of Irish Book Awards. Sarah runs creative writing clubs for children and teens, reviews children’s books for The Irish Independent and programmes children’s events for book festivals and MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland). Sarah is passionate about bringing children and books together and was awarded the Children’s Books Ireland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Books in Ireland in 2015. This is her first historical fiction novel for children and her 40th book.