Sylvia Waugh

'An extraordinary book ... a classic' - Sunday TelegraphSylvia Waugh's extraordinary novel about the Mennyms, a family of life-sized rag dolls, won the 1994 Guardian Children's Fiction Award.From the outside, 5 Brocklehurst Grove looks like an ordinary house - the windows are always clean, and the garden well tended. And from the inside, to hear the voices of the inhabitants, the Mennym family, you would think they were a perfectly ordinary family, too. But you'd be wrong, for the Mennyms are far from ordinary. The whole family shares an astonishing secret behind which it's hidden for forty years; a secret to which nobody has ever come close - until perhaps, now.When a letter arrives from Australia, the whole family is plunged into fear that, for the first time, their secret is about to be exposed . . .

The Mennyms are faced with a crisis when plans to build a motorway straight through their home are announced. They've successfully survived living on Brocklehurst Road for forty years, carefully keeping the secret of their rag doll identity under wraps. Either way the consequences will be devastating .

The Mennyms have always lived in danger, ever since their maker, Kate Henshaw, instilled in them an indomitable life force, a life force that has carried them through many perils. But now with shocking suddeness, that life force has abandoned them all except for Soobie - the sole survivor.

From the outside, 5 Brocklehurst Grove looks like an ordinary house - the windows are always clean, and the garden well tended. And from the inside, to hear the voices of the inhabitants, the Mennym family, you would think they were a perfectly ordinary family, too.

The Mennym family faces its most awesome struggle yet when the family patriarch, Sir Magnus, predicts the unthinkable - that their world is about to end. Is Sir Magnus's astonishing prediction of doom just the pessimism of old age - or is this really the end of the line for the Mennyms?

Pilbeam, the Mennyms' eternal teenager, is in a rebellious mood. One fateful night, Pilbeam throws caution to the wind and goes out to the theatre - and in doing so threatens her own safety and the very existence of her whole, rag doll family.

Like Patrick in Space Race and Matthew and Alison in Earthborn, Steven is a visitor from Ormingat, living on Earth with his family for a designated number of years.

The Gwynns, a pleasant American couple, have lived outside York for the past fourteen years. Nesta, their only child, was born there and attends the local school. They seem ordinary enough and comfortable in their leafy suburb. But they have an astonishing secret unknown even to Nesta. One evening when she sees her father diminish and disappear into a stone lily pad in the garden pond, Nesta has to be told what she really is. Her parents are visitors from the planet Ormingat, sent to Earth to investigate life there. Now they have been ordered to return home. Nesta can`t take it all in, refuses to accept that she is not earthborn and finally runs away with the help of her best school mate, Amy.

For almost as long as he can remember, Tom has lived happily in Belthorp. When his father breaks the unbelievable news that their family come from the planet Ormingat and must go back there, Tom is devastated. Apart from the wrench of leaving home, insuperable difficulties stand in their way as they try to reach their return ship.