So I'm probably a little old to be indulging in children's books - *kicks her pile of picture stories, the brilliantly illustrated sort, under her bed* - but am I the only one whose read this?

Or rather, is reading this.

: ) I saw the thirteen-part television series a year or so back and was hooked; it was the best children's TV I'd seen in AGES! The plot is captivating; it has all the elements I adore, but, for a show geared at a younger audience, it deals with some pretty advanced themes. Cannibalism, nuclear activity and resultant infertility, a liberal dollop of science (solar and radioactive power), time travel, people DIE on screen at four in the afternoon... plague. Yet it's all mixed in with a wonderful travelling circus.

In all honesty, I was shocked.

But really, it's amazing, and it's just come out in book from in the UK, so I presume the US... It's by Margaret Mahy, a Kiwi author. I completely advise it.