A gentle, evocative story of a young Parisian boy's summer in 1960s rural Provence. When Yannick learns that he is to stay with his Aunt Mathilde in the South of France, he cannot believe his luck. If the paintings of his mother's beloved Cezanne are to be believed, surely Provence is paradise itself. So begins an idyllic month for the young boy: roaming the gentle hills and rolling valleys of Aix-en-Provence; daydreaming about his beautiful cousin Amandine; helping in his aunt and uncle's bustling village inn; feeling that he has come to the most wonderful place in the world. Then the idyll is spoilt when an important local comes for dinner and Yannick accidentally destroys a precious drawing the man leaves behind. Yannick is devastated by what he has done, and resolves to put things right. But in so doing he makes a surprising discovery...

Author Biography

Michael Morpurgo was 2003-2005 Children's Laureate, has written over 100 books and is the winner of many awards, including the Whitbread Children's Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize, the Blue Peter Award and the Red House Children's Book Award. His books are translated and read around the world and his hugely popular novel War Horse is now both a critically acclaimed stage play and a highly successful film. Michael and his wife, Clare, live in Devon. Visit Michael's website at www.michaelmorpurgo.com Francois Place studied visual expression at L'Ecole Estienne before completing his first illustrations for the Decouverte Cadet series. He has since illustrated many books, including Michael Morpurgo's War Horse, and has also become a fiction author whose talent has often been highly praised, with The Last Giants, The Old Man Crazy About Drawing and The Atlas of the Geographers of Orbae. Francois lives near Paris, France.