Wilf and his family have moved to the seaside to start a new life by opening a run-down cafe. But for his parents it's all too much, and quite separately they decide to take a break from the family, not realising that the other has also left. So Wilf and his four younger sisters fend for themselves and decide to renovate the cafe as a surprise for their parents' return. But ghostly sounds in the house, a parade of oddball and inquisitive visitors and the mysterious links between the cafe's previous owner and the local art gallery complicate their efforts. As Wilf's superhero comic characters take shape on the cafe's walls, covering the fat ladies who previously decorated it, the children's attempts to hide their parentless state slowly unravel, leading to a dramatic turn of events on the day they open the cafe to the public. Packed with humorous characters and witty dialogue, this is a delightfully funny story with an intriguing mystery at its heart. By a well-known children's poet with huge experience of reading and writing with children, The Comic Cafe is an exciting and highly entertaining fiction debut that ranks alongside stories by Hilary McKay, Lemony Snickett and Anne Fine.

Author Biography

Roger Stevens is a popular children's author, poet and performer who visits schools, libraries, festivals and museums all over the UK. Roger has compiled several anthologies, most recently A Million Brilliant Poems Part One (A&C Black) and The Jumble Book (Macmillan), children's poems compiled for Dyslexia Action. He has delivered creative writing courses for adults at the University of Sussex. He recently published Able Writers in Your School (Brilliant Publications) a book for teachers written with Brian Moses and has worked with students at promoting and advising on the teaching of poetry in schools.Roger's poems for children appear in more than 200 anthologies. His most recent solo collections are The Monster That Ate the Universe and Why Otters Don't Wear Socks (Macmillan) and On My Way to School I Saw a Dinosaur - poems for younger children (A&C Black); A Macmillan Audio CD of Roger reading the best of his poems is available from www.rabbitpress.com Roger has co-written an opera, written children's musicals and written songs for all ages. He wrote and performed the music for Floella Benjamin's Hey Diddle Diddle , a series of programmes based on nursery rhymes, for younger children on BBC Radio 7. Some of his poems can currently be heard on CBeebies Poetry Pie. The Journal of Danny Chaucer (Orion), a verse-novel for teenagers, was adapted by Roger and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.He currently plays in the band Damn Right I Got the Blues with author Ken Follett.Roger began his award-winning website, The Poetry Zone, in 1998, specifically as a place for children to publish their own poetry. Since then it has had over two million visitors and includes interviews with poets, videos and teaching material. It's currently undergoing a re-vamp to bring it in line with contemporary sites such as Facebook and You Tube.www.poetryzone.co.uk Future publications include a new solo collection of poetry for Macmillan Children's Books, Beware Low Flying Rabbits .