Sometimes, the simplest stories are the best... This is a lovely, tender book... Stan and Nan are all of our grandparents, their stability and infinite kindness much mourned as our ever-changing worlds spin frantically on.' Rachel Cooke, Observer
My nan wrote me many letters back in 2011. They were about the love of her life, my grandad, Stanley Burndred. I’ve never met him, he died long before I was born, but his drawings, paintings and ceramics have been in my life for as long as I can remember. Every wall of Nan’s house would be decorated by his artworks and every windowsill bore his ceramic creations. Whenever we visited Nan in the Black Country I would study the ornaments and pictures, wondering who had made them. It wasn’t until I wrote to Nan many years later, receiving in return beautiful handwritten letters detailing his life, that it became apparent that the work was his.
The letters were so beautiful I felt my nan’s story had to be told. Stan and Nan is the story of an ordinary couple and the people who loved them. The narrative follows their lives from Stan’s working-class background, to his premature death, through to Nan’s struggle to cope, and the perils of ageing. It is a memoir about the importance of family, and about death, love, living and human connection.

Stan and Nan

Comics & Graphic Novels

Lippett, Sarah

Manga

JONATHAN CAPE.

A beautiful graphic novel about the complexities of teenage life, the tangles of twinship, and the power of music to somehow make sense of it all. Sometimes everything feels heavy and uncomfortable. My body, my family, my life . . . . And the only thing that releases that weight is music. Nel is fifteen years old, and life is a grind. School is exhausting, social pressures are relentless, and adults are oblivious. Somehow Ludo, Nel's handsome twin brother, seems untouched by it all, gliding effortlessly through life's complications. Her playlist and her best friend, Kit, are pretty much the only things Nel's got going for her right now. When Ludo joins a band and Kit starts going out with the guitarist, it feels like even the tiny space Nel has carved out for herself is in peril. But nothing is forever, and teenage life can turn on a dime. When Nel finds herself taking Ludo's place in the band, she has to work out whether life outside the shadows is all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes you need to follow the music to find your way back to yourself.

Everything Amplified

Teen & Young Adult

Hanaor, Ziggy

Literature & Fiction

Cicada Books

A moving, often very funny graphic memoir about what it is like to grow up with an illness that no one can diagnose. A moving, often very funny graphic memoir about what it is like to grow up with an illness that no one can diagnose. When the headaches started, Sarah Lippett would stand alone on a different side of the playground from the other children. When she started to drag one of her legs, her parents took her to hospital, and so began the visits to many different doctors, each one more bewildered by her illness than the last. Initially schooled at home, when Sarah went back to school she was placed with the struggling kids, and still so often ill, she felt even more alone. But although Sarah's parents often despaired of the stream of appointments and no cure, they never showed it and she grew up in the midst of a boisterous, loving family and found good friends at last, as well as venturing into bands, art, boys, books and records. Finally, when Sarah turned sixteen, she was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital where the doctors diagnosed her with the rare disease, Moyamoya. The book ends with Sarah waking up after brain surgery.

A Puff of Smoke

Graphic Novels

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Books by Lippett, Sarah