Read for Carnegie Medal/ Kate Greenaway Medal 2015 and my current frontrunner - it reminded me of the power, scope and ambition that writing for young people can have.

This is an unnerving work, filled with strange apparitions, witches, wolves, dreams, woods and blood (lots of it, oceans of it). It wears its fairy tale inspirations lightly (Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox) and carves out a new unsettling place for itself as a genuinely scary and satisfying fireside story.

It reminded me of Emily Carroll's brilliantly bloody stories in [b:Through the Woods|18659623|Through the Woods|Emily Carroll|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1414845473s/18659623.jpg|26477611] - particularly the art style, which can be both fluid and oppressive and makes judicious use of the colour red - as well as the Over the Garden Wall miniseries (but with Mitteleuropean gloom rather than Americana oddity).

I hope adult readers will not be put off by the Young Adult tag - this is not just for children by any means.