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Her books have been translated into twenty-three languages and have won many prizes. Woltz’s books are loved by both children and adults. Children enjoy the exciting, funny and sometimes crazy adventures and the lovable characters. Adults have praised Woltz for her beautiful language, psychological depth and fresh, humorous narrative voice.

It is September 1940. The constant nightly bombing by the Luftwaffe has set London ablaze. The city is in chaos. Together with polio survivor Ella (14), you see how ‘every evening the sun seems to set on the wrong side’ and ‘the eastern sky glows a fiery orange’. You smell what is happening as the port and warehouses go up in flames, and you can feel the threat of the unexploded bombs. ‘The world seems to be made of glass. One wrong movement and everything will collapse,’ says Ella, already literally and figuratively thrown off balance by her polio-damaged leg. At night, she hides out in the Underground with her brother Robbie, in a deep tunnel. They are joined by the opportunistic street kid Jay, and later by the free-spirited Quin, who has fled her aristocratic existence, and her brother Sebastian. Their common fate proves stronger than their apparent class differences, and a tentative friendship grows between them, one that will define their lives.The threat of war and the claustrophobic conditions underground cleverly take on a double meaning when it turns out that, as a polio patient, Ella had to lie in a tunnel-shaped breathing machine in order to survive. ‘Breathing isn’t something you can practise,’ she says. ‘There is no shallow water, no summer’s day without Messerschmitts. If you get it wrong, you’re a goner.’ The prologue already reveals that one of the friends will die – but which one will it be?The war gets the adrenaline pumping and makes Ella unexpectedly courageous. The air-raid siren howls ominously, but ever since she tore up her storybook full of adolescent ‘foolish hot-air balloons’ and Quinn taught her that ‘the world is bigger than our parents think’, she no longer wants to wait passively. She may have a limp, but she can choose: ‘I want to know what’s coming next. And soon. And tomorrow.’ The adventure that follows leaves an indelible impression.

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In striking images and evocative language, Anna Woltz writes from a young person’s perspective to tell an exciting and empathetic wartime story that is set in London during the Blitz – with the London Underground as a backdrop, a plot that is driven by the urge for freedom and independence, and friendship, love and courage as universal themes.

The Tunnel

Anna Woltz

These two near-adolescents are both struggling to deal with their own problems. Parker has just had a terrible summer involving a traumatic experience. All she really wants is to be as invisible as possible. Sven, on the other hand, thinks that he needs to pull o some brilliant stunt to stop everyone feeling sorry for him. He’s scared of his body, which could let him down at any moment, but he’s determined to put up a fight. As they can’t be seen together in the daytime, much of the book is set at night. The two children are enemies at first, but they come to know and trust each other. This results in interactions that are both moving and hilarious, with the emotional highpoint the scene in which Alaska finally has to choose for herself which of her owners she wants to be with.Alaska is another brilliantly constructed and subtly composed book by Woltz, full of humour, dynamism and layers. It’s about searching for your identity and dealing with emotions like shame and jealousy, which become a real issue at the start of puberty. And about the big and complex world that you have to negotiate as a 13-year-old, particularly at school with all its unwritten rules and codes, which are often so very confusing. Anna Woltz succeeds in clearly presenting complicated emotions in accessible yet stylistically sophisticated language: ‘If there was a sport called epilepsy, there’s no way in a million years I’d ever choose to join the club.’ Alaska is a cinematic adventure that will appeal to many children, partly because of the positive outcome.

In 'Talking to Alaska', Anna Woltz shows once again that she understands better than anyone else the art of writing about the pain of life in a sparkling and light-hearted way.

'Talking to Alaska' is a little less exuberant and therefore better balanced… once again she deliberately allows the inevitable reality to slip slowly into the story.

After a first disastrous day at school, during which she’s completely humiliated, Parker discovers that her dog, Alaska, is living with the biggest bully in her class. Her family had to let Alaska go because of her brother’s allergy. Parker can’t stand the thought that her beloved Alaska is now an assistance dog for the horrible Sven, who su ers from epileptic fits. So she decides one night to kidnap the dog. Her plan does not go well, and she ends up talking to Sven.

Talking to Alaska

The trigger for the story is Fitz’s sister Bente’s fingertip, which she loses in a slippery winter accident, when she’s on the back of her dad’s bike. With a howling Bente – and the bloody tip of her finger in a sandwich bag – Fitz and her dad race to the casualty department. At the hospital, Fitz’s mum comes to join her ex and her daughters, and the story takes off at a rapid pace. Woltz convincingly sketches Fitz’s powerlessness and confusion. She secretly hopes her mum and dad will get back together, but she’s also furious with them. When her mum suggests that they should all have lunch together at the hospital, “because that’ll be much more fun”, Fitz flashes back at her: “I want you to remember that we’ve had a great time together. But people change. And after all these years we simply don’t fit together as well as we used to. And that’s why I’m going to go and eat my lunch on my own.” Fitz sounds just like her parents when they got together to announce their separation, following the rules in the divorce handbook Happily Married, Happily Divorced. The hospital is not only the ideal setting as a metaphor for a family that is broken and “needs to be put in a plaster cast”, but is also, as Fitz realizes, the perfect place for wandering around and unexpectedly making new friends. Together with perky little Primula and the surly but handsome Adam, who’s at the hospital because his brother was born prematurely, Fitz finds herself going on a search for an answer to the question of what love is. Their quest, as presented by Woltz, results in hospital adventures that are both hilarious and touching and which wouldn’t look out of place in a film.

Another truly magnificent Anna Woltz, with endearing characters who give you ample opportunity to identify with them.

'Plaster' shows, once again, just how well Anna Woltz can write. Her sentences are vivid and meaningful; the images and observations are strong and striking.

Stacks of books have been written about divorce, but rarely as originally as in 'Plaster'. In sparkling dialogue and a tone that is light-hearted yet sharp, Anna Woltz speaks through her character, a quirky twelve-year-old girl, about divorcing parents, broken hearts, a wounded family and hoping against hope.

Plaster

Emilia is disgusted – not only with him, but also with the vicious Twitterers who are threatening her family online, which lends the book a dramatic, contemporary impact.When Emilia arrives in New York, which Woltz describes so evocatively, she discovers that the apartment she booked online doesn’t actually exist. It turns out that teenager Seth and his precocious nine-year-old sister Abby – who seems to have stepped straight out of a book by Jenny Valentine – live at that address with their mother, who is out of town. They take pity on Emilia and allow her to stay the night, along with handsome high-school dropout Jim.The sleepover doesn’t turn out quite as expected, though, as Hurricane Sandy hits New York. Author Anna Woltz experienced the storm herself and conjures it up in chilling images: rain lashes horizontally against the windows “as if we’re driving through the carwash (…) Sandy tugs at the walls and pounds on the windows (…) How can that light be swaying to and fro? Suddenly I understand. It’s not the light that’s moving. It’s the house.”There’s a lot happening in this book, but Woltz skilfully ties everything together. The hurricane and the subsequent days of power failure bring about changes for all her characters. Seth is struggling to cope with his father’s death, Jim with his future, and Emilia with her serious phobia of dirt, her loneliness and her mixed feelings about her father.The power blackout puts these young people beyond the reach of Twitter and parents, forcing them to rely on one another. They find out what it really means to connect and to feel united. “Friends? That’s those little square pictures on Facebook, isn’t it?” Jim wisecracks, but in the aftermath of Sandy, they form a friendship that goes much deeper.

Emilia’s narrative voice is authentic and lively, and her cynical observations about appearance and reality hit the mark. An honest coming-of-age adventure.

A book that doesn’t pull you away from reality, but directly confronts you with it and makes you see things in a fascinating, new way.

Children's books

Tension and psychology are perfectly balanced in this cinematic young-adult novel. Emilia, a 14-year-old Dutch girl, flies to New York all on her own when it comes out that her father, who also happens to be her school headmaster, has been sending inappropriate text messages to a 17-year-old female student.

A Hundred Hours of Night

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