Back Home

A Puffin Book - stories that last a lifetime.

Puffin Modern Classics are relaunched under a new logo: A Puffin Book, all with exciting new covers and endnotes with author profile, interesting facts around the story and archive material.

In Back Home, Michelle Magorian, author of Goodnight Mister Tom, tells the story of Rusty, returning to England after being evacuated to America for five years in the Second World War.
After five happy years in America, Rusty must return to England: the place she used to call home.
But it doesn't fell like home. Rusty's mother is like a stranger, her little brother doesn't know her and why does the food taste so bad? Rusty just can't get used to the rigid rules and rationing and her strict new boarding school.

Lonely and homesick, Rusty makes friends with Lance, another returned evacuee, and her indomitable spirit leads her into a dramatic and devastating rebellion. . .

Guardian Children's Fiction award-winning Michelle Magorian is the author of the iconic war-time children's book, Goodnight Mister Tom.

Michelle Magorian was born in Portsmouth and on leaving school studied at the Rose Bruford College of speech and Drama and Marcel Marceau's International School of Mime in Paris. Over the years she became interested in children's books and decided to write one herself. The result was Goodnight Mister Tom, which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, an International Reading Association Award and was also made into a superb film starring the late John Thaw. In 2012 Michelle was made a Fellow of Rose Bruford College.

Also by Michelle Magorian:
Goodnight Mister Tom; Back Home; Waiting for my Shorts to Dry; Who's Going to take Care of Me?; Orange Paw Marks; A Little Love Song; In Deep Water; Jump; A Cuckoo in the Nest; A Spoonful of Jam; Be Yourself; Just Henry

Keep coming back over the next few months because we'll be uploading friends old and new. A Puffin Book:

GOODNIGHT MISTER TOM and BACK HOME by Michelle Magorian

CHARLOTTE'S WEB, STUART LITTLE and THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN by E. B. White

THE BORROWERS by Mary Norton

STIG OF THE DUMP by Clive King

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY by Mildred D. Taylor

A DOG SO SMALL by Philippa Pearce

GOBBOLINO by Ursula Moray Williams

CARRIE'S WAR by Nina Bawden

MRS FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH by Richard C O'Brien

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle

THE CAY by Theodore Taylor

TARKA THE OTTER by Henry Williamson

WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams

SMITH by Leon Garfield

THE NEVERENDING STORY by Michael Ende

ANNIE by Thomas Meehan

THE FAMILY FROM ONE END STREET by Eve Garnett