The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson

Winner of the prestigious Swedish August Prize 2020.

A bright, contemporary and fearless novel about an ordinary extraordinary eleven-year-old trying to win back her best friend and get her mother to stop sighing.

Cricket Karlsson is going to become an artist just like her aunt, who loves cheese and art and always speaks her mind. Not like Cricket's mother, who is dieting and sighs at everything. But now Aunt Frannie has lost her joy and Cricket's best friend has dumped her for the horse girls.

Eleven-year-old Cricket Karlsson is a warm and complex character with an artistic soul. Written as a diary, tween readers will fall in love with Cricket’s tough yet charming voice as she shares her secret thoughts about her best friend break-up, her Aunt’s breakdown and experimental chewing gum sculptures. Punkish and surprising comic-style illustrations perfectly compliment this coming of age story.

This is a liberating and unexpected story about growing up, fitting in, and sorting out the adults in our lives that will reach the hearts of young readers (and older ones).

"The humorously blunt first-person narrative, which includes Cricket’s numerous revealing lists…offers a sympathetic portrait of an idiosyncratic, thoughtful preteen in a period of turmoil."

"Sigunsdotter's honest voice and Eriksson's sophisticated and generously distributed art come together to honour the passion of (young female) friendships, and the pain that accompanies their dissolution."

"It’s properly funny (like, do a little snort level of funny). Without talking down to youngsters, it treats them with the respect and smarts that middle-readers deserve and in doing so perfectly captures the liminal space between childhood and adolescence."

"We’re obsessed with this side-splitting, heartfelt book...filled with hilarious & wicked illustrations, delightfully oddball humour (recalling Harriet the Spy) and the perfect read for ages 10 through 100."

Kristina Sigunsdotter is a Swedish writer, artist and playwright with a degree in ethnology, English and journalism, currently living in Malmö, Sweden. Her play Systrarna Stormhatt och det stora fågeläventyret has been played at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and Stockholm City Theatre. She is the founder of The Poetry Factory, a poetry workshop for children.

Ester Eriksson is an artist and cartoonist. Her earlier published works include the graphic novels Jag, Esters rester and Det finns ingenstans att fly.

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