THE WATER CAT
Published by The Old Print Workshop
A story for age 7 – 11 years
It's 1953, the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Jane and Tom have just moved with their parents from Sheffield to the steel-working village of Carlingrove.
Unimpressed at first, they soon find themselves involved in an intriguing 400-year-old mystery. The mystery of the "water cat"
THE WATER CAT is a mixture of fantasy and my own nostalgic memories of the industrial, seaside village I lived in as a young child. This was the first children’s book that I had published and the most personal of all my stories. I felt sad that it had gone out of print and was not available anymore, so I decided to bring it back into print, with the help of York Publishing Services and a new cover design from my talented daughter Rosie Maddocks.
Reviews
"Superbly blends fact and fiction ... Theresa Tomlinson’s stunning first novel for children ebbs and flows like the sea."
Times Educational Supplement
"Unpretentious, compelling magic."
The Sunday Times
ISBN 978-1-0369-0033-5
IRONSTONE VALLEY
A story for 7 – 11 year olds
I have always been fascinated by the history of people who worked in industries and created so much that we enjoy today. When I was young, we lived in a house that was next to the steelworks gates, looking down over the valley of Skinningrove. An overhead cable system brought buckets of iron-ore out from the mine and carried them up to the steelworks at Carlin how. The steelworks were fascinating with blast furnaces and cooling towers that we could see, but what happened inside the mine was a mystery. When the mine closed in 1958 the Tom Leonard Mining museum opened on the site and I was able to start to understand. Without the help of the museum I would never have been able to write this story. This was another book that I felt sad about, when it was put out of print, so when the museum re-opened in 2023 under the new name LAND OF IRON – I decided to bring it back into print again, with the help of York Publishing Services, and my friend John Freeman, the Whitby artist, who provided new artwork for the cover. I’m very happy that the book is now available from the LAND OF IRON Museum shop.
Find out more about the museum at www.landofiron.org.uk
Ned is only eleven when he starts work in the ironstone mine. The work is hard and dangerous, and like all mine-workers, he knows that a rock-fall could spell disaster ...
ISBN 978-0-9955832-9-0
