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Overview

The perfect crime – it's a work of art, in Frank Cottrell Boyce's ingenious story, Framed.

Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage – and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod – what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps. But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people – and what have they got to hide?

A story inspired by a press cutting describing how, during World War II, the treasured contents of London's National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This is a funny and touching exploration of how art – its beauty and its value – touches the life of one little boy and his big family in a very small town.

This edition of Framed includes bonus material and discussion questions from Frank Cottrell Boyce, and illustrations by Steven Lenton.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780330463423
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication date: 09/04/2008
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
File size: 10 MB
Age Range: 9 - 11 Years

About the Author

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an award-winning author and screenwriter. Millions, his debut children's novel, won the CILIP Carnegie Medal. He is also the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, Cosmic, Framed, The Astounding Broccoli Boy and Runaway Robot. His books have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Whitbread Children's Fiction Award (now the Costa Book Award) and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth was shortlisted for the 2017 CILIP Carnegie Medal and selected for the inaugural WHSmith Tom Fletcher Book Club.

Frank is a judge for the 500 Words competition and the BBC's One Show As You Write It competition. Along with Danny Boyle, he devised the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. He has written for the hit TV series Dr Who and was the screenwriter for the hit film Goodbye Christopher Robin.


Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an award-winning author and screenwriter. Millions, his debut children's novel, won the CILIP Carnegie Medal. He is also the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, Cosmic, Framed, The Astounding Broccoli Boy and Runaway Robot. His books have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Whitbread Children's Fiction Award (now the Costa Book Award) and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth was shortlisted for the 2017 CILIP Carnegie Medal and selected for the inaugural WHSmith Tom Fletcher Book Club.

Frank is a judge for the 500 Words competition and the BBC's One Show As You Write It competition. Along with Danny Boyle, he devised the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. He has written for the hit TV series Dr Who and was the screenwriter for the hit film Goodbye Christopher Robin.


Steven Lenton is a multi-award-winning illustrator, originally from Cheshire, now working from his studios in Brighton and London with his dog, Big Eared Bob. He has illustrated many children's books including Head Kid and The Taylor Turbochaser by David Baddiel, The Hundred And One Dalmatians adapted by Peter Bently, the Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam series by Tracey Corderoy and the Sainsbury's Prize-winning The Nothing To See Here Hotel series written by Steven Butler. He has illustrated two World Book Day titles and regularly appears at literary festivals and live events across the UK. Steven has his own Draw-along YouTube channel, showing how to draw a range of his characters. He has also written his own picture book Princess Daisy and the Dragon and the Nincompoop Knights' and his new young fiction series Genie and Teeny.

Read an Excerpt



Framed




By Frank Cottrell Boyce


HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.



Copyright © 2006

Frank Cottrell Boyce

All right reserved.


ISBN: 0060734027


Chapter One


You've probably never heard of Vincenzo Perugia.

But we know all about him. He was a famous art thief and we used to be in the same line of work. My sister Minnie even had a picture of him on her bedroom wall. She reckons that when Vincenzo stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris on August 21, 1911, that was the most immensely perfect crime ever. The Mona Lisa was the world's most famous painting, but Vincenzo did such a neat job no one even noticed it was missing for two days. Then they did notice, and everything went mental. Everyone went to the Louvre to look at the empty space where the painting had been. They lined up to look at an empty space! Even Vincenzo Perugia lined up. And when they got to the front of the line, they all looked at that empty space and thought about what used to be there. I can understand that. Sometimes something vanishes, and afterward you can't stop looking at the place where it used to be.

And all this time Vincenzo had it in his little room--the Mona Lisa was in a trunk next to the bed. Sometimes he took the painting out and played it funny songs on his mandolin. He didn't try to sell it. He didn't steal any other paintings. He didn't want to be famous or rich. He just wanted the Mona Lisa. And that's where he went right. That's why it was the perfect crime.Because he didn't want anything else. And that's probably where we went wrong. We wanted something.

Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel, Manod

February 11

Cars today:

Blue Ford Fiesta--Ms. Stannard (Twix)

Scania 118 Low Loader--Wrexham Recovery

Weather: Rain

Note: Oil is different from antifreeze

My dad, right--ask anyone this, they'll all say the same--my dad can fix anything. Toyota. Hyundai. Ford. Even Nice Tom's mam's diddy Daihatsu Copen (top speed 106 mph), which is about the size of a marshmallow so you need tweezers to fix it.

And it's not just cars.

Like the time when we were at Prestatyn and Minnie wanted a swim but I wouldn't get in the water because it was too cold. She kept saying, "Come in. It's fine once you're in." And I kept saying, "No."

Dad got up, went to the trailer and came back with a kettle of boiling water. He poured the water in the sea and said, "Dylan, come and test it. Tell me if it's all right or does it need a bit more?"

I said, "No, that's fine now, thanks, Da."

"Sure now?"

"Sure now."

"Not too hot then?"

"No, just right."

"Give me a shout. If it gets cold again, I can always boil up some more."

Then Minnie splashed me and I splashed her and we stayed in the water till the sun went down.

He fixed the sea for us. Now that is a thing to be admired.

My big sister, Marie, never came in the water even after Dad fixed it. She said, "Have you any idea what sea water can do to your hair?" And later on when we were playing Monopoly in the trailer, she said, "Did you really think that one kettle of water could warm up the entire Irish Sea?"

I said, "Not the whole sea, obviously. Just the bit we were swimming in."

"Yeah, like that would really work," said Minnie. "Let me explain the physics . . ."

"Minnie," said Mam, "Euston Road. Three houses. Two hundred and seventy pounds, please." Typical of Mam, by the way, cleverly changing the subject like that.

Obviously I know now that the kettle didn't warm up the sea, but that's not the point. I got into the water, that's the point. Dad looked at that situation and he thought, I can't do anything about the physics, but I can do something about Dylan. So he did.

He's keen for us all to learn how to fix things too. That's how I came to be helping him with the oil change on Ms. Stannard's blue Fiesta (top speed 110 mph). I don't know how I came to make the mix-up about the oil.

Dad said it would probably be best if I didn't go near the workshop again. Or near a car again, really. He was quite calm about it. He said it was the kind of thing that could happen to anyone. Anyone who didn't know the difference between motor oil and antifreeze, that is.

After that, Mam said I could take over the petrol log. That's the massive red book next to the till where we write down all the petrol sales so we can track supply and demand. The book is red, with gold patterns on the front. It looks like a Bible. Mam got it in a trunk sale (Trunk Crazy at the Dynamo Blaenau Soccer Club ground) for fifty pence. It's got over a thousand pages. We only use about a page a week, so it should last us twenty years. Bargain!

No disrespect to Mam, obviously, but she was probably too busy with the new baby to make the most of that job. She just wrote stuff like, "10:20 a.m.--four gallons unleaded." Whereas I put down all the detail--the make, the year, name of the driver, anything. I'd stay out on the asphalt forecourt in front of the shop from after school till teatime. Sometimes Nice Tom would come and sit with me, and if he said something like, "Mr. Morgan's back left tire is baldy," I'd put that down too. When Dad saw it, he said, "Dylan, you have made a fifty-pence petrol log into a database. That is something to be admired."

A database is very useful. For instance, when Dad read, "Mr. Morgan: back left tire is baldy," he sourced a new tire and offered it to Mr. Morgan. So a job that would . . .

Continues...




Excerpted from Framed
by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Copyright © 2006 by Frank Cottrell Boyce.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.


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