Framed

by Frank Cottrell Boyce, Steven Lenton Narrated by Jason Hughes

Overview

The perfect crime - it's a work of art, in Frank Cottrell Boyce's ingenious story, Framed, read aloud by actor Jason Hughes.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

British actor Hughes (with his spot-on Welsh accent) nails his reading of Boyce's (Millions) latest, serving up humor, quirkiness and intrigue at every turn. The exploits of nine-year-old Dylan Hughes's family, who run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel gas station/copier shop/coffee house in the tiny gray town of Madon, Wales, are the stuff of belly laughs handled expertly in Hughes's deadpan tone and interpretation of Boyce's kid-friendly dialogue and colloquialisms. Oddball locals, including Daft Tom, a grown man obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, provide some hilarious exchanges for narrator Dylan. But the real action takes off when Dylan's dad flees a tax inquiry and "team Hughes" is left to rescue the family business. At the same time, flooding in London has forced the National Gallery to move many of its masterpieces to an abandoned quarry near the Snowdonia Oasis. Dylan's younger sister, Minnie, an aspiring criminal mastermind, comes up with a heist plan that just may save the day for everyone. This skillfully drawn kooky family, the story's high-octane premise and Hughes's knockout take on the tale will quickly have listeners hooked. Ages 8-14. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 6-9-Boyce's second novel is written with the same charm and deadpan humor as Millions (HarperCollins, 2004). Dylan Hughes is the only boy living in Manod, an uneventful Welsh town of drizzling grayness that he thinks is full of Hidden Beauty. His best buddies are two agoraphobic chickens named Michelangelo and Donatello after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His family runs the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage. When the business falters, his father takes off, and Dylan, Mam, his older sister, Marie, and his aspiring criminal genius younger sister, Minnie, try to make Oasis more profitable so that he will return. Flooding in London causes the National Gallery to evacuate its paintings to the safety of Manod's mine. (An actual evacuation to the Manod slate quarry occurred during World War II.) Lester, the art expert in charge, takes a shine to Dylan as an art connoisseur on hearing the chickens' names. When he agrees to put one masterpiece at a time on view, the villagers' lives are changed. Minnie concocts a hilarious scheme to nick Van Gogh's Sunflowers, replacing it with a paint-by-number affair. All gets sorted out and Dad comes home. The colorful characters steal the show-even the secondary players are cleverly drawn. But it is Dylan's narrative voice, with its unintended humor, appealing na vet , and expression of absolute belief in his dad that is truly a masterpiece.-Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

When the entire contents of the National Gallery are brought to the dead-end town of Manod, Wales, for safekeeping in a hollowed-out slate quarry, life changes forever for the Hughes family. Business at the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel has been drying up as more and more people move out of town, leaving the family without any viable source of income and narrator Dylan without a single boy to play soccer with. When the chief caretaker of the artworks mistakes Dylan's fondness for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for an appreciation of Renaissance artists, a line of communication opens up between Manod and the quarry that gently transforms both, as the response of the citizens of Manod to the art brings life back to the nearly moribund town, and humanity to the Gallery personnel. While the art does its quiet work, however, Dylan's little sister Minnie, a criminal genius in the making, determines that the only way to rescue the Snowdonia Oasis is to pull off a heist, threatening everything. Boyce's signature daffiness plays hilarity and pathos off each other with not one wrong note. (Fiction. 10-14)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172283895
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	06/06/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

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.

---

Videos