The Mud Puddlers by Pamela Rushby
About Pamela Rushby
Pamela Rushby is the author of over 200 books for children and young adults, as well as children’s TV scripts, documentaries, short stories and freelance journalism. Pam has been an advertising copywriter, pre-school teacher, and producer of educational television, audio and multimedia. She has won several awards, including the NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Prize, five CBCA Notable Books – and a bag of gold coins at a film festival in Iran! Pam believes the strangest, most riveting, heart-breaking, laugh-out-loud stories aren’t fiction. They’re real. They come from history. And she loves tripping over unusual incidents from history – and then writing about them. For further information, visit:
Quote from Pamela Rushby
“I’m thrilled that The Mud Puddlers has been included in the longlist for the 2023 ARA Historical Novel Prize. I had such a wonderful time researching this book: it all started when the stars aligned and the tides were (finally!) low enough for me to go on a mud larking guided walk on the Thames. And it went on to learning how to get a narrowboat through a lock, life on a houseboat, bothering museums in London … wouldn’t be dead for quids, would you? Thanks HNSA – I greatly appreciate this.”
About The Mud Puddlers
What lies hidden in the mud? What might happen if you look at it too long? And what will happen if you let it go?
Twelve-year-old Nina is not happy. Her scientist parents are spending a year in Antarctica. And Nina’s being sent to London to stay with her Aunt Bee, an intertidal archaeologist, who lives on a converted barge on the Thames. She’s also a keen mud larker, combing the river mud for fascinating, long-forgotten articles from past lives. Nina arrives with an Attitude. Her parents have never left her behind before. It takes time for her to settle in, helped by the MudPuddlers, a local group of enthusiastic amateur mud larks, and especially by Molly, an elderly MudPuddler living on a nearby barge. Molly draws Nina into the magic and mystery of the ancient river and its treasures. When she finds herself stranded in time, in the Blitz in 1940, Nina and a very unwilling fellow traveller, Tom, become runaways, fumbling their way across wartime England, desperate to return to London. Will they ever see their families again?
