The giant's boot - Charles Ashton

Shortlisted for the 1995 Smarties Book Prize this story features Ritchie, who first spots a boot lying in the stream, it looks like an L- shaped stone, but with tiny delicate stitches. He doesn't know that it belongs to a giant, who lost it thousands of years before, and that over the centuries, it has shrunk and turned to stone. Soon, he has more worrying things to think about when his mother falls ill with some strange condition that makes her bedridden. Now, Ritchie and his sister Maisie and their father have to manage as best they can. Tensions develop and it feels to Ritchie as though something is pressing down on the house, crushing all the air out of it. Could there be some link between the giant's boot and what is happening to the family?;Charles Ashton has also written "Jet Smoke and Dragon Fire", which was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the W.H. Smith Mindboggling Books Award. He is also the author of "Into the Spiral", "The Shining Bridge", "Billy's Drift" and "Ruth and the Blue Horse";Peter Melnyczuk has illustrated "While Shepherds Watched" and "Red Fox".