Rosie’s Magic Horse

　　This story begins with an ice-lolly stick. Its sweetness gone, it lies discarded and lonely … until a little girl called Rosie comes along. She places it carefully in her cigar box, full of other sticks. “Without our ice-lollies we are nothing,” says an old stick. But this new stick wants to BE something and into the minds of all the old sticks he plants dreams  … maybe they can be something, too. What about Rosie? That night she dreams of helping her parents pay the bills. And so, at the stroke of midnight, magic and dreams collide and a HORSE gallops out of the cigar box! His name is Stickerino. “Where to?” he asks Rosie. “Anywhere with treasure!” she answers and hops on his back. Then begins an adventure like no other … ice-lolly mountains by the sea, caskets of gold, and pirates foiled by a stickling ice-cream van.

作者簡介

　　Russell Hoban is the renowned author of many acclaimed novels for grown-ups, including Turtle Diary and Riddley Walker, which won the John W. Campbell Award for science fiction. He once described himself as “an addict to writing” and wrote more than 50 books for children, including such classics as Bedtime for Frances, How Tom Beat Captain Najork, The Mouse and His Child,  and The Sea-Thing Child. Born in Pennsylvania in 1925, he moved in 1969 to London, where he lived until his death in 2011.