Age 10+

Boyce won the CILIP Carnegie Medal for his first children’s book, Millions, written after his screenplay for Danny Boyle’s film of the same name. Now he proves he is not just a one-book wonder. Using an innocent boy narrator, he tells the story of a thinly populated Welsh village where life is so uneventful that the inhabitants congregate to discuss unknown vans seen on the streets.

His inspiration was an article about a war-time cache of paintings from the National Gallery hidden in a Welsh mountain; one canvas a month was shown to the locals before being carried back to the capital for display. In Framed, flooding in London has again prompted the nation’s treasures to be stored in safety, and it tells how each week the sight of a work of art changes a life. What makes this book so enjoyable is that the writing is full of jokes and touching moments, and the dialogue is as lively and arresting as a film script. And yet the book offers more than could be shown on screen, such as Boyce’s startling use of metaphor. Driving up a mountain through cloud and coming out into the sunshine, for instance, is described as “like opening a cupboard and finding a beach”.

FRAMED by Frank Cottrell Boyce

(Macmillan £9.99)

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