The Woven Path

The Woven Path (UK cover)

To be re-published in the United Kingdom by Harper Collins Children's Books, July 2011

"This is the magic, kid!' Ted declared. "This is what you wanted to see. Take a good long look, this is what I been waitin' fer. God knows it's been a long time! Ain't it beautiful?"

In the Separate Collection

In a grimy alley in the East End of London stands an ugly, forbidding building, its blackened walls pierced by grubby windows, its roofline crusted with turrets.
It is the rarely opened Wyrd Museum, cared for by the strange Webster sisters - and the scene of even stranger events.

Wandering fearfully through the museum, Neil Chapman, son of the new caretaker, discovers a place crammed with secrets both dark and deadly. To his horror, he is forced to journey to the past, to a London torn apart by World War Two. But Neil is not the only one to be sucked back in time. Josh, his younger brother is somewhere out there and so is something terrifying and evil...

Before he can rescue Josh, Neil must stop the sinister force that has been released - a force growing stronger by the minute as it feeds on the destruction around it. But even if he succeeds, will he ever get home to the Wyrd Museum?

Robin Jarvis, author of the hugely successful Deptford Mice series, invites readers to enter an eerie new fantasy world in The Woven Path, the first book of his compelling Tales from the Wyrd Museum trilogy. All readers will be drawn in by his gripping storytelling, distinctive in its combination of the fantastical with the seriously chilling.

Musings

'One night I was sketching my old Teddy Bear. The television was on and they were showing a war film, somehow the movie travelled down into my pencil and suddenly the drawing of the bear acquired a set of dog tags. As soon as that happened I had his character and knew instantly that he was possessed by the soul of an American airman who had died in the Second World War.

I knew that this bear had been locked away for over fifty years and I pictured him in a glass cabinet in some old museum. Then I wondered about this museum, I wanted it to be strange and full of uncanny exhibits. In almost every legend or myth there is usually a magical device involved, whether it be a cloak of invisibility or an enchanted sword but you never know what happens to those objects when the story is over. The Wyrd Museum is where they end up, all the supernatural trinkets are kept there, safely away from the ordinary world, yet the strangest and perhaps most deadly elements are the three old ladies who live there...

'I discovered Miss Ursula and Miss Veronica working behind the bar of a local pub. Their descriptions in the book were taken straight from life.'