Unhooking the Moon - Tapa dura

Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize and a finalist for The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a starred review Kirkus Review praised Unhooking the Moon as a "rousing adventure on the not-so-mean streets, with heart aplenty."

When an adventurous sister-and-brother duo become orphans, a funny and heartbreaking roadtrip to New York ensues, as the pair searches for their long-lost uncle.

Meet the Rat: A dancing, soccer-loving, fearless ten-year-old from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Meet her older brother, Bob: Protector of the Rat, though more often than not her faithful follower, Bob is determined to build a new and better life for him and his sister in America. Of particular concern for him are his sister's mysterious fits, which keep getting more and more severe.

On their adventures traveling alone from the flatlands of Winnipeg, southward across the border into America, Bob and the Rat make friends with a host of unlikely characters, including a hilarious con man and a famous rap star. As they struggle to survive in the big city, they realize that finding your uncle in New York is incredibly difficult if you have almost no information about him--even if he is rumored to be one of the city's biggest drug dealers.

Gregory Hughes was born in Liverpool, the eighth child in a family of nine. He was expelled from school and then sent to a home for wayward boys, where he spent some happy times among a cast of larger-than-life characters. After a few years in and out of trouble with the law, he went to university, and since then has travelled the world working as everything from a high-rise window cleaner to a deep-sea diver. He has made his home in many countries around the world, including Canada and the US, but is now back in Liverpool.