A Song for Ella Grey - 9780553533590

David Almond, recipient of the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, a Printz Honor forSkellig, and the Printz Award for Kit’s Wilderness, has crafted an enchanting modern take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Written in lyrical prose, this novel for fans of epic romances and mythology retellings explores themes of love, loss, fate, and destiny set against the dramatic and diverse backdrop of Northern England.

Claire and Ella and their friends are bound by ties so strong they seem unbreakable. Then the strange and handsome Orpheus strolls onto the beach, and he sings them all into an astonishing new understanding of themselves. Ella is caught the hardest, fastest, deepest—and Claire is left with the pain of looking on.

Raw, emotional, lyrical, funny, and true, A Song for Ella Grey is a tale of the joys, troubles, and desires of modern teens. It takes place in the ordinary streets of Tyneside and on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland. It’s a story of first love, a love song that draws on ancient mythical forces. A love that leads Ella, Orpheus, and Claire to the gates of Death and beyond.


"Almond's . . . prose seeps into your blood like word venom until you can't imagine reading anything else."--The Times (London)

"David Almond's books are strange, unsettling wild things--unfettered by the normal constraints of children's literature, beyond classification."--The Guardian

A Financial Times YA Fiction Best Book of the Year