The Fountain in the Market Square: A The Pied Piper of Hamelin Retelling by Hilary McKay

By Hilary McKay and Sarah Gibb

I asked myself lots of questions, like what happened in Hamelin after the children vanished?

The Fountain in the Market Square is an imaginative retelling of the classic fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Originally featured in Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales, this short story is sure to capture the imagination!

From the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize-winning storyteller Hilary McKay and featuring black-and-white line and tone illustrations from the talented Sarah Gibb.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Oct 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781447292418

Hilary McKay

Hilary McKay is a critically acclaimed award-winning author. She won the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Exiles, and the Smarties and the Whitbread Award for The Exiles in Love and Saffy's Angel respectively. Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales was her first book with Macmillan Children's Books and is a critically acclaimed collection of clever retellings. Her 2018 title, The Skylarks' War, marks the centenary of the end of the First World War and was the winner of the Costa Children's Book Award 2018. It is a classic in the making.

Book preview

To Ron and Mary Damms

My father, who told me my first fairy tales, and my mother, who once (this is true), when she was twelve years old, spent an afternoon in a magic place that could only have been fairyland.

Because when she went back to visit again, it had vanished, except for the memory that she treasures to this day.

Contents

Introduction

The Fountain in the Market Square

About the Author

About the Illustrator

Bibliography/Further Reading

Introduction

Of course these are not my fairy tales; they are everyone’s fairy tales, and have been for many years. Hundreds in the case of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and thousands in the case of Rumpelstiltskin. They are our living heritage, true fairy gold, except these stories do not disappear at sunset. Their day still shines. The best of them are well and flourishing, in schools and libraries, homes and playgrounds, just as much as they are with historians and universities.

They live because they are so strong. They have withstood the years. Countries and rulers have come and gone, revolutions and wars have redrawn the old lines across Europe and beyond, forests have been felled, the wolves have all but vanished