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Bloom
Nicola Skinner
A beautifully written, incredibly original and wickedly funny novel for readers of 10 and older – BLOOM is for everyone who has ever felt like they didn’t fit in, and for anyone who has ever wanted a little more colour and wildness in their lives…Sorrel Fallowfield is growing up – in a REALLY surprising way . . .Sorrel Fallowfield is so good at being good that teachers come to her when they need help remembering the school rules – and there are LOTS.Luckily, Sorrel doesn’t have any trouble following them, until the day she discovers a faded packet of Surprising Seeds buried under a tree in her backyard.Now she’s hearing voices, seeing things, experiencing an almost unstoppable urge to plant the Seeds in some very unusual places… and completely failing to win her school’s competition to find The Most Obedient Child of the School.And all that’s before flowers start growing out of her head…
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019
Published in this ebook edition in 2019
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text copyright © Nicola Skinner 2019
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Illustrations copyright © Flavia Sorrentino 2019
Nicola Skinner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008297381
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008297411
Version: 2019-03-20
For Ben, who made this possible,
and Polly, who started it all off
Contents
Cover (#ue24fd46f-e8e0-58d2-b6c8-d46435277bf2)
Title Page (#u5c114bca-7e8d-57bb-bf85-ebd64d33b193)
Copyright (#u2b2466e7-0d8a-5e94-85dc-c77f5e7eee1f)
Dedication (#ub1e86b81-1d94-51aa-895c-cac72f9a3c61)
This is a Warning. (#u78191612-0296-51fb-a025-53dfa11efffa)
Chapter 1 (#ua97b0de2-1ce7-54f2-b59c-c502b38a4f3a)
Chapter 2 (#ua1eed561-f756-5e95-ba86-fcd9a9ce448c)
Chapter 3 (#uaca5d949-52ab-56c0-8746-bd029de53d93)
Chapter 4 (#u2b487690-af28-5086-be21-4e8665fad437)
Chapter 5 (#ueefdc900-6122-5777-918f-d148aac3429c)
Chapter 6 (#u2bbd65b3-c3c4-5b10-a417-5540e1951dc0)
Chapter 7 (#u1b1e6649-5a8c-5bc4-b95e-7d883afb642b)
Chapter 8 (#ub1e5c55f-f245-590f-994f-88947ef7a571)
Chapter 9 (#uc0f5662d-f5c1-58f7-9f85-353703398885)
Chapter 10 (#u8c3e8cb1-de43-5000-a263-9148cb218953)
Chapter 11 (#u3bebef9f-5d84-55d8-9617-941cb714f45f)
Chapter 12 (#u3da979a3-fb75-5deb-9b03-4e3f348f54fd)
Chapter 13 (#uce774e0b-ca7d-5659-8e78-9e422e849670)
Chapter 14 (#u66a7eab1-3763-5f62-8b12-812e1d69499d)
Chapter 15 (#u0fa654c6-3dc8-5d19-9085-df6ec0efdb21)
Chapter 16 (#ucbe8ee4f-16c4-59c1-8784-ec4599d591d4)
Chapter 17 (#uadd2ceee-5828-5e11-bd40-ff41073bb09b)
Chapter 18 (#u8699cedf-ca52-5f2a-8fa1-84fac382bab6)
Chapter 19 (#u687d07c4-477b-5b6a-ba21-e5b60b78ffbf)
Chapter 20 (#uc2dcc06a-e92b-5770-9eca-3ae96dd544df)
Chapter 21 (#u2d743ae5-7b71-59f6-b0e6-cf50dbb2f216)
Chapter 22 (#u7d2c738b-9d3c-5eb8-8fff-0ae2c0f1732a)
Chapter 23 (#u9f014d89-4838-5129-a7f9-c880b68e303b)
Chapter 24 (#u876154bb-6a8d-5d79-8025-c28d78917f91)
Chapter 25 (#u3302ad03-72fe-517c-8c99-e636dc63324e)
Chapter 26 (#u34aaa92b-3d57-5c43-a0e0-9d0aa29898a2)
Chapter 27 (#u1fee7cc9-3549-57f8-9c3d-216e1fc108ed)
Chapter 28 (#u8c59197f-aec5-58c0-9933-3a6c26b52869)
Chapter 29 (#u61e0ba3d-accd-5fe5-a10d-2eb79437e77e)
Chapter 30 (#u835c17bc-440a-5a40-ba0f-0cbcf94bec6e)
Chapter 31 (#u09c035c3-70be-56e8-b6f9-0e2ae297bb01)
Chapter 32 (#u57833d81-4d85-5861-bb3a-4abf7a50a81b)
Chapter 33 (#u8832e974-bf12-5af4-8e0b-53fdaced8fb9)
Chapter 34 (#u567e5a1f-517a-5bdc-9319-b132073ea17f)
Chapter 35 (#uf07504cb-3c86-5f84-a1f2-d26de64ee3dd)
Chapter 36 (#u9e4b71a4-ab89-524b-8574-d79c957d5570)
Chapter 37 (#ue67e236c-6488-55b7-9dd3-595868c661e4)
Chapter 38 (#u1d633f92-2089-594b-b761-813a45cb66df)
Chapter 39 (#ufd8ca236-ab77-5180-b44c-b7f3969c3bb4)
Chapter 40 (#u0911b7cd-6c6a-5a62-94ad-eea394c859e4)
Chapter 41 (#u6ad67ded-6fc5-51eb-9e24-5dbb395f2951)
Chapter 42 (#u52da00f6-9a71-5752-8c83-ad795535e9ec)
Chapter 43 (#ub331c7e5-43b4-5a6a-9105-521c81670af8)
Chapter 44 (#u98159892-9d92-5c25-b3a5-1b183750d5de)
Chapter 45 (#u44c06130-d5d0-592e-9f35-544d4542872c)
Chapter 46 (#uc188b16b-8071-5673-8589-d95d0a4dd75c)
Chapter 47 (#uc6fb518f-04eb-5902-8a04-db8a694d9875)
Chapter 48 (#u712cbf21-9d68-526e-b829-1a080da628a1)
Chapter 49 (#uba023d21-8f2c-5812-b61d-b0c9dff6da28)
Chapter 50 (#u854f5060-1d73-57e7-be50-5dcc4f0a24aa)
Chapter 51 (#uce4aa40c-07ae-5efc-b27d-1ae9ccc6804c)
Chapter 52 (#ucbce758a-b61b-53ab-af4e-929de5dcaa7f)
Chapter 53 (#u397a0f11-0317-533c-93ef-712ff006e8c7)
Chapter 54 (#u25af56d4-9a6e-5da3-9769-23220f63414e)
Chapter 55 (#u8660ae1b-516b-5592-ae10-5320706d581a)
Chapter 56 (#ud9d646ab-e38f-5011-8e64-cde24573a9f6)
One Year On (#u275ac013-6d4f-5859-b064-7266a5d4d36f)
Acknowledgements (#u519440a5-b51d-575d-83da-3675f03bdc10)
About the Publisher (#ufe234e05-44bb-5bd9-8d4f-273f0a692458)
(#ulink_913815fe-4f03-59e1-b343-b79b92ae478a)
IT’S NOT OFTEN you open a brand-new book to be told that it’s dangerous. But if you want the facts, and nothing but the facts, then this is a book with peril in its pages.
Well, technically, there might be peril in its pages. No one’s been able to prove anything. But still, the risks are there. Which means you need to read this page carefully before skipping off to Chapter 1.
No one is safe. Girls. Boys. Mums. Dads. Sisters. Brothers. Aunts. Uncles. Even those great-great-apparently-you’re-related-but-you-can’t-remember-how relatives you see once a year. Yep, even them.
You’re all in fate’s firing line now.
That’s because just holding this book and touching this paper has unfortunately left you, and everyone you know, potentially exposed to a substance that is, according to the scientists, ‘highly volatile, medically unregulated and impossible to cure’.
Or, as a confused-looking nurse put it to me once: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before, love.’
So be prepared.
Over the next few days you might experience some unusual sensations. You could be running a bath before bedtime and want to drink it, not sit in it.
You might experience some unusual pains in some unusual places.
And finally – really, it’s nothing to be alarmed about – you might develop some, ahem, growths about your body.
But wait! Don’t fling the book away in horror! Come back! The chances of this happening to you too are super small. Roughly one in a million, or a billion. (Or one in a hundred. I’m not brilliant with decimals.) Honestly, it’s extremely unlikely anything will happen to you, and even if it does, there’s literally no point rushing off to the bathroom to scrub your hands.
Because it’s not your hands you need to worry about.
But look – try not to worry. Even if you are infected at least you won’t be the only one. It happened to us too. We all look a little weird here.
