The Peppermint Pig
Puffin Books
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First published in the United States of America by J. B. Lippincott 1975

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1975

Published in Puffin Books 1977

Reissued in this edition 2016

Text copyright © Nina Bawden, 1975

Illustrations copyright © Kenny McKendry, 1997

The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

Cover illustration by Patrick Leger

ISBN: 978–0–141–91657–6

All correspondence to:

Puffin Books

Penguin Random House Children’s

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

READ ON

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NINA BAWDEN was born in London, but grew up in different parts of Britain: in Norfolk, where her mother was born, and in Wales, where she went to school during wartime evacuation from London. A year after she left Somerville College, Oxford, with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, she wrote her first novel. Her first children’s book, The Secret Passage, was published in 1963. Since then she has written many novels, most of which have been widely translated and adapted for film or television. The places in which she has lived, and which she has loved – London, Wales, Norfolk, Shropshire and Greece – provide the real-life setting for her novels. The Peppermint Pig (winner of the Guardian Award) takes place in Swaffham where her mother grew up, Keeping Henry is set in a farmhouse in Shropshire and Carrie’s War in the mining valleys of Wales. Nina Bawden died in London in 2012.

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Books by Nina Bawden

CARRIE’S WAR

GRANNY THE PAG

KEEPING HENRY

THE FINDING

THE OUTSIDE CHILD

THE PEPPERMINT PIG

THE RUNAWAY SUMMER

THE SECRET PASSAGE

THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER

In happy memory of my grandmother