Smith Award-winning author by Leon Garfield (author) and Kenny McKendry (illustrator)

Puffin Modern Classics are relaunched under a new logo: A Puffin Book. There are 20 titles to collect in the series, listed below, all with exciting new covers and fun-filled endnotes.

London street urchin Smith is 12 years old, and an experienced pick-pocket. One day on Ludgate Hill, he robbed an old gentleman, and one minute later watched him silently murdered by two men, who chased him for the document he had stolen but could not understand. Smith artfully dodges the two men and winds up in the odd company of a wealthy blind man, who takes Smith into his home and provides him with an education. But this new comfort is lost when Smith himself is suspected of the very murder he witnessed.

Leon Garfield was a British novelist, born in 1921. He is best known for children’s historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books including Shakespeare’s Stories – retellings of Shakespeare’s plays for children, and he won many awards including the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal. He died in 1996, aged 74.

Also available in A Puffin Book: GOODNIGHT MISTER TOM and BACK HOME by Michelle Magorian CHARLOTTE’S WEB, STUART LITTLE and THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN by E. B. White THE BORROWERS by Mary Norton STIG OF THE DUMP by Clive King ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY by Mildred D. Taylor A DOG SO SMALL by Philippa Pearce GOBBOLINO by Ursula Moray Williams CARRIE’S WAR by Nina Bawden MRS FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH by Richard C O’Brien A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle THE CAY by Theodore Taylor TARKA THE OTTER by Henry Williamson WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams SMITH by Leon Garfield THE NEVERENDING STORY by Michael Ende ANNIE by Thomas Meehan THE FAMILY FROM ONE END STREET by Eve Garnett