Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones - the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces.

But it's dangerous there - and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself...

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, Banshee, Room, the Kyoto Journal and Cicada, among others. She is a recipient of a We Need Diverse Books Mentorship, and was a finalist for the 2020 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Catfish Rolling is her debut novel.

The activity pack includes stickers, book club-style questions to ponder and a welcome note from Clara Kumagai. There’s also a word puzzle to solve and instructions to make a paper catfish, alongside jokes and further reading recommendations.

Activity packs are a handy A5 size and printed on uncoated paper which is fully recyclable.

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Our packs are wrapped in a simple paper sleeve and sent out in a cardboard book wrap – we would be so grateful if you could recycle both.

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We are a monthly book subscription by post for children aged 5 to 14, focused on helping families discover new and different chapter books.

This title was sent to subscribers in the Macaw reading group, aged roughly 12 to 14, who need books that feel grown-up but aren’t quite ready for all young adult books.