Twelve-year-old Anna’s parents are going through a rough patch, but Anna can’t let them split up. Not when it might mean living apart from Anto, her twin brother. Anto might be a boy, and he might not speak (except using Lego bricks), and he might carry a coat hanger about like it's his closest friend, but that doesn’t stop the two of them being like peas in a pod. It’s a twin thing, and nobody’s going to separate them.

So Anna hatches a plan: get the whole family on a plane to Italy. Her parents have always been happiest on holiday. How can they fail to fall back in love at a swanky hotel with an actual pool to swim in and everything!

But when Anna discovers more about why her family has grown apart, suddenly a happy holiday in Italy seems about as likely as swimming on the moon …

Conaghan, a beautiful writer who loves to surprise, takes this unlikely pair of cowboys on a road trip to the north of the country. And so Bruce becomes the father figure Lenny needs, Lenny the responsibility Bruce craves as their back stories get a slow reveal.

With the feel of a modern-day classic, this book will make readers cry but is also hysterically funny and life-affirming

This is an energetic charmer of a book

Brian Conaghan lives and works in the Scottish town of Coatbridge. He was a teacher for many years, and his novel When Mr Dog Bites was shortlisted for the 2015 Carnegie Medal. The Bombs That Brought Us Together won the 2016 Costa Children’s Book Award, The Weight of a Thousand Feathers won the 2018 Irish Book Award for Teen/YA Book of the Year, and We Come Apart, a verse novel co-authored with Carnegie Medal-winner Sarah Crossan, won the 2018 UKLA Book Award. Cardboard Cowboys, Brian’s first middle-grade novel, published in 2021 and is full of his trademark heart, humour and crackling dialogue.
@ConaghanAuthor