Slow Tale Time
Spellbrook Academy-Gentle stories for growing minds
Adventures that help children slow down, listen, imagine, learn, feel and grow
Your Reading Journey
Read your first story on this shelf to begin collecting its seasonal badges and build a chain of quiet days together!
Spring
(3 tales)
The Second Timetable
A new lesson appears on the Year 7 timetable, taught in a room that is not on the map, to a class made up of four different years. The room only asks questions. Every answer costs something.
20 pages
The Missing Lesson
The school clock has lost a hand and every day at Spellbrook is ten minutes shorter than it should be. Tom and Isla go looking for the stolen time, and find a classroom that has been teaching the same lesson since 1954.
20 pages
Summer
(3 tales)
The Spellbrook Cup
Sports day at Spellbrook has three ordinary events and one that involves a silver hare. Somebody has stitched a head-start charm into a running shoe, and the fairest race of the year is about to be won by the wrong person.
20 pages
The Quiet Choir
The oldest song at Spellbrook has never been written down, and it is the only thing keeping the roof on. When the choir's best singer stops in the middle of a line, the rafters begin to fill with moths.
20 pages
The Library Under the Stairs
The library at Spellbrook has two floors and one shelf too many. Behind the returns box lives a small paper dragon that eats other people's apologies, and at the back is a shelf of books about children the school has been trying to forget.
20 pages
Autumn
(3 tales)
The Lost Property Cupboard
Behind the door marked LOST PROPERTY there is more cupboard than school. It keeps everything anyone has ever lost at Spellbrook, and one of the things it keeps is a whistle that belonged to Amara when she was seven.
20 pages
The Substitute
A supply teacher arrives who never blinks, never forgets a name, and makes the whole school slightly less magical just by looking at it. He is writing a report, and one of his marks is a cross.
20 pages
The Exam
Every pupil in Year 7 sits an exam that is not on the timetable. Part one has ordinary answers and everybody passes. Part two asks what you will do with what you know, and almost nobody does.
20 pages
Winter
(3 tales)
The Midwinter Play
Every December Spellbrook performs the same play, and nobody has ever written down how it ends. This year it snows indoors, the audience cannot move, and the only way out is to give the light away.
20 pages
The Boy Who Forgot
Ravi starts forgetting: a lesson, then a Tuesday, then his father's watch. Somewhere in the bell tower there is a quiet room that keeps the things people would rather not remember, and Ravi has been going there on his own.
20 pages
The Second Bell
The bell in the tower has two clappers and has only ever sounded once. The second ring makes the school's hidden rooms official for good, and the Ledger has come to collect on the account.
20 pages
Unlock all 12 tales for £6.99
One payment unlocks every tale in Spellbrook Academy — yours to keep on any device.
First tale free · 75p each · £6.99 for the whole series
An ordinary English school, drawn properly — every Spellbrook tale starts somewhere on this map.
The Main Gates
Where every day begins
The Great Hall
Choir, the midwinter play and the keeping line
Room 7Q
Quiet Studies, behind a door that isn't on the map
The Potions Lab
Mei's second measurements, and the Fair-Play Draught
The Library Under the Stairs
Two floors, one shelf too many, one bookwyrm
The Lost Property Cupboard
Further back than the wall allows
The Creature Yard
The hare, the paddock and the gathering moths
The Bell Tower
Two ropes, two clappers, one true thing