One day on the way to school, Joe finds a key in the long grass. It is a large, heavy key. Joe thinks a giant might have dropped it. His friend Irrum thinks it might be magic. But Akash says the key is no good because it doesn't open anything. He laughs at Joe and makes the others laugh too - except Irrum, who says that Joe should try the key in the lonely gate. When Joe turns the key in the gate, it opens up into a new world. Jan Mark has twice won the Carnegie Medal and has also won The Guardian Award, the Observer Teenage Fiction Prize and the Angel Award for Fiction. Her books include Thunder and Lightenings, The Dead Letter Box, Fur, Strat and Chatto (winner of the 1990 Mother Goose Award), Fun With Mrs Thumb, This Bowl of Earth, Taking the Cat's Way Home and Great Frog and Mighty Moose.