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Un Lun Dun by China Miéville
Published by Macmillan Children’s Books, 2007

Something weird is happening in London.
Deeba and Zanna discover a wheel in a basement, Zenna turns it and London is switched off!

Zanna and Deeba are two girls leading ordinary lives, until they stumble into the world of UnLondon, an urban Wonderland where all the lost and broken things of London end up as well as some of its lost and broken people too. The best friends find themselves a world which is under siege by sinister Smog (a poisonous cloud)

Their salvation is a magic book that can speak. Guided by this book the girls have to try and disperse the poisonous cloud. A crew of UnLondon locals, the likes of which you will have never dreamed, joins them in their quest! UnLondon is more than a little unusual but an absolute wonder to read about. The world of UnLondon is populated by astonishing frights and delights that will thrill the imagination.

"One of the most imaginative young adult novels of the post-Potter era. . . a tempting, carefully plotted rebellion against the cotton-candy elsewheres offered up by most children’s novels."

New York Times Book Review