When Arabel’s father, Ebenezer Jones, drives his taxi home late one night he comes across ‘a large black bird, with a hairy fringe around its beak’. He takes it home and from that moment on, life is never the same again for the Jones family. Arabel’s raven is called Mortimer – and he’s one in a million. ‘Nevermore!’ he cries when astonished or upset, ‘Down the hatch’ he thinks before gobbling bowler hats, stairs, telephones. He dislikes flying except in emergencies, and with disaster-prone Mortimer around there are plenty of those. There are six hilarious stories in this classic collection by the much-loved storyteller Joan Aiken and renowned illustrator Quentin Blake.

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