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The Midnight Children: A Vanishing

Tunku Halim
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The Midnight Children trilogy is a series of dark fantasy novels for children age 8-13 combining Asian mythology and Gothic elements. The characters, ten-year-old Min and twelve-year-old Zak are the main protagonists.
In The Midnight Children: A Vanishing, Zak and Min’s father mysteriously disappears at breakfast and curious things then begin to happen to them. Min encounters two small creatures with spider-like legs, a doll that runs, talks and steals and Shaz, the shaman, who gives her a box with a finger bone inside. Zak is chased by a strange man on all fours in the shopping mall, flees from snakes that interrupt his homework and is visited by a ghostly old lady in his bedroom who happens to love matcha ice cream.
Trying to find their father, they are transported to an eerie world called the Moonlight World where oily creatures want to kidnap and eat them. The novel concludes with Zak vanishing one night during dinner.

Published: Feb/2021

ISBN: 9789814914215

Length: 128 Pages

The Midnight Children: A Vanishing

Tunku Halim

The Midnight Children trilogy is a series of dark fantasy novels for children age 8-13 combining Asian mythology and Gothic elements. The characters, ten-year-old Min and twelve-year-old Zak are the main protagonists.
In The Midnight Children: A Vanishing, Zak and Min’s father mysteriously disappears at breakfast and curious things then begin to happen to them. Min encounters two small creatures with spider-like legs, a doll that runs, talks and steals and Shaz, the shaman, who gives her a box with a finger bone inside. Zak is chased by a strange man on all fours in the shopping mall, flees from snakes that interrupt his homework and is visited by a ghostly old lady in his bedroom who happens to love matcha ice cream.
Trying to find their father, they are transported to an eerie world called the Moonlight World where oily creatures want to kidnap and eat them. The novel concludes with Zak vanishing one night during dinner.

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Tunku Halim

Tunku Halim was born in Malaysia in 1964. He is dubbed Asia's Stephen King. By delving into Malay myth, legends and folklore, his writing is regarded as 'World Gothic'.
His novel, Dark Demon Rising, was nominated for the 1999 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award whilst his second novel, Vermillion Eye, is used as a study text in The National University of Singapore's Language and Literature course. His short story has also won first prize in a 1998 Fellowship of Australian Writers competition. In Malaysia, he has had three consecutive wins in the Star-Popular Readers' Choice Awards between 2015 and 2017.

His children's fiction include The Midnight Children trilogy (2021), comprising A Vanishing, Cemetery House and The Midnight World, whilst his children's non-fiction include A Children's History of Malaysia (2019) and History of Malaysia: A Children's Encyclopedia (2013).

His other books comprise the short-story collections The Rape of Martha Teoh & Other Chilling Stories (1997), BloodHaze: 15 Chilling Tales (1999) and The Woman Who Grew Horns and Other Works (2001); and the novels Juriah's Song (2008), Last Breath (2014) and A Malaysian Restaurant in London (2015). His non-fiction books, amongst others, include a biography of his late father A Prince Called 'Charlie' (2018).