[2] Clarke and The Twelve won the annual Carnegie Medal recognising the year's best children's book by a British citizen.

[3] Six years later she won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for the German-language edition, Die Zwölf vom Dachboden (Berlin: Dressler, 1968).

The local newspaper publishes a letter about the Brontë wooden soldiers, from an American professor offering £5,000 (at the time a small fortune) to anyone who finds them.

Max and Jane's older brother Philip believes the Morley soldiers may be the Brontë ones, and impulsively writes to the professor about them – only to deeply regret his act when he too discovers the truth.

The children have some anxious moments before they discover that the soldiers have determined to return to their original home in Haworth, now a museum dedicated to the Brontës.