BfK 8 – 10 Junior/Middle continued


The Girl who thought her Mother was a Mermaid


HHHH


Tania Unsworth, Zephyr, 238pp, 9781788541671, £10.99 hbk


Stella has run away before, always unsuccessfully, but now it is serious. She is serious. She is determined to find out the truth about her mother because Stella thinks that maybe her mother was a mermaid. She has one clue – a name, Lastland Island. That is her destination but what she finds there will not only be stranger than she can imagine but will land her in real danger. This is a very enjoyable adventure,


where reality mixes with a fantasy in which the author has indulged in “what if..”. It might be described as “magical realism” or perhaps a “fantasy” but these epithets would be incorrect– both the Stella’s world and adventure and the fantasy element are too real for either to fit neatly. Nor will the reader care since Unsworth’s imagination convinces from the first sentence to the last. Her prose is clear and direct and the reader’s sympathies


are quickly engaged.


Stella’s longing to find out more is very understandable as is her home situation with a father immersed in work. Characters are neatly drawn. Both Stella and her best friend Cam emerge as credible schoolgirls while even the frightening Marcie convinces in her obsession and cruelty. At the heart of the story anchoring it is a strong ecological message; what would the reader do if faced with a fantasy creature? What would be the consequences of publishing such a find? There is a trend with authors exploring this particular mix of the real world with the fantastical. This is an example to be welcomed – and not least for the attractive design both of the jacket and the page decorations subtly breaking up the text. This is one to recommend to KS2 readers who are already exploring worlds that challenge the imagination. FH


The Great Telephone Mix-Up HHHH


Sally Nicholls, illus Sheena Dempsey, Barrington Stoke,96pp, 978-1-78112-753-3, £6.99 pbk


In the village no mobile phone can get a signal. There is a huge storm. The wind blows down the telephone wires carrying the landline signal. When the lines are restored, everyone’s phone signals go to the wrong subscriber’s house. Outgoing calls also go astray. Nicholls poses the questions how people will respond to this telephone crisis and whether by chance it might engender a closer sense of community as people take calls from random strangers. The villagers include


the village organiser engaged


Margaret, in


setting up the May Fair, the Cubs – a cinema club - and the Women’s


Institute. A boy named Will is grateful for the telephone malfunction, since his mother’s phone is often used to inform her what trouble her son is currently in. An old lady living alone is Jean. She is concerned that she can’t call for help if she needs it. A young woman tries to call a young man who appeals to her. She can’t contact him but she gets through to Jean, who by good fortune will act as a matchmaker. The novel contrasts the world automated systems


where the same are


working well with the more chaotic world where behave


systems in a haphazard and


unpredictable way. The author is of course quite aware that such breakdowns in automated systems do occur in the real world. This book makes an enjoyable


and ideas. Many themes are drawn into this book, the conflict between science and religion, the gap between rich and poor, the inequality of the class


system and the nature of destructive family secrets and lies.


These themes are woven together in a skilfully written story with clever subplots, exciting and dramatic set pieces and a moving climax when Bill saves the life of his new baby brother and learns the truth about his own identity and place in the world. This is a beautifully


written,


poignant and thought-provoking book, full of intriguing ideas which link brilliantly with such curriculum subjects as evolution,


adaptations


and heredity. It is the perfect read for children who love adventure stories and are fascinated by history and the natural world, particularly dinosaurs and fossils. SR


read,


with telling support from Dempsey’s illustrations. But readers who are familiar with Nicholls’s earlier work (such as Things a Bright Girl Can Do) will know that she is capable of deploying convincing characters in a far broader context. The characters who bestride this little book constantly remind the reader that they would be at home in a more ambitious landscape. RB


The Great Sea Dragon Discovery


HHHHH


Pippa Goodhart, Catnip, 260pp, 9781910611081, £6.99 pbk


Set in Grantchester, near Cambridge, in the early 1860’s, this fascinating historical novel tells the story of Bill Ellwood whose small, rural world is greatly


the fossilised contents of dinosaurs’ stomachs,


changed are


when coprolites, discovered in the


village fields. Mining companies arrive to dig for coprolites to use as fertiliser, wealthy landowners become richer, new people with new ideas arrive and the landscape and way of life change. Bill is a curious boy, fascinated by the natural world, and when one of his experiments causes his father to lose his job, Bill begins to earn money for his family by selling fossils that he finds. Then Bill makes an amazing discovery when he unearths the bones of a huge sea dragon, an ichthyosaur. Bill and his cousin Alf nickname the sea dragon “Croccy” and battle to keep the skeleton safe from thieves until they can sell it to a Cambridge scholar and make enough money to save their families. This is a gripping and


heart-


warming historical adventure story set during a period of great change when the ideas of Charles Darwin and the discovery of dinosaur fossils were causing upheavals in Victorian society.


Bill, with his curiosity,


intelligence and bravery, is a very engaging character who faces many dilemmas as he tries to bridge the gulf between his quiet, traditional village and the wider world of science


24 Books for Keeps No.232 September 2018 The Day War Came HHH


Nicola Davies, ill. Rebecca Cobb, Walker, 40pp, 978 4063 7632 6, £10.00 hbk


In the spring of 2016 Nicola Davies wrote a poem in response our


to government’s refusal to give


sanctuary to 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees. It drew on a news story of a refugee child refused entry to a school because there wasn’t a chair for her to sit on. The poem was published on The Guardian website accompanied by images of empty chairs by Jackie Morris and Petr Horácek. In a remarkable outpouring of support, hundreds of people posted their own images of empty chairs on the website. This is the picturebook of Nicola’s poem with illustrations by Rebecca Cobb, endorsed by Amnesty International, with £1 from every sale going to the charity Help Refugees. The poem itself is understated and eloquent,


bringing the terrifying


experiences of a young refugee within the imagination and understanding of a child reader of the same age who, thankfully, might never


face


the same trials. In particular, I like Davies’ succinct expression of the long-term psychological effects


of


conflict: “But war had followed me. It was underneath my skin, behind my eyes, and in my dreams. It had taken possession of my heart.” This sense of the pervasiveness of war finds expression, too, in the anxiety and fear found in the people to whom she might turn for help: “War was in the way that doors shut when I came down the street.” In contrast, the children offering chairs at the optimistic end of the poem is a perfect metaphor for the sympathy and hospitality that has so often been missing in the response of rich European countries to the recent refugee crisis. Rebecca Cobb’s illustrations have a childlike quality that reminds me of the kind of


pictures that refugee children


might draw themselves, in which an innocent eye and naïve technique underline the awful experience that the drawings of guns, bombs, broken


buildings and broken bodies can only inadequately but dreadfully express. This is a book to be admired for what it says and how it says it. It deserves a wide audience. CB


Tilly and the Bookwanderers HHH


Anna James, HarperCollins, 378pp, 9780008229863, £12.99 hbk


Eleven-year-old Matilda Pages, Tilly, has lived with her grandparents above their bookshop, “Pages & Co”, ever since her mother disappeared soon after she was born. The bookshop is a dream home for a book loving child and Tilly relishes escaping into the enticing worlds of her favourite stories. When Tilly


characters from her


starts meeting favourite


children’s books between the shop’s shelves, she begins to realise that there is more to “Pages & Co”, and to her grandparents, than meets the eye. Once Tilly has discovered the magic of “bookwandering”, crossing from real life into story book worlds, and travelling back again, she and her friend Oskar, with the help of Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland, step into fictional worlds to try and solve the mystery of


The children


Tilly’s mother’s are


mysterious and sinister Enoch Chalk, who is convinced that Tilly and her family have broken the strict rules of bookwandering. This magical adventure story will appeal to those book loving children who understand the pull of fictional worlds and appreciate how exciting it would be to meet a favourite book


bookwandering


character. The concept of is imaginative,


the


voices of the fictional characters sound authentic and the settings are well drawn, from the cosy, comforting bookshop to the intriguing “Underlibrary” where bookwandering records are stored. However, the story does rely on considerable knowledge of classic children’s books and the pace and plot do get somewhat bogged down in explaining the very complicated rules of bookwandering. There is rather too much exposition in this first volume of what is obviously intended to be a series, but those readers who enjoy all the fictional references will look forward to future bookwandering adventures. SR


Run Wild HHHH


Gill Lewis, Barrington Stoke, 106pp, 9781781128282, £6.99 pbk


This story of the need for presented young


people to connect with the natural world is beautifully written by wildlife author


Gill Lewis and accessibly in publisher Barrington


Stoke’s characteristic dyslexia- friendly


style. Izzy and Asha are


desperate to find a space where they can practice their skateboarding away from the threatening Skull brothers. Their search leads them, together with Izzy’s younger brother Connor and his animal-loving friend Jakub,


disappearance. pursued by the


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32