reviews 8 – 10 Junior/Middle continued New Talent Umbrella Mouse HHH


Anna Fargher, ill. Sam Usher, Macmillan, 274pp, 978 1 5290 0397 0, £6.99 pbk


It’s 1944, the D-Day landings have just taken place and Pip the mouse is living with her parents inside an antique umbrella in a shop window in New Oxford Street, where Pip listens to stories about her Italian relatives at the umbrella museum in Gignese and dreams about spies. One night the shop is hit by a V1 rocket. Staggering from the ruins to find her umbrella - but not her family – Pip vows to make the journey to Italy alone. Befriended by Dickin, a search and rescue dog, Pip visits St Giles, a hidden market and refuge for animals deep beneath London’s streets. There she meets Hans, a German rat, and Bernard Booth, the pigeon co-ordinator Secret


of Churchill’s Animal Army. Bernard


refuses to help Pip in her quest so she takes a top-secret message intended for the French Resistance and launches her umbrella into the Thames, heading for the open sea. Hans and a carrier pigeon named


GI Joe follow her to retrieve the message. After some hair-raising escapes, Hans and Pip arrive in France where they’re captured by the animal resistance fighters of Noah’s Ark, including a stag, an eagle and Madame Fourcade, their hedgehog leader. More adventures ensue,


culminating in a rescue


attempt on a Nacht und Nebelcamp where Madame Fourcade, Hans and others are being tortured. Pip and her accomplices risk everything


hers is less than spectacular. However, when the most powerful witch in the kingdom of Starfell knocks at her door seeking


her help, Willow discovers


her powers are quite special after all. There follows a rather unusual quest; to discover how the previous Tuesday has gone missing from everyone’s memory, find out who is responsible and to try to restore people’s memories of the missing day. Success requires Willow not only to show bravery when facing danger but also, in the process, cope with the discovery of a deeply sad lost memory of her own, concerning someone she loves. With an intriguing opening


and


a lively narrative style this is a fast paced and enjoyable fantasy adventure story. The world of Starfell is peopled with an array of quirky and appealing characters including Nolin Sometimes who reads forgotten memories and is prone to sudden fainting and a shy and grumpy cat-like creature who is happiest under a bed or zipped up safely in a bag. Team work saves the


in a new series likely to be devoured by young fantasy


fans who enjoy


delving deep into engaging narratives and meeting appealing and unusual characters along the way. SMc


The Tunnels Below HHHH


Nadine Wild-Palmer, Pushkin Press, 256pp, 978-1782692232, £7.99 pbk


to save the prisoners, and at last Pip realizes where her true loyalties lie. Published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII, this fast-paced tale about courage, resistance and friendship draws on true stories of animals caught up in the conflict. There’s much here to enjoy, but right from the outset readers must grapple not only with the wartime setting and information about umbrella history, but also a complex back-story about Gignese, which may deter some children. That said, confident readers who


are prepared to give the Gignese element the attention it requires will find this book engaging, and once on board the plot has plenty of twists and turns to keep them interested. Sam Usher’s evocative line drawings are dotted throughout, bringing Pip’s adventures to life with a deft charm and sense of integrity that add to our enjoyment of the text. CFH


day as Willow uses her undervalued skills to powerful effect and with a cast of engaging misfits works to rescue the kingdom from an evil being seeking ultimate power. Along the way Willow acquires some rather wonderful magical gadgets


which


come in handy at specific points in her adventure. There are many themes touched


on in this story for example making the most of your gifts, jealousy and how it can fester and coping with loss. The story also explores a thought- provoking idea, ‘the incredible value and significance of one ordinary day’ and how what happens one day inevitably affects what happens on the next. The storyworld is detailed with colour an important young


iridescent glow of the dragon’s indigo feathers and the paint box colours of the magical forest of Wisperia, indicated in the cover


illustration.


Internal art work was not included in the proof reviewed. This is the first


A brilliantly imagined other-world adventure that pitches a young girl into a very strange place, and up against a dangerous tyrant, The Tunnels Below is an impressive debut. Cecilia Hudson-Gray is out celebrating her twelfth birthday with her family on a day trip to London – so far, so ordinary, though there’s clearly something unusual about the marble her little sister gives her as a present. When it rolls onto the tube train she’s just got off, Cecilia steps back to retrieve it, only for the doors to shut. Separated from her family, the train whisks her away into the darkness. Emerging from ‘the black of beyond’, she finds a whole new world, very different to the one she knows. The first friend she makes for example, is Kuffi, tall, friendly, human looking except for the fact that he has the face of a fox. The more she discovers in the tunnels below, the stranger it all is – this is a place where music has a taste, and where things are often deliciously


literal


(you can actually live in the lime-light, ie. a district lit by neon lime-green light). Ruling it all though, through a mixture of intimidation and brutality, is the Corvus Community, under the leadership of the brutal Jacques d’Or. As in the best fantasy adventures, Cecilia’s challenge is to save her new friends from the enemy and, as we suspected, that marble might just have a part to play.


Wild-Palmer manages to keep the plot


It’s hugely imaginative, and moving alongside


descriptions of bizarre,


intriguing quirky


characters and customs. A message about the importance of standing up to oppression is delivered with a light touch and this is a fresh, original and enjoyable addition to the canon of hidden-world adventures. Read


our Q&A interview with


Nadine Wild-Palmer. MMa Cloud Boy


HHHH


Marcia Williams, Walker, 203pp, 9781406388991, £6.99 pbk


Marcia Williams is known for the witty illustrations


accompanying feature, readers can visualise the


her retellings of classic stories. Now she has written her first novel for children. Narrated as if by nine-year- old Angie Moon, it takes the form of a year’s diary kept while her lifetime friend of the same age, Harry next door, contracts a serious illness. Inter-leaved are old letters from her grandmother, now staying with the family,


written but never


by the Japanese forces over-running Singapore. There are elements of repetition as Angie records her growing anger at what she construes as friend Harry’s obstinate refusal to get better, after which the pair can get back to the favourite games in a shared tree- house. But her grandmother’s letters, based on the real-life experience of one Olga Morris, remain riveting reading. She too


was heartless guards. a child


incarcerated in Changi jail at the same time where families lived in dreadful


conditions ruled over by Encouraged by


Elizabeth Ennis, a former nurse in the Indian army, a group of eight children became one of the most unusual Girl Guide groups ever to have existed. Their mission was to complete a quilt from bits and scraps around them. Their example was followed by older women, who found ways of inserting messages into their work to be read by the men’s camp next door. This inspiring story is told bit by bit


to Angie and Harry throughout this fine, sensitive novel. It is a little too long and towards the end loses some momentum. Even so, here is a tale well worth telling, with a historical note at the end adding historical perspective to such an otherwise bleak passage of life for those going through it at the time. NT


The Bluest of Blues HHHHH


Fiona Robinson, Abrams Books for Young Readers, 40pp, 978 1 4197 2551 7, £12.pp hbk


This absolutely beautiful picture


book biography looks at the life of British botanist Anna Atkins who is acknowledged as one of


the


first women in the world to take a photograph as well as one of the very first people to publish a book of photographic images.


illustrator Fiona Robinson uses a time-line to tell Anna’s


The author- amazing


delivered


when she herself was a child interred in the notorious Changi jail in 1942


story, featuring key moments in the scientist’s life. Anna’s interest in the natural world and in particular plants, was fostered by her widowed father, scientist and


Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019 25


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