reviews 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued


is always full of questions, especially when rumours start that there is a deadly illness in Chinatown. People blame the sickness on the people living there and the area is cordoned off. The city starts to become a very dangerous place, full of mobs and fear. Lizzie’s family want her to stay safe, but then Jing, the family’s cook and chauffeur, disappears and Lizzie discovers a strange boy hiding in the attic. The boy becomes her friend. He desperately needs Lizzie to find Jing and get him out of the cordon surrounding Chinatown. Lizzie is a very resourceful girl, but can she do it? Her friends, Gemma and Gus, help her, as does her brother, Billy. But Billy is reckless, and tragedy ensues. Do they have a chance of escaping the


Francisco? This is an exciting historical mystery


disease that threatens San


by Gennifer Choldenko, the award- winning author of Al Capone Does My Shirts. The story itself is fiction but is based on historical fact. It is well researched and cleverly brings the period to life. Lizzie is an engaging and adventurous heroine, and the story is both exciting and intriguing. It’s cleverly constructed and very well written and is an extremely enjoyable read that will appeal to pre-teenage and teenage readers.


ARa Anyone But Ivy Pocket HHHH


Caleb Krisp illustrated John Kelly, Bloomsbury, 336pp, 978-1408858646, £6.99 pbk


‘I was a junior lady’s maid. Brilliant and beautiful. But still just a child. What did


mischief? Nothing, that’s what. Until now.’ That’s Ivy Pocket at the start of her adventure and in her own words. She’s a twelve year old lady’s maid with vast amounts of self-confidence, a gloriously deluded view of how others see her, and an endless supply both of bizarre and


histories. You can rely on Ivy to call a spade a spade, or to describe her employer


to a roomful of dinner guests as ‘a fine horsewoman in her day (who) can drink like a fish and who like many true aristocrats has a drooping bottom lip and no real chin to speak of, making eating soup both difficult to achieve and unpleasant to behold.’ It says a lot more about Ivy that she’s surprised when the countess gives her notice after this. Jobless and stranded in Paris, Ivy is


only too glad to accept a commission to deliver the priceless Clock Diamond to London, which is when the real adventures start. There’s something strange and supernatural about the diamond, and Ivy is soon up to her neck in the afore-mentioned murder and mischief, and experiencing some very spooky ghostly visions too. She finds work with another set of aristocrats, as snobbish a bunch as you’re likely to meet - even Ivy is hard- pushed to keep them in their place – and the mystery develops nicely with a real sense of foreboding


the Countess Carbunkle ridiculous


practical remedies invented


personal I know of murder and


The Boy at the Top of the Mountain


HHH


John Boyne, Doubleday, 224pp, 978-0-8575-3452-1, £12.99 hbk


1936: Seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer lives in Paris with his mother. His German father, a veteran


Somme, left home three years earlier, never to return. Pierrot remembers him though: his screams as memories of the trenches haunted his nights; his drinking; and his conviction that one day his country would ‘take back what is ours’. When that day comes, he tells his son, he must remember he is ‘German through and through, just like me’. 1944: As the war, and this novel,


that in the final chapters the plot veers off in some very surprising ways as last minute revelations are made, and indeed a whole new world is introduced. But even with that slight quibble, I


can recommend this wholeheartedly. Readers are unlikely


There’s no-one like Ivy Pocket. MMa The House of Eyes


view carries all before


Patricia Elliott, Hodder Children’s Books, 298pp, 978-1-4449-2469-5, £6.99 pbk


This is the first Connie Carew mystery and it is an exciting start. Connie is an orphan and lives with her two aunts and one aunt’s, Dorothea, second husband.


was kidnapped as a child and this has left her a sad and broken woman who never leaves the house.


she is persuaded to attend a séance and there Ida appears. miraculously


doorstep to apply for the post of under maid. Is Ida who she says she is or is she an imposter? What role does the orphanage where she grew up play? And what are Aunt Dorothea’s husband and his dodgy son up to? Only our intrepid heroine Connie can find out! This is another period detective


story with plucky young gels rejecting the role that society has set out for them.


parents’ profession of anthropology and is curious about everything and everyone around her.


beautiful and loves all the dresses and balls that are her new life, but still remembers her life in the orphanage and


fortitude displays the


they would have to make their own way in life. My favourite character is Lady Lavender Lamont a suffragette and all


eccentric. A well-paced detective yarn with


CD of someone who thought round good egg but totally


likable characters and a good start to what looks as though it could be a welcome series for fans.


strength and Ida is very Connie longs to carry on her she appears on the Then Even more Dorothea’s daughter Ida


many heroines as lively, entertaining and downright original as Ivy, and her ebullience, world


HHH to encounter


bravado and particular her.


So far, so irresistible. It’s a shame


draw to a close 15-year-old Pierrot is living in the Berghof, Hitler’s retreat in the mountains above Berchtesgaden. He is now a zealous Oberscharfuhrer in the Hitlerjugend. The Fuhrer’s long- serving cook, Emma, finds him in a quiet corner of the Berghof during a party, forcing himself upon a girl who is unable to fight him off. Emma knocks him to the floor, her carving knife at his throat. ‘What happened to you, Pierrot?’ she wonders. ‘You were such a sweet boy when you first came here. Is it really that easy for the innocent to be corrupted?’ A critical reader might well ask that


last question of this novel. Defenders of John Boyne’s The Boy


Striped Pyjamas dismissed charges of implausibility by seeing the book as a fable rather than a realistic narrative. A similar defence might be made here, but it would take some arguing.


‘Three Red Spots on a Handkerchief’ and within a few pages Pierrot is an orphan. His best friend, Anshel Bronstein, lives with his mother in the apartment downstairs. The boys communicate through language


deaf. For a while, Anshel’s mother cares for Pierrot, but as life becomes increasingly difficult for her as a Jew in Paris, she reluctantly finds him a place at an orphanage in Orleans. After a few months there, Pierrot’s Aunt Beatrix sends for him – Mme Bronstein


though she has been out of touch for years. Pierrot, still aged seven, makes a ten hour rail journey across France and Germany to join his aunt. The trip is not without incident. Changing trains


bumps into a German officer who, as Pierrot sprawls on the ground, grinds his jackboot into the boy’s fingers. He also encounters ferocious anti- semitism and en route to Munich he is bullied by an older boy in the uniform of the Hitlerjugend. Aunt Beatrix, it turns out, is Hitler’s


exceptional, but by the age of seven he has seemingly read The Man in the Iron Mask and a year later he gets through Mein Kampf, though he struggles with Hitler’s gift of Carlyle’s biography of Frederick


the


dog. as


at Mannheim, he literally has tracked her down, since Anshel was


sign born


demanded by his father. He is gullible and unquestioning – enabling Boyne to provide a perspective which differs sharply from conventional


into the Reich. This may well interest young readers (though the age of the implied reader of this novel is an issue in itself … it’s simply told, the hero is under 10 for much of the book, but in relatively few pages he’s become a sexually


housekeeper at the Berghof, which is how Pierrot (soon renamed Pieter) meets Hitler in person, along with Eva Braun and Blondi, Hitler’s German Shepherd described


Pierrot is never being intellectually


Great.


adolescent). Boyne rarely takes us inside Pieter’s mind – a moment here and there, such as his shock as he watches the execution of his aunt and Ernst as a result of his revelations. Otherwise, there is little ambiguity or self-doubt. Only in the brief Epilogue, taking us well beyond the war, does the adult Pieter reflect, recognising the monster he became, prompting him to seek out his old friend, Anshel, now a novelist, to tell his story. It could be said that Pieter is a microcosm of what happened to a whole nation. But too often here, the characters seem to be at the service of the plot. As a consequence, Emma’s question, ‘Is it really that easy for the innocent to be corrupted?’ is worth exploration. GF


Books for Keeps No.216 January 2016 29 frustrated insights Pieter is faithful to the promise The opening chapter is titled, in the of the


By the time he’s 11, he turns Aunt Beatrix out of her room so that he can enjoy more space for himself and sleep closer to the Fuhrer in case he’s needed. He is merely the nephew of the housekeeper but he says, ‘If you ask me, servants should just keep their mouths shut and get on with their work‘. When he’s 13, he betrays his aunt


and her lover, the chauffeur Ernst, thwarting their plot


with a slice of Christmas stollen. Ernst is an unconvincing assassin, since he reveals his anti-Nazi sympathies within minutes of meeting the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson as he drives them up the mountain to make that famous visit to Hitler (‘One is generally accustomed to a band of some sort,’ mumbles the Duke, disappointed by the lack of a welcoming fanfare.) Even more remarkably, Pieter is summoned by the Fuhrer to take the minutes of a meeting including Himmler and other officers, planning a new concentration camp. Pieter interrupts to check that he heard correctly that no water would be coming out of the showers. His notes are ready for use as the meeting closes.


to poison Hitler


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