reviews Binny in Secret HHHHH


Hilary McKay, Hodder Children’s Books, 272pp, 978-1444913408, £10.99 (hbk)


It begins with a wind, ‘the sort of burglar wind that plucked litter from bins and petals from flowers and balls from toddlers and anything else it fancied.’ The wind blows a swallowtail butterfly into the path of Binny, reluctantly out shopping for a uniform for her new school. Chasing the butterfly Binny careers into another girl - an accident that will have major repercussions. The next night the wind rips a hole in the roof of the Cornwallises’ cottage, so that the family must decamp to a rented house in the country. That brings exciting adventures for Binny and her little


10 – 14 Middle/Secondary Whistling in the Dark


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Shirley Hughes, Walker Books, 240pp, 9781406360295, £9.99 hbk.


From the first sentence the reader is transported to a suburb of Liverpool in 1940 to meet Joan, and her family, older sister Audrey, brother Brian, and younger sister Judy who live with their widowed mother. Their father died in a fire on board a merchant navy ship before the war and their mother has begun a relationship with Captain Ronnie Harper Jones whose presence grates on the children. A new girl comes to Joan’s class at the local girls’ grammar school, Ania who is a refugee from Poland. Joan’s friend Doreen protects Ania from the bully in the class and they become friends. At the same time a deserter appears to be in the local area and there are rumours of a black market flourishing. Ania’s uncle is the deserter and when Joan’s mother finds out she invites Ania to meet with him at her home but the pair are discovered by Captain Harper


between a lorry and two boys the black market element of the plot also comes to a surprising conclusion.


brother ‘Hello, don’t kiss me’ James, and a thrilling rather magical mystery to be unravelled, examined and then kept secret, for safety.


is more linear than the previous book in this series, Binny for Short, but running parallel is a subplot about three children who lived in the house before and during World War One, and we learn that their story is part of the one that holds Binny.


Binny is a wonderful creation, impetuous, stubborn, awkward, generous, an irresistible


observed, but rarely so well described. A particularly beautiful paragraph describes an afternoon of ordinary happiness, ‘For the time that it lasted, there was no growing up and no grown away from, no leaving and no left behind, no future and no past. It was perfect sunlit present.’ Reading McKay gives us all entry to those childhood moments of perfect sunlit present. AR


Hilary McKay tells her story with wit, warmth and extraordinary insight and perception. As ever, her depiction of family life is sublime, covering situations and


emotions often character. The narrative


Shirley Hughes has given a snapshot of life during 1940, with every little detail adding to the picture. This is the work of an accomplished author who has moved to writing stories as well as the picture books and illustrations for which she is so well known and loved. In her foreword Shirley Hughes states that this is based on her own war time childhood, but this is not a memoir rather a story to tell children what life during wartime was like. Many readers will be surprised I think that lots of families did not have air raid shelters but instead used the cupboard under the stairs, or even just stayed where they were. Rationing with its endless queues and the collecting of scrap metal by the young people are just part of the life which is so well described. Small drawings by Shirley Hughes decorate the beginning of every chapter and add to the pleasure of a very good story. There are many good stories about the Second World War but this is a stellar contribution and highlights the work of the Merchant Navy which does not often appear in this genre. A real gem and a treat to read!


JF In Darkling Wood HHHH


Emma Carroll, Faber&Faber, 320pp, 9780571317578, £6.99pbk


After her younger brother Theo has a heart transplant, Alice is sent to stay with her unknown grandmother Nell at a house called


Cottage. She soon makes friends with a reclusive young girl called Flo, whom she meets in the woods which enclose the house. She also starts at the local school and begins to make friends, but it is made difficult when it gets out that her grandmother is having the wood cut down. Added


Darkling Jones. After an accident


to all of this is the growing sense that there is something strange and perhaps magical about the wood itself, but can Alice solve the mystery and end the estrangement between her father and grandmother?


This is a lovely book by one of our excellent new authors. It is overall a serious book that covers a range of truly emotive issues. Alice’s


has split up and her father now has a new partner and child, whilst Theo is facing a truly momentous challenge and her mother has to cope with all of this. Even Nell, it seems, is hiding a major


Intertwined with this modern day story we have a parallel sequence made up of letter sent by a young girl to her brother in 1918 and telling stories of how she has actually seen fairies in Darkling Wood. This part of the story has been inspired by the stories of the Cottingly fairies


country by storm in 1919 and caught the interest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The overwhelming themes of this book are about love and friendship and the importance of family and caring for each other. The characters are flawed and human, so that we can associate with their actions and thoughts. As with real life, those of us on the outside can be objective about events whilst those directly involved have their reactions tempered by emotion. It is a story that can be read at a variety of levels and will no doubt be of great help for families coping with major traumas, as well as being an extremely good read.


The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow


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Katherine Woodfine, Egmont, 336pp, 978-1-4052-7617-7 £6.99 pbk


There’s a spate of light-hearted historical whodunits at the moment: Murder Most Unladylike and The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place spring to mind. The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow is in a similar vein.


Fourteen-year-old Sophie has just started working in Sinclair’s, the most famous department store in London even though it hasn’t officially opened yet. The other shop girls think she seems a bit stuck up – but then until two months ago, Sophie was still taking French and music lessons with her governess. It was only when her papa died abroad leaving her pretty much penniless that Sophie was forced to find lodgings and get a job.


When Sophie makes apprentice


mannequin Lily-Rose, porter Billy and friends


look up – but it soon goes wrong again. Precious


a beautiful ornate bird, glittering with gold and gems, are stolen from Sinclair’s Exhibition Hall, and Sophie is the last person who was seen there. Both the store manager and the metropolitan police suspect her, Sophie’s sacked, and then chucked out of her lodgings.


she’s things, including life starts


shop to


with that took the tragedy from years ago. family


Luckily Sophie’s a born optimist and Billy and Lil, as well as petty-criminal Joe, are on hand to help her out. They find clues, break codes, overhear crucial


dodgy behaviour, and manage to open locked doors as they try to find out who’s a goody, who’s a baddy, why the Clockwork Sparrow is so important, exactly what the evil Baron is planning, and how they can save Sinclair’s from disaster.


It’s a thoroughly with some to


subsequent books – like the truth behind her father’s mysterious will, and his relationship with the Baron. I loved the Edwardian period details, as well as the descriptions of the exotic Sinclair’s (a ceiling ‘painted with a mural of cherubs luxuriating upon soft pink clouds’ and such like), juxtaposed against the grimness of Sophie’s lodgings. The characters are great – Lil’s determinedly ‘can- do’ attitude, Sophie’s cheeriness in the face of adversity, Billy’s growing confidence, Joe resisting temptation. It’s nicely presented too, with each of the five sections opening with an illustration and description of a different hat, and the odd newspaper cutting or press release scattered throughout to break up the text. RW


Dead End Kids: Heroes of the Blitz


HHHH MP


Bernard Ashley, Orchard, 214pp, 9781408338957, £5.99, pbk


This is a gutsy story about the East End of London during the early years of the Blitz. The story is inspired by a group of young people who did fight fires during the war, but in his foreword Bernard Ashley makes it clear that his characters are not based on those living then. Told in cockney dialect, the people of that part of London with their famous community spirit come alive, as they take refuge in the underground shelters from the ferocity of the German bombing. Josie Turner is a bit old for gangs really but her group use a disused barge as their headquarters, and watch as the other young people form groups to fight the fires which rage nightly, in order to free the Fire Brigade for the bigger ones. Josie determines that just because she is a girl shouldn’t mean she can’t form a group to do the same, and they manage to do that, but then tragedy strikes and her brother Len, the leader of the groups, is killed in a freak accident. Josie fights for the iron bar that denotes the gang leader and assumes Len’s mantle. Meanwhile her blossoming friendship with another boy is threatened when he is accused of a crime he did not commit and goes on the run.


Once the reader is accustomed to the dialect, (this would read aloud well), the


Ashley’s vivid descriptions take the reader into the heart of the East End


Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015 27 story moves quickly. Bernard (presumably) be


intriguing threads resolved


romp, in


enjoyable conversations, glimpse


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