BfK 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued


in wartime; you can see the bombed out buildings, some walls eerily standing, wallpaper flapping, beds upturned. Len’s death is unexpected and horrible, but the courage of the young people is clear.


character in particular stands out. Josie’s


There are not too many books about the Blitz itself, Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh written in 1969 is probably the best of the bunch so Bernard Ashley with this latest book in his long writing career, makes a valuable contribution to the genre. Young people of 12+ will get the most out of this story and be full of admiration for their forbears. JF


50 Things You Should Know


About the Second World War HHHH


Simon Adams, QED Publishing, 80pp, 9781784930356, £8.99 pbk.


This book is built round fifty key things skilfully selected to help young readers begin to understand the ‘big shapes’ of a complex global war lasting six years from 1939 to 1945. Many are to do with key events including ‘The invasion of Poland’, ‘The fall of France’, ‘The war goes global’ and ‘Europe is liberated’. Others cover such things as ‘Home Front’ (which explains something about the contribution of women to the war effort and the evacuation of children), ‘Spies and Spying’ (covering the work of the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), ‘The Holocaust’, ‘New Weapons’, ‘The cost of war’ and ‘The post-war world’. Organised in double spreads, the pages are well designed with a clear, spare text and copious visual information using photographs and particularly fine maps. Time-lines, a glossary and index and a Who’s who picturing the nine men who led the Allies and the nine men who led the Axis powers all help with overall coherence.


Some suggestions for further reading would have been helpful to the older primary and early secondary school children and teachers for whom the resource is intended. While this book gives a succinct overall account, other books tell of the experiences of individuals, for example Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom’s Taff in the WAAF. And the ‘fiction based on facts’ kind of book, for example Michael Morpurgo’s touching novel about a young girl living in war time Devon, The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, would bring understanding to a personal level. Nevertheless this is a simply splendid resource to support a school history project. Parents would also find it useful when helping to answer children’s questions about the Second World War.


MM The Potion Diaries HHH


Amy Alward, Simon and Schuster, 368pp, 9781471143564, 12+


In this clean teen adventure, magic, ancient traditions and a race against time combine to create an adventure that pits tradition against innovation.


When the princess of Samantha’s country poisons herself with a love potion, every alchemist in the country


is called to join the Wilde Hunt: a race to mix the perfect cure before the princess’s loss of control over her magic causes the kingdom to fall apart. No one works together. In a world filled with the magical Talented, Sam is ordinary. But she’s descended from the most famous line of alchemists the kingdom has ever seen, and when her grandfather refuses to join the hunt, she puts herself forward. Whilst the great synthetic labs have access to greater resources than Sam, she has the mixer’s instinct, meaning that she can make connections between ingredients quicker. But along the way, she’ll face danger, fractured friendships and a growing attraction to the son of her rival that could ruin everything.


This was an original concept, mixing an essentially modern world with a rich magical and alchemical tradition, seemingly quite similar to our own. Unfortunately, the text felt rushed, meaning that other than Sam few characters felt very developed and the


difficult to get behind. The themes of tested friendships were well explored, but at times came at the expense of believable world building as Sam and her companions hopped around the globe. A fun summer read for younger teenagers, but it’s a shame such a fun concept wasn’t more fully realised. MMa


The Potion Diaries HHH


Garth Nix, Hot Key, 512pp, 978-1-47140448-1 £7.99 pbk


Not everyone


on a multi-paged saga involving strange worlds, mythical beasts or magic. Maybe, the young reader is unfamiliar with the range of themes and backgrounds to which the term ‘fantasy’ can be applied. The answer might lie in a collection of short stories; To Hold the Bridge might be such a collection. None of the stories in this anthology have been written for the occasion and have appeared in magazines and other collections individually. Here, for Nix fans they are together. And a very enjoyable collection it is. Nix is a good storyteller ranging from the world of the Old Kingdom imbued with magic to the dystopian future that is the setting for Shade’s Children and more. There are few surprises, the stories falling neatly into the conventions of the science fiction genre. Some stories are more successful than others – I particularly enjoyed The Quiet Knight – while placing them within lightly themed groups ensures readers can home in on favourite features. Solid without setting the world alight.


FH Song For A Scarlet Runner HHHH


Julie Hunt, Allen and Unwin. 324pp 978 1 74331 358 9, £6.99 pbk.


This long, ambitious fantasy tells Peat’s story. She and her sister Marlie eke out a precarious living, isolated both from their village and the outside world. When disease strikes the village, Peat is blamed and forced to flee for her life.


28 Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015 wants to embark love interest in particular was


Her adventures are legion, gripping and written with huge


power. When she is kidnapped by Eadie the Marsh Auntie and trained to be a storyteller she experiences a wider and stranger world than the one she inhabited, but there, as everywhere, then and now, people were driven by dark motives – greed, revenge, mistrust of strangers. Hunt is scrupulously attentive to detail – every new and remarkable world is painstakingly created and characters carefully constructed to engender belief, even in the most unlikely circumstances. The Siltboy, trapped by the Siltman with his giant hound Shadow, has his own idiosyncratic take on language which leans heavily towards the poetic but is immediate in its impact and endears him to the reader.


Hunt is careful to root her narrative in the imperatives which drive us all, giving the story a potent universality. When Eadie betrays Peat to the ruthless Siltman, she does so to save her own soul. The Siltman is capable of manipulating the environment in which he leaves to make escape for those he has captured impossible, thus guaranteeing the continuity of his workforce. However, Hunt does not forget that good is as powerful as evil and so Peat is reunited with her family, who have worked tirelessly to find her. The Sleek, animal guide and tormentor in equal measure, leads Peat and her companions safely through dangers which only he can anticipate. Siltboy finds heroism beneath his cowed exterior and even Eadie, eased into death when her soul is returned, is seen for the frail and vulnerable old lady she has become.


This is a multi-layered story – mystical and mysterious adventure, twisting and turning through secrets, truth and lies and, at the same time, providing insight into the age-old which confront us all.


dilemmas VR


The Crowham Martyrs HHHH


Jane McLoughlin, Catnip, 272pp, 9781846471636, £6.99


Maddy has found herself sent to a highly unusual boarding


after her actress mother moves to Hollywood to join a new partner. This is a school that seems to be hiding secrets and it is full of ghosts; unfortunately Maddy has the ability to see them. Then Maddy starts getting visions and her new school


Hannah disappears. There is also talk of demons and witches who were killed during the 16th century, but what is their connection to the school and its scary events. Importantly, who can Maddy trust and how can she solve the mysteries that seem to be closing in around her?


This is a great story for the middle years, although the heroine is a 13 year old girl. There is the combination of boarding school linked to magic and witches, but there is a darkness that can seem to be missing in similar themed stories.


questions for Maddy to answer and we quite often see her


friend


The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean


HHHHH


Lindsay Littleson, Floris Books Kelpies, 192pp, 978 178250 180 0, £5.99 pbk.


and uncertainties show themselves as anger at the people around her. It is an exciting and well plotted


There are so many frustration


This worthy winner of the Kelpies Prize offers the story of 11 year old Lily, twin brothers Bronx and Hudson, baby sister Summer and formidable teenage sister Jenna, all living with their Mum in a tiny council house which is bursting the seams. So when Lily is offered a week’s holiday with her Gran, she jumps at the chance of peace and quiet and a room of her own. To further add to her delight, she will miss her junior school Leavers’


school imaginative


story, although the dark threat to our heroine remains in the shadows and we do not really feel the full horror that he can bring.


This is above all a story about love in its varying forms and about friendship and how we have to learn to trust others. Maddy goes on a journey of discovery, some of which shake the slim foundations of her life. The few certainties that she thought she knew are undermined and Maddy has to grow up a bit more as she comes to terms with the new realities of her life. A great story for girls in particular, but it should attract readers of both genders with its action and characters. MP


Nest HHHHH


Esther Ehrlich, Oneworld Publications, 326pp, 978-1-78074-809-2, pbk


It’s 1972 in Cape Cod. Naomi Orenstein (known as Chirp, because her hobby is bird-watching) is aged eleven. She lives with her father, mother and older sister Rachel. Her mother is a dancer. Chirp is very close to her mother, slightly less so to her psychologist father. The family life is disrupted when mother is diagnosed with multiple


course of a dancing career. The illness brings on a nervous collapse and the mother must be moved to an institution her daughters call ‘the nuthouse’.


The


charts the efforts of the family to cope with this devastating situation and the ways in which relationships are formed and fragment. Chirp has a rare moment of elation at school when she earns admiration and applause from her teacher and her classmates by imitating the action of a bird she has observed. And at that moment out of the blue comes a life-changing event.


Ehrlich has a marked ability to construct a narrative that rings true, in part the result of her lead character’s authenticity, the language and idiom of the 1970s being convincingly captured. A child of eleven may have enough knowledge of the world to grasp events around her, but not enough to manage them effectively. Ehrlich gives Chirp exactly this measure of worldly knowledge.


Above all Ehrlich deals with the issues of physical and mental illness in a supremely balanced way. She neither dramatizes nor flinches.


RB remainder of Ehrlich’s novel sclerosis,


the end of


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