BfK 10–14 Middle/Secondary The Lambton Curse HHH


Malachy Doyle, ill. Dylan Gibson, Barrington Stoke, 64pp, 978 1 84299 757 4, £5.99 pbk


Malachy Doyle has taken one of the oldest dragon legends of these islands and breathed new life into it with his retelling of the curse and the slaying of the worm. Young Lambton unleashes worm and curse; knights die attempting to kill worm; young Lambton kills it. Hardly complex, lacks a labyrinth, no great mythological tension. As such, Malachy Doyle has pitched his retelling where it should be – the result is a short tale divided into chapters that will have appeal to older children with a taste for history and the legendar y but who are less confident readers.


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love, and it is Lizzie who tells her story from her bed in an old people’s nursing home to another Karl.


The background to the war is convincingly drawn through the falling out of Mutti and Papi with Aunt Lotti and Uncle Manfred over the Nazis, and small incidents told about Jews having to wear yellow stars. These are not played down but seen from the child’s perspective, leaving the full impact to sink in as the reader travels through the stor y. Peter’s statement that London too was bombed brings a balance to events, as does the Countess’s help for refugees after her husband’s execution for his part in the July plot to kill Hitler. There is a moving extract from a letter her husband wrote about the bir th of a new Germany out of the ashes of horror. It is not clear whether that is a quote from a real document or not, but it emphasises the impact of war on ordinary people.


Michael Foreman’s grey pastel drawings and the double spaced text make this a very accessible novel, marvellous to read aloud to those who might not manage it by themselves. The presence of Marlene makes the fleeing from the atrocities of war somehow bearable both for Karli and Elizabeth and for the reader, not dumbing it down, but somehow adding to the unreal quality of it all, much as it must have been.


JFi Theodore Boone HHH


John Grisham, Hodder, 272pp, 978 1 444 71304 6, £12.99 hbk


There was plenty of Radio 4 coverage for this multi-million selling author turning his hand to books for teens and it sounded like he’s planning a series.


An Elephant in the Garden HHHHH


Michael Morpurgo, ill. Michael Foreman, HarperCollins, 240pp, 978 0 00 733957 0, £12.99 hbk


Morpurgo creates an incident packed story about the bombing of Dresden in 1944, using a favourite theme of an animal’s involvement in a war. This time it is Marlene, the elephant, whom Mutti looks after and about whom she is worried so she brings her home for the nights. But when the bombing of Dresden star ts, Mutti realises she has to get her children, Karli and Elizabeth, and Marlene out of Dresden to survive. They escape across the snow with very little food, using the icy streams to drink from, making for a relative’s farm. But here they find a Canadian airman, Peter, the only sur vivor of a Lancaster bomber shot down earlier. Peter helps save Karli’s life and changes Mutti’s opinion of him, and led by his compass they make for the American lines to escape the oncoming Russian Army. Elizabeth, who is 16, and Peter fall in


The precocious young hero knows more about the law than many lawyers and his playground and preferred milieu are in the local cour t complex. Not surprisingly his family are lawyers going back generations. In this tale he manages to make unenviable enemies by finding a crucial surprise witness to a scandalous local murder, where the dastardly husband looks set to go free. The scene is set for Theodore Boone II.


The novel is full of clearly explained legalise and the parents and uncle are charmingly eccentric and worthy; Theo is all right in a nerdy way and definitely well meaning but it is a bit short on page turning excitement. What thrills there are, are a bit over-blown and forced. Maybe he’ll do better next time! It will be enjoyed by lower and mid- secondary, but I’d wait for the paperback if it were me buying.


DB Spirit Hunter HHH


Katy Moran, Walker, 280pp, 978 1 4063 1728 2, £6.99 pbk


Set in unfamiliar territor y, both geographically and historically for most readers, including this one, the story of


26 Books for Keeps No.184 September 2010


Asena and Swiftarrow around 665 AD has a curiosity value added to the tale of their involvement with each other. Asena is a Shaiman, a person within the Horse Tribe who foresees events and is forbidden to love a boy. Swiftarrow, trained as a Shaolin, is a captive of the Empress of China who holds his beautiful sister in a ransom for his services. Swiftarrow is sent to lead General Li to the Horse Tribe to kill them and also to find another young tribesman or woman to train as a Shaolin. He sees Asena and she, being mesmerized by him, is unable to stop herself leading him to the tribe and sees her uncle killed and her father wounded. Asena is then taken to the Shaolin house and in the midst of her guilt comes to hate both herself and Swiftarrow, and vows to kill the Empress in revenge. The complicated plot, told in the alternate voices of Asena and Swiftarrow, comes to a conclusion with her attempt to murder the Empress and her subsequent flight to freedom with Swiftarrow.


The use of the alternate voices and the beautiful descriptions of the steppes and the Empress’s palace with its many cour tyards give the story a cinematic quality and do indeed paint pictures in the reader’s head. It was difficult to understand the historical background at first but after a while this did not matter too much and it is clarified by the notes at the end of the story. The inward spiritual life is not explored much in fiction but in this story becomes quite fascinating, and could well lead the reader on to explore Buddhism and other religions further. This book is not an easy read but becomes a rewarding one as one progresses further. One small point is that the girl on the cover does not look as eastern as one would expect from the setting.


JFi The Moonstone Legacy H


Diana de Gunzburg and Tony Wild, Pushkin Press, 304pp, 978 1 906548 21 6, £8.99 pbk


Coming across this novel makes me feel like a natural history explorer discovering a specimen long thought to be extinct. In style and content somewhere between Rider Haggard and Frances Hodgson Burnett, it bounces merrily along oblivious to any of the developments that have taken place in children’s literature during the last hundred years. Within its convoluted plot, faces drain of colour, blood runs cold, smiles (or sneers) ‘play’ across lips and crucial meetings take place in ‘a great oak panelled hall’ casting shadows across ‘immaculate lawns’. But rich and snobbish Aunt Lavinia and her bratty twins are no match for 14-year-old state-educated Lizzy, already an exper t horsewoman and friends to all. Her weedy father is not much help when it comes to solving the mystery of the family curse, but Uncle Peregrine, who has ‘ethereal grey eyes’ and wears an interesting


yellow tunic ‘that seems to button up both sides’ does better. Throw in a visit to India, during which Lizzy naturally comes to star in a film, plus the presence of adoring swains wherever she goes, and everything is set fair for the sor t of adventure that in its day The Girl’s Own Paper might have been proud to have published. Two more sequels are promised; it is to be hoped that the main characters in the future will not venture outside in the snow too often, given that on present form they seem in danger of sinking into the clichés that drop on them so liberally wherever they turn.


Wasted HHHHH


Nicola Morgan, Walker, 304pp, 978 1 4063 2195 1, £6.99 pbk


Nicola Morgan’s novel Wasted made me think of Scandinavian writer Tove Jansson’s thoughts on what makes a successful book for young readers: ‘Every children’s book should have a path in it where the writer stops and the child goes on.’ In Wasted, Morgan creates sympathetic, intelligent characters you really care about and when the book ends, you can hardly bear to leave their stories behind.


The story has two main characters, neither of whom has had an easy childhood: Jess has a mother who turns to the bottle when she finds it hard to cope with life and Jack has had two mothers who have died, about which he feels vaguely responsible. The pair meet by chance: Jack is playing in the school band and is in want of a singer; Jess leaves the door of the school practice room open and in a lucky moment he hears her beautiful voice. What develops is a love story that is charming and real.


The issue of whether our lives turn out the way they do because of luck, fate or choice is at the centre of this story. Jack believes in luck. In fact he lives his life by it and increasingly he chooses to let the toss of a coin make important decisions for him. And the narrative voice in the story continually invites the reader to get involved in this ‘heads or tails’ approach to life and teases us with the different possibilities that can arise if we leave things to chance.


But isn’t it the writer’s responsibility to construct a story for the reader, to tell us ‘what happens’? So I felt for several pages. I found it unsettling to be asked to take an active role in determining their fate. But the confidence of Morgan’s writing and the power of her characters kept me going. Towards the end, there were times when I found it both hard to put down and impossible to finish and I had to stop for a while before I could face the ending.


In a final twist of the tale which readers will find either intriguing or infuriating (or possibly both) the reader is instructed to play ‘Jack’s game’ – to toss a coin and depending


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