BfK 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary


John’s two ships, missing now for five years. In a trance, Ann draws what could be a map of their location. End notes by the author explain that the Coppins’ story is also true and that


Ann’s/Weesy’s map proved


remarkably accurate. Pierce has a gift for putting young readers at the heart of important moments in history in books including City of Fate and Behind the Walls. While filled with the same inspiring sense of real life events, this seems also to be asking questions about truth, perception and the stories we want to believe. FH


Troofriend HHHHH


Kirsty Applebaum, Nosy Crow, 208pp, 9781788003476, £6.99 pbk


Chasing Ghosts HHHH


Nicola Pierce, O’Brien Press, 978- 1788490177, 320pp, £7.99 pbk


There are two stories Pierce’s Chasing Ghosts and very much at all.


to Nicola at


first sight they don’t appear to link together


One


describes Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, the journey mostly seen through the eyes of his second-in-command, Francis Crozier. The second story is also a first person narrative in which young Ann Coppin describes the goings-on in her Derry family home following the death of her little sister Louisa, known to all as Weesy. Both are ghost stories: readers


discover the fate that befell Franklin’s expedition, how his two ships were trapped in ice for months until in desperation Crozier led the crew out to find help, only for them all to perish. Crozier’s voice is that of a dead man, while thousands of miles away in Derry, Weesy is haunting her family, and sister and brother in particular, mischievous


and sometimes


malevolent. The two narrative strands are equally vivid and gripping, and Pierce instils both with a matching sense of the totally prosaic (details of daily life) and the truly uncanny (the


strangeness of Franklin and


his crew recreating the setting of an upper-class


Victorian home in the


middle of an icy nowhere is constantly shocking; Weesy’s appearances genuinely creepy).


The despair and


physical agony experienced by Crozier chimes too with the tension and grief of the Coppins and Ann’s frustration at the limits set by on her by her parents, though readers may still find themselves waiting impatiently for the two stories to come together. All is finally made clear towards the


end of the book. During a séance, set up by her mother, Ann asks Weesy if she knows the whereabouts of Sir


Sarah’s parents decide that she


needs a robot friend to keep her company while they’re busy at work, and purchase a TrooFriend 560 Mark IV. After all, it is marketed as the better choice for children – a friend who won’t bully, harm, lie, or steal. Sarah names her robot Ivy, after the make number IV on her arm, and after initial reluctance, realises that Ivy will tidy her room for her, play games, and do her hair. But when Ivy starts coveting Sarah’s hair grips, and develops a fear of the dark, Sarah and Ivy wonder if the programming is faulty or whether Ivy is partly a sentient being. Told from Ivy’s point of view, this is


a gripping, pacey novel that challenges the reader, not by way of its prose, which is lucid and light, but with its pertinent questions about how we live, the role of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be a human. This future world is well described, with little details that bring it to life – the way Ivy notices hair colour in a robotic way: ‘Chestnut 29’; and reports on the weather whenever she is powered on. In the human sense, Kirsty Applebaum notes how stickers, pens and hairgrips are items of importance for children, and how so much of what we say and do isn’t literal, but is ambiguous and nuanced. By looking at artificial intelligence,


Applebaum pinpoints our humanity. Sarah is at first devious, using Ivy more as servant than friend. She switches Ivy off, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps of time, as Ivy isn’t aware of what’s happening while she’s powered down. Applebaum manipulates the reader’s sympathy too, as Ivy doesn’t realise


she’s being treated as a


servant. There is a perceptive play with patterns of speech: Ivy fails to pick up nuances of irony and sarcasm, yet notes an eye roll and scans her database for interpretations of this human behaviour.


Ivy’s speech is


robotic, and sounds as if it comes from a machine manual – which of course it


28 Books for Keeps No.242 May 2020


does. As Ivy grows more ‘human’, the reader becomes aware of her feelings, and grows more empathetic to both Sarah and Ivy. The writing is quietly disturbing


and powerful. It pinpoints how tricky it is to understand human behaviour and societal expectation, such as why utensils are used to eat fish but not chips, and also the nuances of friendship, including jealousy, feeling isolated, and understanding people’s motivations. Allusions to Chocky and Black


Mirror abound, and although the topics tackled are complex, Applebaum has a gift for applying them to a child’s mindset, as she did in her first novel, dystopian The Middler. She has a knack for portraying the sometime cruelty, but also sensitivity and thoughtfulness of children of this age. The book is a delight; with touches


of humour, and short chapters that move the plot along in a cumulative way, both in linear time but also in Ivy’s development. By the end the reader is thinking


about the dynamics of the core family structure, the


isolationism


that can occur from extensive use of technology, the benefits of tech, and the complications of human nature. The ending is hard to face – Applebaum has come up with a convincing solution to the problems she raises on a small scale, but leaves the reader wondering how to extrapolate this on a grand scale. Thought-provoking, gripping and ultimately necessary. CZ


Robin Hood HHHH


Robert Muchamore, Hot Key Books, 978-1471408618, 272pp, £6.99 pbk


In these testing times, we could all do with a dose of escapism and wish- fulfilment, and Robert Muchamore delivers magnificently in his new adventure, particularly if you happen to be a ten-year old boy.


Robin is a geeky twelve-year old, not particularly popular at


school,


not very cool but he has a couple of skills: he’s an enthusiastic hacker, and amazing with a bow and arrow. When I tell you his surname is Hood, you’ll get a good idea where the story is heading. Muchamore has reimagined the story of the hero of Sherwood Forest,


relocating it to


modern times where Guy Gisborne runs the Northamptonshire town of Locksley for his own personal profit and through a mix of corruption and out and out thuggery. The (female) Sherriff turns a blind eye, and the disadvantaged and refugees bear the brunt. Opposition comes in the form of bands of rebels, one of which is based in a derelict Designer Outlet deep in the forest, and they take Robin in when he’s forced to flee into hiding, having fired an arrow in Gisborne’s ‘nuts’ (ahem). As we’ve come to expect from Muchamore the action is pretty well non-stop and liberally sprinkled with humour, but there’s also a genuine sense


that injustice of the kind


represented by Gisborne needs to be tackled. There’s lots for girls to enjoy as well as boys – Marion Maid is much more than a sidekick, and I loved the fact that Robin completes his best act of robbing from the rich to give to the poor in the clothes of a ten-year old girl. Muchamore knows just how to keep the pages turning and this is the first in a series that promises quiverfulls of action and entertainment. Mma


Robert Muchamore answers our questions about Robin Hood here, and was the subject of our Authorgraph interview.


The Vanishing Trick HHHH


Jenni Spangler, Simon & Schuster, 294 pp, 978 1 4711 9037 7, £6.99, pbk


Leander is an orphan, always hungry and without a safe place to live. When he meets a stranger, who offers him food and shelter and the possibility of speaking to his dead mother again, he feels compelled to accept. Unfortunately, Leander soon discovers this help is in exchange for his only treasured possession, his mother’s locket. His benefactor is Madame Pinchbeck a medium, fortuneteller and spiritualist. Leander soon finds he has been tricked, when he hands over the locket Pinchbeck captures a part of his soul, enchants the locket and transforms it into a magical cabinet, in effect a prison in which Leander soon finds himself trapped to be summoned at will by his new mistress. Not only that but Leander discovers other children share his fate; a boy called Felix desperate to find his beloved brother and a girl called Charlotte eager to return to her uncle


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