Island of Whispers by Frances Hardinge, illustrated Emily Gravett

Expectations

Frances Hardinge is one of the most original and imaginative writers for young (and older) people around. I have delighted in her work every since the first hiss of her Fly by Night goose. Her books are always quite wonderfully weird, idiosyncratic, and gripping in both style and content. Mostly fantasy, but sometimes with a historical context, they can be delightfully amusing, although often with a dark, disturbing edge too. Her recent The Unraveller is another triumph and I am sure it will thrill even more readers now that it is out as a (particularly ravishing) paperback.

Those who know her work are unlikely, then, to be misled by the superficial appearance of this new book, although others just might be. At first glance, the format, layout and overall style of Island of Whispers gives the feeling that it is one of those lovely books of beautifully illustrated Fairy Tales. And so, perhaps it is, certainly if you remember that the world of genuine Fairy Tale was often rather dark and disturbing, before so much of it was sanitised as bedtime stories for young children. But this new book is certainly not sleepy time fare for tinies - unless, that is, they are possessed  of remarkably mature and robust emotional and imaginative intelligence. 

Emily Gravett’s powerful pictures too - strong, print-like images in simple black and white, supplemented with just two shades of blue - seem to have a  feel of Fairy Tale. However, enchanting although they undoubtedly are, looking at them carefully, reveals that they echo the text closely with a good many touches of the darkly gothic. Indeed they become positively ghoulish with the introduction, part way through, of the headless birds. 

Dark brilliance 

However many older children (and many teens and adults too) will revel in this macabre weirdness and appreciate it for the superbly imaginative, and subtly nuanced, verbal and visual treasure that it is. Although Frances Hardinge is never anything but her own writer, for the sake of comparison I might initially be tempted to shelve this book alongside Neil Gaiman’s  The Sleeper and the Spindle, itself a stunning but rather scary book, enhanced throughout by some of Chris Riddell’s finest illustrations - and that’s saying something.

Unlike Neil Gaiman’s story however, Frances Hardinge’s is not even loosely based on well known Fairy Tale but rather grounded in even more ancient-feeling legends and beliefs about the Ferryman of Souls and the shoes of the dead. On second thoughts, Island of Whispers is perhaps more of a distant cousin to Sophie Anderson’s unmissable The House With Chicken Legs, and, like that story, it is actually more thoughtful than nightmarish; ultimately more comforting than the impression its rather morbid content initially gives.

The ferryman 

Independent of any specifically religious connotations, Island of Whispers is certainly about death, and the passage of remnant ‘ghosts’ on to whatever comes next for them. After the murder of his ferryman father and kidnap of  his older brother, more sensitive younger son Milo is left with the task of ferrying the dead across real and ethereal seas to the island where they can pass on. However Frances Hardinge’s story ultimate develops to be much like the figurehead of the ‘Evening Mare’, the ferry boat that Milo unwillingly inherits:

‘Not a nightmare. Nor yet a daydream. In between and half awake. A dusk-slider. A twilight voyager, sailing the seam between worlds.’ (p 29)

Both Frances Hardinge’s storyline and her writing are full of surprising felicities, cleverness of thought and skilfulness of wordcraft. It frequently send thrills of delight though this reader, and I suspect will similarly impress countless others too.

‘Falter-moths, grief winged. Things of doubt and confusion that feed on loss. If you touch them they will feed on you.’ (p 56)

A matter of life and death

For all its dark images and grim context the overall story is a warm and reassuring one. It courageously confronts mortality and, within its Fairy Tale frame, does not shy away from associated fear and anguish. But it also speaks sympathetically of grief and bereavement, very movingly at times. Milo’s feelings for his lost father are particularly affecting, albeit briefly caught.

 

‘The worst thing about losing somebody is that, even after you survive a difficult day, the next morning the person you miss is still gone, and you have to get through another day without them.’  (p 108)

However, it also celebrates many positives in life, poems and stories, treasured memories, the release of honest confession. It exudes empathy together with that gift that Frances Hardinge both has and gives in spades, imagination. And, above all, it speaks of simple kindness.

‘Kindness is not weakness. To be kind in this unkind world is walking through a battlefield without armour or sword. It takes courage and strength to be kind.’ (p 82)

In the end, there are metaphysics too, for any who want them, speculations on eternity and the sands of time. But for those who prefer, there is the eternal ending of story, the reminder that love and kindness will always triumph over the blackest of magic. And when the dead take up their shoes and move towards whatever release awaits them, for this reader at least, it is the stringed acorns of the shoeless pauper that provoked an inner tear. 

The final exhortation of the story is to make memories whilst you can - and that is a wonderful thought to be left with by a truly wonderful book. Slim it may be, but it is anything but slight. It is heading straight onto my list for Books of the Year.

Jacketless

Finally, a minor gripe to the publishers. As someone who likes to collect the best children’s books, as well as read them, I am always disappointed when something very special is produced without a dust jacket. This lovely volume will in the future always feature on collectable listings with ‘no jacket, as issued’, which is sad. Nevertheless, this is a most treasurable book, otherwise outstanding in production quality.

Wolf Road by Alice Roberts

A story of history

I must admit, I tend to avoid children’s fiction from celebrity writers. However, Alice Roberts has considerable authority as an anthropologist and prehistorian, in addition to being a prominent TV presenter, so I though this one might be worth a read.

On the cover Alice Roberts is described as ‘a fine storyteller’, but her book is not some fictional masterwork. Rather the story that she tells is the story of history, specifically, here, that of life in the far distant Palaeolithic. What she does is to add her imagination to secure knowledge of both prehistory and parallel modern environments to bring a distant time to life. Her narrative is packed with detail and description of Early Stone Age people, of their way of life and of the landscape and nature that defined it. Indeed, sometimes the detail is rather heavily piled on. Nevertheless, she pictures the past for us and inhabits it with what feel like real flesh and blood people. However the dialogue and attitudes of her characters, particularly those of her young protagonists, can seem rather anachronistically modern. I think perhaps the author is trying to make them relatable to her young audience, and this is a creditable ambition, but it is not altogether convincing here.

Just imagine it

Wolf Road is not the book for young readers hoping for an engrossing adventure set in prehistory; for this, they would be far better to turn to Michelle Paver’s superb Wolf Brother series. Despite some dramatic incidents, and even some affecting ones, this story remains essentially a string of events held together by a seasonal journey of the nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe it features. But is is important to value it for what it is, not for what it is not. I welcome books which will ignite and stimulate children’s imagination and that is what this one could do. Those young readers who are prepared to lose themselves in life as it might have been experienced in the remote past will learn much, and may well be stimulated to further interests too.

Just picture it

It has to be said that Wolf Road is a very beautiful physical book, especially in its wonderful independent bookshop edition. Stencilled edges notwithstanding, its major attraction comes in the form of Keith Robinson’s brilliant illustrations. His charcoal drawing are just wonderfully evocative of the story’s landscape, characters and animals. They are stunningly and quite hauntingly atmospheric and I only wish there were even more of them.  Their contribution to the overall book is considerable.

Better still

However, for a more convincing feel of early prehistory, combined with far finer fiction, I would unhesitatingly recommend a work from back in 1998, Peter Dickinson’s superb The Kin. Of course, we cannot know exactly how very early humans spoke, and I am neither a historian nor a specialist in ancient language, but the dialogue in The Kin, built around a simple vocabulary of immediate need, seems to me much more credible. The sweep of Peter Dickinson’s whole epic narrative is certainly more involving, emotionally and imaginatively. Sadly, The Kin is currently out of print, as is much of the work of Peter Dickinson, one of children’s literature’s finest authors*, but I am sure it could be tracked down second hand.

*Although some fine titles of his are still available on Kindle.

Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

Illustration: Celia Krampien

This is one of those rare books that I picked up and read the first couple of pages, just to get a feel of what it might be like, then hardly put it back down until I’d finished it. It’s that engaging!

Very American - and why wouldn’t it be?

However it does come with a bit of a warning. Although the author now lives in Canada, this is an American book. Now I am a great admirer of a number of American children’s authors, including this one, but their books can be difficult to get hold of over here However, Simon Sort Of Says, seems, thankfully, to be accessible at present through several of the major UK online booksellers*.That’s not the thing though. You see, some American books are very American, some moderately so, and others, to us, feel almost familiar. The thing is that this is one of the ones that is VERY American. To read it UK kids will need to have seen loads of US TV shows and films (sorry, movies) and the like. But, actually,most of them have, so, probably this isn’t a thing after all. And even if the odd word (or ten!) isn’t familiar, then a bit of contextual guessing supplemented by a little googling only adds to the fun.

American humour- and very funny it is too

Having got that out of the way, I can say is that this book is really (and I mean REALLY) funny. As long as you can appreciate it, it exudes that very classicallyAmerican, riotous humour that combines brilliant dry wit with ludicrously farcical situations. (If you can think updated Marx Brothers, but with smart-ass kids, then you are kinda getting there.)

The hyper-imaginative, if ludicrous, setting for all this hilarity is provided when protagonist Simon moves with his family to the fictional small Nebraska town of ‘Grin and Bear It’ where the internet and other forms of electronic device are banned so that resident radio astronomers can listen out for signals from outer space. Simon’s mother is a funeral director, and their new home is the upstairs of her business premises (with occasional corpses downstairs, a basement piled with jars of embalming fluid, and a mightily vicious peacock already resident in the surrounding ‘garden of rest’. Meanwhile his sackbut-playing father holds the position of assistant priest at a local Catholic church where (controversial) disaster strikes when an intrusive squirrel gnaws through the communion box and consumes the consecrated host, becoming what Simon’s mother irreverently describes as ‘thirty percent Jesus by volume.’

The plot that eventually emerges out of this mayhem concerns Simon himself  (‘Clearly I’m not the brains of the outfit. I’m the snacks and repressed trauma of the outfit,’), and two new friends, goat farmer’s daughter, Agate (‘both cool and a tiny bit serial killer’) and super-bright, Astro-physicist’s  son, Kevin, (‘red shirt with green hair . . . his extreme skinniness makes him look like The Grinch Who Stole Football Tickets’). Together they try to try to fool the listening astrophysicists by faking  signals from an alien intelligence (with the best of motives). There’s a puppy, a trainee assistance dog, in there too, just to add a touch of adorable warmth to the mix, not to mention a farm-full of rampant, recalcitrant emus.

A particularly American issue - or is it?

Yet humour is not all that this book is about, not by a long way. It has a devastatingly serious core. It soon becomes clear that Simon has experienced some sort of trauma, resulting in him and his family having to try to deal with his regular debilitating panic attacks. It gradually emerges that he was the only survivor of a mass shooting of children in his former school class. The family move has been to try to give him a fresh start away from constant media attention, as well as from his continual reliving of the trauma. Initially he copes, but things reach a new low when the small community of which he is now part, including the kids in his new school class, learn about his past. 

This intertwining of deeply serious issues and riotous comedy is quite brilliantly, as well as sensitively, handled by this skilled author, and the book is as thoughtfully affecting as it is entertaining. Simon desperately wants to be treated as the person he is now, not as some sort of notorious sympathy figure, ‘the kid who survived’.

I particularly like the way Erin Bow ends this story, not by frantically tying up lose ends, and certainly not by providing a sentimentally optimistic resolution to everything. What she does show is that time, resilience and the support of true friends can begin to lead towards healing. And this is a wonderful message for readers to take away.

A book to fall for

This is writing of a particular style that American writers do wonderfully well. Maybe it is a kind of writing that only American writers can do.  Certainly no one  (even Americans) does it better than Erin Bow does here. Grab it whilst you can for a very particular reading treat - a book that is wildly funny yet, in and amongst, thoughtful in a profoundly human, compassionate and inclusive way. Mass school shootings may be a particularly American issue (although sadly not exclusively) and we here in UK should be hugely grateful for our own much stricter gun control. But extreme anxiety in children, resulting from traumatic or other disturbing experience is found here too. This  book helps us all to understand those affected (and ourselves) better, which is a most valuable thing. At an even more universal level, it is a celebration of the healing power of family and friends, and how worth reading and sharing is that. 

Helping to make this physical book a particularly beautiful object, Celia Krampien’s striking cover illustration captures brilliantly many of the story’s key elements and qualities.

*Amazon, but also Blackwell’s or Waterstones online.

The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow

‘it’s the darkness that switches on the lights’

About poems and novels 

I was hugely taken with Matt Goodfellow’s recent book of poetry, Let’s Chase Stars Together (reviewed here August ‘23), so I have been waiting eagerly for this new book to come out. I was not disappointed. The Final Year goes straight into my Books of the Year and really should not be missed.

Novels told through a linked sequence of poems (as opposed to long narrative verse*) have become something of a thing recently. In the case of the best ones, it is a stunningly good thing too. However most of the truly outstanding examples are more YA books than true children’s (MG). The very best YA examples are, in my view, two by Paul Coelho, The Girl Who Became a Tree and The Boy Lost in the Maze. Both are challenging, the latter particularly, but they are also staggeringly wonderful. 

There are a few good MG examples though. Probably the best are Love that Dog, from outstanding American author, Sharon Creech and The Way of Dog, from Australian children’s writer, Zana Fraillon.**

Until now, that is, because, for me, Matt Goodfellow’s new book jumps right to the top of this distinguished little pile. What makes it so very special? Firstly, it succeeds both as outstanding poetry and outstanding fiction, with the one totally integral to the other. This story could not be told as effectively, or as effectingly,  in any other way. Further, both of the ‘dog’ books mentioned above sometimes teeter on the verge of sentimentality. The Final Year is, at times, highly charged emotionally, but it is never sentimental.

About a boy

Nathan (Nate) is the book’s narrator and the poems which collectively constitute the novel are purportedly his. Matt Goodfellow catches the voice of this young working-class boy brilliantly, with enough school-kid-speak to convince, without it being intrusive. But it is not only Nate’s playground language that is so compelling. Here is the authentic thinking and behaviour of a 10/11-year-old, a complex interaction of naivety and awareness, expressed through a refreshing honesty and directness that can often provoke the reader to laugh with (but rarely at) him. Equally, it can induce real pathos and, above all, engender rich identification. Nate is a boy with a challenging home life, and his own ‘beast’ too, but his experience of moving from the end of Year 5 through his final year in primary and up to the start  of secondary school will contain much that so many children will know, or come to know.

About words

Yet one of the many very remarkable things about this book, is that, at the same time as convincing us completely of Nate’s voice, Matt Goodfellow succeeds in crafting some exceptionally good poetry. Real poetry, not simplistic verse. Real poetry which says things that matter and says them powerfully, potently.There are many moments of tender poignancy, some of devastating awfulness  -  and some that are both, and one. 

He uses rhyme to particular effect, but doesn’t overuse it. He can play with words cleverly, sometimes subtly ( ‘prison’ exchanged for ‘prisom’ on p 54). He arranges words and lines in telling rhythms and patterns, pulling an emotional punch until it lands in the gut. But more than anything he condenses experience into a small number words, perfectly chosen to capture the experience of a telling moment, and to cut straight to the heart. 

In one episode of his excellent podcast, Just One Poem, another poet, Dom Conlon, says: ‘Show me a poem that runs over two pages and I’ll question the poet’s commitment to the craft. Brevity is the brief.’ Although there are actually many exceptions to this, I do know what he means. A good poem does not simply recount or record, it distills. If a good novel is a gastronomic feast, then a poem is the essence of a flavour. But it brings you to smell, to taste, to know that flavour as an intense, shared experience. And that is exactly what Matt Goodfellow’s poems do here. Each is a brief but intense evocation of a thought, a feeling, a hope, a fear, a day, a lifetime. The result is that you only have to read a few dozen words, before you know Nate, his family and friends intimately. You can picture his home, his school, his classroom, his teachers. You share so much. Because of this intensity, you feel so much tragedy and so much joy, so much humanity, through the eyes of one eleven-year-old boy. Prepare to shed tears. 

Many things shine through this thrilling writing, Matt Goodfellow’s own intimate and revealing insight into English primary school life, his thorough research and sensitive handling of the childhood physical and psychological conditions he covers, but perhaps most of all, his deep understanding of children and how they think and feel.

About wings

Running through this novel is an enthusiastic recommendation for David Almond, which is just tremendous. I love Nate’s (Matt Goodfellow’s) taste in books. References to Skellig  particularly permeate the work; references to the book itself,  to its story, its characters and its symbolism. both explicitly and sometimes more obliquely. It is a real homage to Skellig, but above all, is is is an exploration of the ways in which a great book can influence and support a young life., lend its images to reality, heal real pains, support real growth and feed real aspirations.

The Final Year needs to be read to and with Y6 children across the country, and I am sure it often will be. When it is, it will encourage many to try David Almond’s books too, especially Skellig. And, if and when they do read Skellig, they will be able to close the circle and return to re-read The Final Year. They will then be able to hear more of it resonances and appreciate even more of its layers. Ultimately, both books will allow countless children to grow with and through them.

But the remarkable thing about The Final Year, the most remarkable thing of all, is that the whole story, the story itself, is a poem. It captures experience with hyper intensity. It reaches into the heart of things.

It is darkness that turns on light.

It is a boy who is yet too young and already too old.

It is the wondrous magic of books and libraries.

It is moving up and moving on.

It is friends who are and aren’t, and always were.

It is a child who is a mother and a mother who is a child (but still loving, in her way)

It is all the huge potential of drawing and writing, of writing poems.

Its everything that is bad about school and all that can (sometimes) be good.

It is ‘you’ve never seen Christmas til you’ve seen it in a primary school’.

It is finding our people - and ourselves.

It is feathers moving in the wind, 

Matt Goodfellow offers his young readers a very special gift: Wings and words. And, in consequence, some of those readers will grow them and some will write them - and some will do both.

What a wonderful gift it is.

Wings and words.

About pictures too

Fulsome praise is due too to Joe Todd-Stanton’s illustrations. Superficially simple, but really ever so clever, they capture with remarkable transparency the emotions of honest, open Nate as he passes through so much over the course of the narrative. They too hold a moment in freeze-frame and let us see it for what it is. They too just jerk our hearts. It is all in the detail of posture and placement, of an expression so simply but so tellingly conveyed. A football, a book, a hand on a shoulder, a flush on a cheek, can be just as poignant as the lurking beast or an unfurled wing - and that is saying something. This illustrator gets it all. His contribution is huge, and breathtaking.

Notes:

* There is nothing at all wrong with this, just that I see it as something rather different.

** Thankfully, both are published here in the UK, as is another more recent Sharon Creech example, Moo. This is a delightful book too,  although it perhaps edges a little closer to narrative verse.

Sweet Skies by Robin Scott-Elliot

Cover: Holly Ovenden

‘The problem with being a Berliner in 1948 - there was only so much daydreaming possible before reality came banging at the door.’ (p 69)

Berlin skies

Robin Scott-Elliot’s considerable talent is in building highly engaging stories around real periods and events in history. His novels are ‘historical fiction’ that is genuinely, and brilliantly, both. And this, his latest, is most certainly no exception. 

Although there have been many children’s novels set around WWII (some of them truly outstanding) I can’t think of much at all about Berlin in the years following the war. But now we have two come out at more or less the same time. They are very different though, and both exceptionally good. Dan Smith’s recent The Wall Between Us* is, as the title suggest, about life during the period of the Berlin Wall. Sweet Skies is, however, set a little earlier, at the time of the Russian blockade of West Berlin. 

Dark skies

At the centre of this story are three young West Berliners in 1948, all poorly-clothed and skinny, like most of the city’s children. Protagonist, Otto, is now missing an eye and wears a patch, his friend Karl lost a leg and walks on crutches, whilst Ilse is an orphan living in a derelict cellar. All three characters are beautifully drawn; they spring vividly off the page and into the reader’s imagination. In a way they represent all that has been experienced and endured by children living through war, including the devastating bombing of their home city. And now they have the almost equally terrifying close presence of the hostile Russians, entrenched in their own Eastern sector of the city. Currently the Russians are completely blockading the isolated West Berlin and preventing food supplies from entering..  

Equally powerfully evoked is Berlin itself, the sad, tense and often dangerous shell of what was previously a thriving, vibrant, city. With seven out of ten houses damaged and most of the centre of the of the city utterly flattened, these often cellar-dwelling kids live literally in and under a rubble field, their days’ soundtrack the mechanical din of desperate clearing and rebuilding. Add the intense pressure of the partitioned Berlin, intimately hemmed in  by the hostile Russians, defined by  bleak poverty and rife with desperate black marketeers.

Candy skies

To these surviving kids the saviours are the Brits, and even more especially the Americans. Otto particularly has caught something of the American Dream. He watches the US planes fly in daily with the food supplies West Berlin so badly needs and he dreams of being a pilot, perhaps even one day of escaping altogether to the ‘land of opportunity’.

But for the immediate present there is chocolate, candy dropped on makeshift handkerchief parachutes by incoming US supply planes and chased by eagerly waiting young hands. 

For a readership of today’s children, who take sweets and chocolate almost for granted as part of everyday life, it takes remarkable writing skill to capture every moment of anticipation, each stage of savoured experience for children who have hardly ever eaten chocolate before. But that is exactly what Robin Scott-Elliot does. We share with our three young Berliners the intense sensory pleasure of Hershey bars, the wondrous flavours of American candy and the totally new phenomenon of chewing gum. 

Storm skies

For Otto though, there is far more tragic, devastating experience on the way when his former war hero father is unexpectedly returned from prison in Russia. Not only is he physically broken, but unable to adapt to the Berlin he finds, or to his drastically affected hone life.

‘“ I don’t think my father is well - it’s the camps, in Russia, the war, I don’t know.”

 “ I think the war does that to fathers. And mothers . . . And us. It hurts us all, outside and inside.”’ (p 218)

Otto finds himself on the brutally sharp end of his damaged father’s frustrations. There are several heart-rending scenes in a relationship that also represents what has been destroyed, perhaps irreparably, by war. For Otto, and the other children, there are still bitter skies here as well as sweet ones. 

All of this has much to teach us about both the generalities of war and the specifics of post-war Berlin, but that does not exclude Sweet Skies being an exciting and highly engaging story too. The children have to try to survive as best they can, and Otto has his ambitions to pursue - at almost any cost. Their escapades with friendly, but ultimately unreliable, American airmen, with a German quisling and particularly with a dangerous Russian spymaster, could turn out to be genuinely deadly. 

Dramatic skies

This is a gripping, gut-punching story; thrilling but also so much more . It is about war and the effects of war. It is deeply important. It helps us see the aftermath WWII from  very different perspective. The way it also highlights the very real jeopardy in relationships with Russia that were to develop into the Cold War (and re-emerge in our own time) makes it highly relevant too.

The skies over Berlin were for a long time black and this novel helps us to share that experience, if only vicariously. The sweet skies of dropped candy did and do bring elements of hope, and promise, without being unrealistically sentimental. This book enriches us all, just as war impoverishes humanity.

The cover by Holly Ovenden skilfully combines many elements of this novel in one compelling image. The reproduced photographs add further to its authenticity, reminding us starkly that although the story is fictional the human truths, frailties, horrors and tragedies it captures are all too real. It is a fine book.

Play by Luke Palmer

Contains scenes that may . . .

This is very much a book for teens+, about, but not solely for, those in the chrysalis stage of male development, neither still child nor quite yet adult. I predict it will very quickly become a must-read for fans of  Patrick Ness, Marcus Sedgwick, or indeed the many admirers of Luke Palmer’s own deservedly acclaimed first novel Grow. 

It is a hard-hitting story about four boys as they move through their years of secondary school. Despite very different social backgrounds, and indeed personalities, they have remained a group of close friends since primary school. They entertain themselves by inventing and playing a variety of ‘games’, many of which would not really be recognised as games at all by some people. This is a realistic, gut-punching narrative about boys whose high-spirited behaviour is often ‘anti-social’, at times what some might call ‘delinquent’. But every page of it rings true and these characters and their dialogue are brilliantly evoked with real depth and insight. Narration is divided between them and the distinct voice of each is caught tellingly. It is not long into the book before you can see and hear each as a vivid presence in their world - and ours.

Not one thing. Nor yet . . . 

Rugby-playing Luc, is bullied into almost toxic masculinity by his overbearing father: Matt is artistic, intelligent, gay and supported by liberal, if distant,  parents; Mark from the most deprived home of the four, has little support at all and is lured into criminal ‘business’ way over his head; and affluent, but neglected, mad-cap Johnny, well, he is . . . Johnny.

The novel covers issues of developing sexuality, of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as the easy road these bring for some youngsters into serious criminalisation. It is a book of which I think some parents will disapprove, and very probably some teachers too, but that is exactly why they should read it. It is also a big part of what makes it great. Together with cleverly layered, multi-perspective narration and its compelling storytelling, its graphic honesty is the very reason its intended audience will appreciate it so enthusiastically. Many young people will recognise this as real life. They will identify with one or other of its characters and those who don’t will know kids who are very like them. 

Playing . . .

Yet there is far more to Luke Palmer’s ultimately remarkable book than this. The narrative is replete with potent, even poetic, images, many disturbing, yet quietly infiltrated by a little optimism. There are dens elaborately constructed and then deliberately brought down around their builders’ heads; the heathland of the boys’ escapades is encroached by noxious landfill; a tin of childish treasure turns to maggoty decay; yet the detritus from youthful play is transformed into embryonic art. 

And as the cataclysmic climax rushes towards us through the accelerating pace of ‘chapters’ that become shorter and shorter, the narrative suddenly falls into a metaphysical vision that is the book’s real heart. All its street-wise, school-wise, adolescent grit tumbles into spirituality. This is no mere story of athlete, artist, entrepreneur and  . . . Who? What? Angel? Daredevil? Fool? The ultimate gamer? The one who makes (or breaks) the rules? The one who pulls the whole construction down on top of himself?

In Play life is game. Story is play. Play is not play. Reality and fiction are one, and neither. It is fate and circumstance, happenstance and predetermination , nothing possible and everything possible. It is the infinitesimal gap between ‘nowhere’ and ‘now here’.

It is a great read and a fine piece of literature (and would make a stunning film too).

The cover by Anne Glenn is not only a brilliant, striking image, but also a very clever one. She really understands this book. Which one is jumping? No brainier once you’ve read it.

(Having read as many of his poems as I can find in the net, I look forward enormously to Luke Palmer’s first full collection of poetry to be published in 2024.)

Children of Winter by Berlie Doherty (new edition)

Cover: Tamsin Rosewell

Berlie Doherty has been creating wonderful children’s literature for us for fifty years now and it was thrilling to have a new book from her, The Haunted Hills, only last year. A very fi book it is too. (See my review from November ‘22.) 

Now I am delighted to see one of my absolute favourite of her older titles, Children of Winter, attractively re-published for a new audience. No one visiting the Derbyshire Peak District should miss this captivating historical novel, centred around the Eyam plague of 1665. For any readers at all though, this is a lovely example of how to build an engaging, affecting human story around past events, whilst still showing full respect to history.

Reading the novel again reminded me how skilfully Berlie Doherty’s language is crafted, never as an end in itself, but always in the service of her evocative storytelling. Derbyshire has often been at the rich heart of her work and is, I think, very much in its soul. However, because of her deep humanity, her appeal is universal and both these books are a perfect reflection of her very special qualities as a writer. We should be hugely grateful to uclan publishing, and of course to the author herself, for bringing them to us. We diminish literature and ourselves if we lose the old even as we embrace the new.

Storyland (Children’s Version) by Amy Jeffs

Illustrated by the author 

Now for children 

I both admired and enjoyed the adult edition of this book when it came out in 2021, so to now have an adapted children’s version on the way is very welcome indeed. The ‘British’ myths and legends Amy Jeffs has collected together, in these authentic but now very accessible tellings, are probably far less well known than their ‘Celtic’ counterparts. Certainly there are a good number of excellent children’s versions of the latter around (some beautifully illustrated too) but the tales assembled here are just as much part of our history and heritage, so it is excellent that our children will now have a chance to get to know them as well. Many elements of these old stories also feature in literature (both adults and children’s) and they sometimes permeate other media and popular culture too, so knowing them will help enrich children’s present and future appreciation. More than anything, though, these stories are part of who we are, not only as present inhabitants of Britain but also as human beings. And we will all be richer for knowing them.

Food for the imagination 

Even more important for young readers perhaps, these varied stories of giants and dragons, kings, prophecies, magic and adventure, make hugely entertaining reads. Often strange, even enigmatic, they are wonderful food for the imagination. Were I still teaching I would wish to read them aloud often to children and use them as stimulus material in a wide variety of ways. Perhaps surprisingly for ‘British’ legends they show considerable influence of other countries and cultures and will also help establish the understanding that what we call British is actually a rich melange of different peoples and cultures - and is far the better for being so. The same applies to the appearance is several strong women characters, the (supposed?) social conventions of the times notwithstanding.

Then and now 

The Mediaeval period, from which the sources of these stories have been gleaned, is simply but effectively caught in the introductory section, with the conventions that led to a culture of storytelling nicely conveyed from a child’s perspective. I particularly like the way that, even though the social and gender expectations of this period were narrow and rigid, nod is given to modern sensibilities, by implying that today’s children may well (quite rightly) not be prepared to accept them. It is, I think, a good example of the way this book has been cleverly and most suitably adapted to its contemporary young audience.

I love too the way that legend and history are interleaved, with proper distinction made between the two, even whilst acknowledging that this may not always be totally clear cut after all. This is a book that offers young readers much food for thought as well as engaging entertainment.

Amy Jeff’s has again provided her own illustrations in striking woodcut style, adding some entertaining new vignettes and many page margin decorations, whilst also retaining some of the larger images from her adult book. These serve wonderfully to maintain a certain archaic feel whilst still appealing to contemporary sensibilities. They too both feed and provoke the imagination magically. The whole is a stunningly beautiful, treasurable volume. No school should be without it and many homes will be considerably enriched by it, taking a most valuable place alongside collections of myths and legends from the rich Black and Asian cultures too.