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.