Finn Jones Was Here by Simon James Green

Cover and illustrations: Jennifer Jamieson

It’s your funeral

I wonder how many MG or YA books open with the main character attending their best friend’s funeral? There surely can’t be that many. Yet happenstance has brought me one after the other.

However there are few other direct similarities between this and the last  book I reviewed. (Treacle Town by Brian Conaghan). For starters Finn Jones Was Here is suitable for a much younger readership; it sits comfortably within the MG range  Simon James Green deals with death and bereavement with a much lighter, often very funny, touch. If indeed you can consider death and bereavement light. But then that is exactly the very clever coup that this talented writer pulls off. Although charmingly entertaining, his book is far from superficial. Nor is it sentimental. In fact it treats its situation and characters with enormous sensitivity and understanding, making this an important read as well as a highly entertaining one. Constantly balanced on the knife edge between giggles and grief, it is often deeply affecting and ultimately life-affirming.

Sadly, many children will experience loss, be it of a grandparent, other family member, friend, or even a loved pet. And it is never easy for them to cope. Even for those who are fortunate enough not to encounter personal loss in their early years, it is important to understand the feelings of others who have. There are actually a good many children’s novels around that help deal with bereavement and the best are outstanding works of literature. Now Finn Jones Was Here has joined the ranks of these important books. Indeed, for a highly engaging, accessible read that offers consolation, in a way that this age group will be able to understand and talk about, it is hard to better.

A very special author

Simon James Green himself has already made a significant contribution to fiction for children and teens. His YA titles are hugely important (as well as enjoyable) in that they have brought stories with gay characters and themes into the mainstream and led to their availability in many schools and libraries. These books are helping enormously to bring diversity, inclusion and a more open society, as well as benefiting countless individuals who need to be able to find themselves in books. At the same time he has written several outstanding MG titles, to which he has now added another.

Protagonist Eric’s very close friend Finn has recently been lost through incurable illness, but has left a series of ‘treasure hunt’ clues for Eric to follow.These begin with the invitation to turn up to Finn’s funeral dressed as a unicorn, with inevitable hilarious consequences. The whole scenario initially reinforces Eric in the conviction that his friend is still alive somewhere and pulling a crazy stunt. For the reader, amusement is offset from the outset by the painful suspicion that Eric is simply avoiding a reality he does not wish to face.  However, it takes Eric most of the book to work towards this acceptance. At one stage, I did find myself wondering whether the author was going to be able to sustain this scenario for an entire novel. However, I need not have worried. Simon James Green keeps Eric’s story developing through a whole sequence of significant (and funny) activities. At the same time he reveals increasing detail of Eric’s earlier relationship with Finn in a series of nicely integrated flashbacks. Confirming the quality of this novel, the discoveries Eric makes about himself and about life (as well as death) are profoundly and universally human. And everything is brought about through the selflessly huge spirit of Finn. 

Images matter

Also importantly, the author here provides positive portraits of boys who are sensitive and loving, with imagination and flair, and this carries the vital, subliminal message that boys can be many things and should not let themselves be coerced into conforming to narrow stereotypes and prejudiced expectations. All have the need, and the right, simply to be themselves. 

Jennifer Jamieson’s illustrations enliven the text wonderfully, reflecting its warm humour whilst still allowing space for its poignant sensitivity.

This is a  book for all libraries, many upper primary classrooms, and hopefully lots of homes too. 

Treacle Town by Brian Conaghan

Definitely YA

Brian Conaghan has recently written two outstanding MG novels: Cardboard Cowboys and Swimming on the Moon. However, it is perhaps in YA fiction that his greatest work of all is to be found (and he is certainly a great writer) because it is here that he can give full reign to his most hard-hitting, gritty storytelling. His latest book Treacle Town carries a warning, ‘Not suitable for younger readers’, which is certainly apt. It is a down and dirty, punch in the gut of a book, bravely, brutally honest, emotionally harrowing. Yet its ‘Not suitable for younger readers’ statement seriously needs balancing with, ‘Unmissable for others.’

Messages

At its heart, this book carries many of the liberal messages of diversity, inclusion and anti-violence that are to be found in many quality works of YA fiction. It even includes a strong plug for books and libraries. Of course, these are right and important messages for books to promote. They are the messages our society and our world needs. They are, therefore, the messages young readers should indeed be faced with. And it does not matter if they have been said many times before. They need to be heard over and over again so that they become accepted by all and not just by some. But what makes Treacle Town so very special is the context from which these messages emerge and the voice through which they are expressed.

The place

Eighteen year-old protagonist Con O’Neill has grown up in Coatbridge, just outside Glasgow, an area of social and economic deprivation. His response to a group organiser ‘particularly interested in attracting people from disadvantaged areas’ is:

‘. . . does having a town chocka with charity and We Buy Gold shops constitute disadvantaged to you? . . . does having a town piled to the gunnels with deserted junky pads and crumbling high-rises represent disadvantaged to you? . . . does a town who plies its weans with pish food cos that’s all they can afford signal disadvantaged to you? See, if all these boxes can be ticked then I’m exactly the guy you’re after.’ (p 64)

And in many ways Con is the product of that environment. He largely failed at school. Still unemployed, his principal recreation has been to hang about the streets with his ‘team’ of mates,  He has been involved in extensive and excessive drinking and drug-taking, as well as shop lifting. He and his contemporaries are obsessed with wearing the ‘right’ designer gear.  In addition to this, he faces other emotional deprivations. His mother committed suicide relatively recently and he is now largely neglected by his body-building obsessed father. 

So near to Glasgow, his neighbourhood is viciously rifted along an entrenched religio-cultural, Celtic/Rangers divide. As nominal Roman Catholics, Con and his team have often been involved in violent street conflict with gangs of youths from the opposing faction. In fact, the shocking and immediately devastating opening of the novel finds Con at the funeral of his best mate ‘Biscuit’, the victim of knife crime by their deadly rivals.

Soaked in the language of these dismal streets and the youths who inhabit them, Brian Conaghan’s writing conjures this world with gripping vibrancy. In the canon of YA literature, there are, and have been, only a  few other writers with the knowledge, understanding  and skill to represent this significant element of our society with such convincing and devastating honesty. His narrative portrays and penetrates these lives with shattering intensity.

Wanting out 

Yet, Con’s thinking is very different from many around him. His ‘team’ includes a lesbian girl and an Asian-heritage  boy. In both cases he asserts that their value as mates, and indeed as human beings, completely supersedes any ethnicity or sexual orientation. Moreover, he is prepared to defend this position against the prejudice he regularly meets. Even more pertinently perhaps, he is becoming increasingly troubled  with the whole lifestyle of confrontation and street violence, an attitude brought to a head by the murder of Biscuit. More than anything he wants out. Coatbridge is the ‘Treacle Town’ in which Con and his mates are mired and from which he now desperately wishes to free himself. But it also stands for any and all such deprivation-moulded communities. Con is the hope of something different, the belief in something better. Escape may be possible, but it is extraordinarily hard.

Shock horror

This will undoubtedly prove a controversial book in some quarters. Very sadly, there will be some parents, and indeed teachers, who will object to its language, who will deplore its depiction of binge drinking, drug-taking, shoplifting and street violence. Yet those who try to sweep such issues under the carpet, or who claim that young readers will be led astray, corrupted by reading about them, will most miss, and even limit, this novel’s enormous potential. Young people living in the same or comparable environments to Con need to be able to find themselves in books, to read about a world they know. Pertinently, it shows them, through a voice they might just listen to, why they need to think and live beyond these circumstances. It even offers valuable hints as to ways they might do this. Its message, especially that against the stupidity of revenge, of meeting violence with violence, is enormously potent and relevant. Those young readers who are lucky enough not to live in such places, will also learn much and perhaps understand more. The final shock of the narrative hammers home Brian Conaghan’s central theme with devastatingly powerful impact.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not an overtly didactic book. It is essentially story and works wonderfully at that level. I think it would be wrong to say it is entertaining, but it is certainly compelling, deeply engrossing. 

Tenderness

For such a hard-hitting book, it is also amazingly touching. Con’s grief for his dead friend, Biscuit, and his desperation to escape ‘Treacle Town’ are deeply affecting. There is much beauty to be found here, in both words and content. The chapter where Con revisits the dismantled ‘shrine’ to Biscuit (‘Landfill’) is one of the most wonderfully written passages of fictional prose I have read in a very long time.  Also tenderly captured are his continuing love for his deceased mother and his, at least partial. rediscovery of his childhood relationship with his father. Perhaps most touching of all, by the end of the book, Con seems to be on the way towards an escape from his ‘Treacle Town’ shackles that does not betray his connection to his roots or to those people he fundamentally loves, despite recognising their shortcomings. 

Greatness 

I do not have a personal experience of living in a ‘Treacle Town’ environment. or anything like it. Moreover, I had little prior knowledge and no experience of Slam poetry, which is integral to this narrative. Yet, this novel spoke to me more strongly, than almost anything I have read in recent years. I was emotionally invested in Con and compulsively involved in his story. I think this is because it is such a profoundly and universally human book. 

Together with one other totally remarkable YA novel I read earlier this year*, this is not just a fine book, it is a truly great one.

*Play by Luke Palmer, which I reviewed here is September.

The Witch-Stone Ghosts by Emily Randall-Jones

Here is a second recommendation for the Halloween/Half Term season, although it could equally be enjoyed at any time. It is an easy, but most entertaining read for children of about 9 upwards, short chapters making it particularly accessible. It would be a great book for adults to share with or read aloud to children too; the stuff of spooky mystery rather than real nightmare.

Cover: Micaela Alcaino

I see deal people

Protagonist, Autumn, has the ability to see and hear ghosts, although she often finds their intrusion into her daily life more annoying than anything, There seem to be rather a lot of them around her London home and their quirky characters are often persistently demanding of her attention.This is not a totally original scenario in children’s fiction, but here it is amusingly and entertainingly handled. Autumn does have one particular ‘friend’ amongst the ghosts, Jack, an erstwhile chimney sweep, who she summons with a particular playing card. This gives her a confidant whilst early stages of what is to be an intriguing mystery start to evolve, helping to open up the thoughts and feelings of a vividly drawn and engaging main character.

Stones and ghosts

However, it is when, at the behest of her deceased father, Autumn has to move to, Imber, a very strange little island off the coast of Cornwall, that the originality and richness of this story really starts to emerge. Local legend has it that the island is ‘Wrong to its bones.’  However, for Amber, its mysteries seem to be as much associated with stones as bones. Her father left her what turns out to be a witch stone (a sea pebble with a hole right through), and it seems to have rather mystical associations, a kind of small cousin to henges, monoliths and stone circles. It is a thing of the past as well as of the present, a ghost of a stone. There is much strange singing of folk-type songs in Imber too and other weird and rather intriguing shenanigans. As it develops, this becomes one of those stories that effectively draw in resonances with our deep past, as well as the personal past of Amber and her father. It is all most intriguing. Emily Randall-Jones’ conjuring of the island and its people is rooted and vivid, there is magic here.There is the ever presence of the sea too and, as the narrative proceeds, the emphasis subtly switches to deeper and darker mysteries. Everything climaxes in a terrific storm of wickedness and enchantments, of songs and stones and ghosts. Neither people nor events are altogether what they seemed and the author spins her sea spells wonderfully.

Imagine this

This is a book with no pretensions to change our planet or even individual lives, but it is wonderful, escapist entertainment, rich food for the imagination, and sometimes that is exactly what children want and need. The Witch-Stone Ghosts is an assured debut. There were times when it reminded me a little of early Catherine Doyle (in a very good way). It is hard to tell whether this title will be a stand-alone or the first of a sequence. But either way I am sure there will soon be many children looking forward eagerly to Emily Randall-Jones’ next book.

Dragon Daughter by Liz Flanagan

Cover art: Joe Todd-Stanton

'Milla saw a smooth, glistening expanse nestling in a deep velvet surround. There was a rounded dome inside, a light turquoise blue, dotted with dark gold speckles like the first drops of rain on stone. Gently, she wiggled her fingers down the sides and lifted it out.' (p 52)

Back through the years

Even though it was a long time ago, I have clear memories of trailing home from school through grey streets, in a depressing downpour, my belted gabardine raincoat and schoolboy cap soaking in more water than they repelled. I huddled swiftly along, not so much because of the weather but because of what was waiting for me,  a world of comfort to which I ached to return, the world of a book. In those day it was probably an Arthur Ransome or a Malcolm Saville, although a  very first reading of The Lord of the Rings was not far ahead. These were books I lived in, books that I simultaneously longed to finish and wanted never to end. I was desperate to get to the final pages, not simply to find out what happened, but to reach that place when everything turned out all right. At the same time I wanted the book to go on and on; I didn't want to leave its world and, perhaps most of all, I didn't want to leave the company of its characters, who felt like my very special friends. I wanted to be with them, to be like them, to be them. And, whilst I was reading, I was. 

Only very rarely since then have I found books that immersed me in quite that way. Dragon Daughter is one of them 

The dragon's egg

At the heart of this new book protagonist, Milla, is present at the hatching of a dragon and the two pair for life. 

Of course, stories about dragons abound in fantasy literature. A good number of these are dragons that, on hatching, form a unique bond with a particular human, who subsequently becomes their rider. Perhaps the most deservedly famous of authors to exploit this idea is adult sci-fi/fantasy writer Anne McCaffery. Her Harper Hall Trilogy (Dragonsong; Dragonsinger; Dragondrums), is the element within her vast Dragonriders of Pern sequence most clearly aimed towards a Young Adult audience. It particularly stands out as amongst my all time most enjoyable reads. There are many children's books too that feature dragons, hatching eggs and riders. Amongst others writers, Cornelia Funke, Angie Sage and Cressida Cowell have all, in different ways, woven wonderful magic from these particular story elements  

So, if is is not originality of concept, then what is it that makes Dragon Daughter such an outstanding  book?

New world, new friends

For starters,  Liz Flanagan builds a convincing 'high' fantasy world of compelling intrigue that almost immediately draws us in. In has a rich balance of familiarity and freshness that we enter willingly together with that mixture  of comfort and excited stimulation that constitutes a really good read. Added to this Milla and her small group of friends are not just interesting but completely credible as characters - and hugely likeable too. It is easy to identify with them.  What happens to them as the story develops swiftly engenders that very state of mind where we desperately want things to work out well, but fear that they won't - for a good while at least.

When we are reading this book, it does not matter one jot that stories about dragon riders have been written before because we are living through every engrossing moment of this one. Only this particular story is important. This place matters because it is the one we are in.  This situation matters because it is the one we are experiencing. These characters are the ones we care about, not in some abstract way, but right here, right now. This author's imagining of the events comes alive. Everything that happens matters to Milla, so it matters to us. 

I don't know exactly what it is in the writing that creates this effect, but it is the mark of a very talented children's author.

Compelling

'In the days that followed, Milla would be glad of those wakeful hours she'd spent with her dragon. She held the memory of their closeness like a blanket around her against what happened next.' (p 294) By the later stages of the story we readers know exactly how she felt. We need all the warmth and feel good of the earlier chapters to survive the shocking trauma and heartache of the climactic later ones.

Dragon Daughter is an outstanding example of the power of story. Although the development of the narrative involves descent into revolution and bloody warfare, it remains very much the tale of Milla and her friends - and, of course, their dragons. Perhaps, indeed, this is where its true power lies. It has a human scale, whilst still dealing with huge events and themes. 

Deep wrongs

And there lies the essence of of it. The greatest thing of all about Liz Flanagan's writing, is that this book is not just a story. Into its plot she subtly but surely weaves some of today's most real and concerning themes. Embedded within her narrative is an exploration of racism, with examples of its most fundamental and heinous expression. Although seen through the veils of fantasy, its presence immediately resonates with our own world. A ' superior' society  that  treats with blatant unfairness and careless cruelty those it considers inferior feels all too familiar. Impoverished and neglected 'camps' of unwelcome immigrants only add to the picture. And, when individuals are forced, by draconian law, to wear symbols sewn on their clothing to externally badge their racial status, the horrendous parallels are obvious. 

Strident beneath all this is the despotism of  the ruling Duke. It is abundantly clear that his tyranny, and its pervasive abhorrent attitudes, stem directly from a male dominance and and unconcerned determination to maintain perceived masculine power and superiority at any cost.  Fortunately Milla, and a good few other strong female characters, are there to oppose him. It is highly pertinent, too, that they seek to replace those attitudes, not with an alternative tyranny, but with a new, inclusive and tolerant way of living in their world. It is quietly, but powerfully, a very feminist book. And three cheers for that. 

However, unlike some of the most strident feminist writers, Liz Flanagan does not demonise all males. Once imprinted by his dragon, the Duke's son, Vigo, becomes very much a 'new man', fighting alongside Milla for freedoms that should belong to all people equally. There also are other boys and men in the story, willing to stand up for what is right, and pay the cost, alongside the girls and women. And three cheers for that too.

Politics and fantasy

After writing Tehanu, the much later sequel to her renowned Earthsea trilogy, Ursula Le Guin was accused of  'politicising her delightful fantasy world'. In response she reminded us that, 'The world apart of a fantasy inevitably refers back to this world. All the moral weight of it is real weight. The politics of fairyland are ours.' * I can think of few better examples of this than Dragon Daughter. The fact that Liz Flanagan achieves it whilst still keeping everything fully accessible to a young audience, and entertainin them hugely to boot, is much to her credit. She does not lecture, but embodies her messages in her characters and their actions - and that is what great fiction does. 

'Milla's new knowledge of her own heritage still felt dangerous, incendiary as firepowder. She circled it warily. But one distant day, if they won this fight, she resolved to sit in the palace library and read every book, every sentence, every word that had ever been written (about that heritage).' (p 322). 

Thankfully there are now many books that can help girls, and indeed boys too, to envision the world as it can and should be. And this is one of them. 

Flying with a dragon

There is something very special in the idea of a dragon hatchling imprinting on a human child, of the two developing a lifelong, emotional, almost physical, bond. I think it is, perhaps, a perfect metaphor for the desire, the need, in all of us to bond with the world of fantasy, of imagination, of magic; to discover its power and its freedom; to fly our own dragon through life. Liz Flanagan capitalises upon our need for such a dragon  as convincingly and captivatingly as any children's writer I have encountered. 

But there is more to Dragon Daughter even than this. Its messages, both overt and subliminal, are profoundly important. 

'The dragon's must belong to everyone. The new eggs must hatch before everyone. We have to do things differently.' (p 322)

It is about revisioning the world. 

'Milla and the dragon stared at each other and the world was remade.' (p 122) So it is for readers of this wondrous book, for its duration at least - and, perhaps, through their power to imagine things being different, for ever. Now that's magic. 

Note:

* In a lecture of 1992, later published under the title Earthsea Revisioned. 

Welcome to Dead Town, Raven McKay by Eibhlís Carcione

Illustrated: Ewa Beniak-Haremska

Special from the start 

Here is an ideal book for the spooky season, although it would make a thrilling read at any time. The classic follow-up to which would be, ‘If you’re brave enough.’ In this case it may just be true. Delicate sensibilities beware. However, I think many young readers will revel in its macabre thrills.

A striking first sentence is often the precursor of a fine book. This is not invariably so, but it certainly is here. The opening of Eiblís Carcione’s Welcome to Dead Town, Raven McKay may also qualify as one of the longest sentences in contemporary children’s fiction. But then her writing often belies expectation -  and is all the more exciting for it.

The author opens her story in media res and  plunges the reader, and protagonist, Raven, straight into arrival in Grave’s Pass (‘DeadTown’)  which has an immediately engaging effect. The opening catalogue of the ghosts and ghouls Raven sees on her first day also helps establish a wonderful traditional Irish ethnicity (‘pooka horses’ and ‘banshees’), a clever mix of the folkloric and the contemporary (‘a zombie in ripped jeans staring in the window of a phone shop’) and delightful touches of humour to lighten the mix (‘a bogeyman walking a labradoodle’).

The conjuring of her weird characters and almost uber-gothic setting are nothing if not viscerally descriptive. Her prose bursts with strikingly original, idiosyncratic simile and metaphor, which does not always hit home, but it often does, and, overall, this gives her writing a richness that is vivid and evocative.

Original and richly imagined

The initial premise of the story is that Raven, is a twelve year-old girl whose parents have mysteriously disappeared. Following a series of unhappy foster placements, she is taken to live in a strange town with a previously unknown distant relative. Thus far, the scenario is only a minor variation on the opening of countless other children’s books. But here the unoriginality ends and the wild, weirdly idiosyncratic imagination of this exciting author kicks in. Grave’s Pass, the place  where Raven pitches up, is a town which the dead (together with an assortment of of their ghoulish creatures) inhabit alongside the living. These are not ghosts occasionally seen haunting particular locations, but regular residents with their own enclave, ‘Dead Town’. However, a fair degreee of mixing between the living humans (‘humes’) and their deceased neighbours seems to be both commonplace and accepted.

A wonderful cavalcade of richly imagined  ‘dead’ is cleverly paraded when Raven witnesses one of their midnight processions. It is a delightful passage - a real literary coup. Raven does not initially seem to be particularly frighted by these unusual presences, but is, rather, fascinated by the strangeness of her new co-inhabitants. She even manages to make a couple of friends amongst both the dead as well as the living.

Amidst all this freaky oddness, the author beautifully captures Raven’s clearly very genuine distress about the loss of her parents. As the narrative’s protagonist, she elicits all our empathy, yet, in truth she is somewhat odd herself. Her feelings may be touchingly human, but her clothing, a tall black hat adorned with a sleek raven feather, and an old-fashioned dress, its cuffs skilfully embroidered with black butterflies, somewhat distance her from the role of contemporary Irish girl. There is further mystery in her passionate attachment to a battered suitcase that turns out to contain only a single, live black butterfly. It is all most intriguing and keeps the pages turning frantically.

Don’t go there - Oh, you did!

Like the heroine of a horror movie, who enters the deserted house whilst all the audience mental shriek at her not to go in, Raven is drawn to explore the Dead Town area of Grave’s Pass, despite her new guardian’s extortions against it. And the consequences are as disastrous as might be expected. Eibhlís Carcione skilfully builds up tension and horror, and when, after spending the night in a creepy disused funfair, Raven is led into the Fun House by one of her few new-found friends, her experience starts to descend into nightmare.

The author’s richly idiosyncratic style of writing is ideally suited to her subject matter and her somewhat fractured narration only adds to the nightmare ethos. It does not matter that the string of events are weirdly beyond normal logic, this is a children’s version of Franz-Kafka-meets-Salvador-Dali-meets-Susan-Hill. The unnatural events of this world are not so much ‘magic’ as symptoms of the completely alternate reality. It is all weirdly wonderful, engaging and spine-tinglingly thrilling. And in the end, it is, thankfully, as befits the outcome of a book for this readership, a world where dreams supersede the nightmares. It is still a strange world, an odd one, even a macabre one, but it is also a world of flowers and fluttering wings. 

Eibhlís Carcione’s is another name to add to the impressive list of fine Irish children’s writers. I hope she is read well beyond her home shores too. She certainly deserves to be. 

Stunning illustration 

Alongside the excitingly fresh writing in this book, I was also thrilled by the copious illustrations by artist Ewa Beniak-Haremska. Her marginal vignettes are excellent, but it is her rich, complex whole-page images which really enthralled me. They succeed quite magnificent in representing both the quirky oddness and the developing nightmare of the text. She seems to have understood, absorbed and caught the essence of this novel perfectly, adding much of her own to complement and enhance it remarkably. She adds considerable impact but also contributes emotional nuance and narrative depth. 

A little Googling seems to indicate that Ewa Benjamin-Haremska  is well-used as an illustrator in her native Poland, but I would like to see her work better recognised and in more books over here too. She is a breathtaking talent. 

Ewa Beniak-Haremska

The Panda’s Child by Jackie Morris and Cathy Fisher

Picture books are not usually my subject here but this October has brought along one so stunning that I cannot resist recommending it. I am sure it will appeal to readers from about 7yrs upwards. 

Jackie Morris

I have long been an admirer of Jackie Morris who has already produced many glorious books. Not the least of these was the huge The Lost Words (huge in so many ways), where she created the stunning artwork that complements Robert Macfarlane’s remarkable nature ‘spells’. However she is herself an occasional writer, as well as a supremely talented artist, and it is the text that she contributes here.

The Panda’s Child is a relatively short story, albeit in three chapters, yet its words somehow succeed in being simple and lyrical whilst conveying intense power and potency. They speak of bonds; of the bond between mother and child, both human and animal, but also particularly of the bond between child and nature. Then they also speak of the way  men, with their greed for money and their urge to dominate, break that bond. An element of feminism underlies the telling, but it is not strident. Yet it is the men/merchants/soldiers in the tale who seek who replace bonds with bars, to restrain and exploit wild, free nature. The mother, and particularly the child, represent all those who carry the hope of freeing, re-wilding nature,  re-establishing the natural ties. Jackie Morris’ shows that wild nature can be fierce, as well as cuddling and warm, but it is a wildness that nurtures its own, just as the child loves and cherishes it.

Cathy Fisher

However, despite the quality of Jackie Morris’ writing and the importance of her message, it is Cathy Fisher’s illustrations that are the really glory of this book. Publishers Otter-Barry Books also deserve much credit for enhancing these with outstanding production values. On quality paper, they give the glorious images space, so that, from the stunning endpapers (delicate night at the beginning and radiant light at the end), to the glorious full-page images and textless double spreads, they impact with their impressive scale. Cathy Fisher’s scenes capture the same combination of sensitivity and power of the text, but amplified manifold. Out of hazy backgrounds, delicate yet so expressive images of human figures and animals emerge. And the faces. Such faces. Such transparency of emotion and care. Here is an example of the way the very best ‘illustrations’ are so much more. They glow from the pages and not only complement the text, illuminating the narrative, but add to it deeply affecting levels of richness and depth.

Their gift, our gift, your gift

This is, at heart, a book with a simple message. But it is a message that needs to be heard over and over. It is a book to have, to keep and to share, but, perhaps most of all, to give. Many children will grow in it, and with it - and love it., for years to come.

And I Climbed And I Climbed by Stephen Lightbrown

Illustrated by Shih-Yu Lin

A recommendation recommended 

I didn’t find this the easiest of books to get hold of, but it was recommended to me by Pie Corbett, whose opinion I value highly, so I persisted. And I am very glad I did. I do hope a lot more (independent) bookshops will stock and promote it, as it is a work of very high quality as well as being of considerable value in terms of  inclusion and empathy. It is richly educational in the true sense - and very moving with it.

Authentic voice

And I Climbed And I Climbed is collection of poems mostly couched in the fictional voice of a young boy, Cosmo, who has lost the use of his legs after a fall from a tree. He is now a permanent wheelchair user. Its author, poet Stephen Lightbrown, is similarly paraplegic, so his understanding is deep and genuine, the thoughts and emotions expressed totally and affectingly convincing,

The book as a whole sits, I would say, somewhere between a collection of poems and a novel written in verse. Not many of the poems would work as well stand-alone; they need the context, comparison and contrast of all the others to have their full impact. This is in no way to their detriment, however. What the poem format does is allow the writer to capture the boy’s feelings and reactions with a focused, concentrated intensity that makes them communicate very powerfully. A range of poetic forms are used to considerable effect in capturing vividly a whole range of emotional reactions to, and reflections on, his past, present and future. Together they do not quite add up a fictional narrative (in the way, say, that Matt Goodfellow’s wonderful The Final Year does), but they do allow a reader who works through them to fill in the gaps and build the narrative for themselves. Rather the poems fluctuate between responses, jumping from anger and resentment, to resignation and positivism, and sometimes back again And it is actually this emotional ambivalence, this fluctuation, that adds authenticity. It engenders real understanding, rather than painting a sentimental picture of too simplistic or straightforward a progression towards acceptance. Cosmo’s overall journey is positive, but not easy, and that is a big part of what is important here.

Poignant images

Many of the individual poems are addressed by Cosmo to the tree from which he fell. This tree is often, but not always, the focus of his anger and bitter resentment, and this works well, allowing him to express the excruciatingly difficult feeling (physical and emotional) of finding himself in his new condition. Other poems capture the responses of members of his immediate family and these too too work well to build a moving picture of Cosmo’s situation. This is a fine example of outstanding writing where individual elements build into a remarkable whole. Some of the poems are desperately poignant: ‘Writing My Feelings’, ‘Huff Stop’ and ‘Be Careful With Scissors’ are devastating. Overall (and this book is almost certainly best read as a whole) Stephen Lightbrown’s message and his skilful use of the medium complement each other powerfully.  

The same can be said of the direct but effective illustrations by Shiah-Yu Lin. They too are outstanding and skilfully complement the content and intent of the written words. I found the image accompanying ‘What Was It The Table Said!’  particularly affecting, 

Like that, like this

This would be a most valuable book in any KS2 classroom. It will help children understand something of the feelings, as well as the needs, of disabled people. Most important, it shows that they remain individuals of integrity and worth who may be shaped, but are not defined, by their disability. It also has the crucial advantage of clearly showing that poetry can be more than just comically entertaining rhyme and word-play. It can be a most effective way of saying and seeing, discovering more of others - and ourselves.

Matt Goodfellow’s book seems to have garnered a vast and enthusiastic following - and rightly so, it is a very fine thing. I think those who respond to it would also appreciate this one. It would be a great sadness, and loss, if Stephen Lightbrown’s poems do not attract at least something of the same attention. 

Skrimsli by Nicola Davies

Illusrrated: Jackie Morris

‘. . . Something had begun to change in him. He had started to see that everyone and everything had a story, was a story, and that he could tell them.’ (p 310)

The next big thing

Nicola Davies’ The Song That Sings Us gained deservedly lavish praise and will I am sure become even more popular now that it is available in paperback. Now she has written a follow-up (in terms of its storyline, a prequel) and it is another very fine book indeed. It is all the more securely convincing this time for being couched in the past tense.  Its rich, complex world building is strange and wonderful, yet filled with many of the issues of our own times. And the author’s deep love for the natural world shines through it all. With, once again, cover and chapter heads by the wondrous Jackie Morris, this is also another beautiful volume. 

Ancient and modern 

It is rare, these days, to find excitingly original and inventive fantasy for young readers. So many orphaned children have already discovered they have magical powers, so many portals have led into other worlds, so many schools have trained apprentice witches and wizards, so many dragons have hatched and imprinted on humans, so many doggerel prophecies have been fulfilled, so many worlds saved from unspeakable evil. It is a very long, but also very familiar list. Some authors have reworked and refreshed such themes magnificently, a rare few have actually created startlingly new worlds, but in too many instances these fantasy ‘tropes’ have been allowed to degenerate into rather tired clichés. Not here though. Skrimsli is the real deal. It stands head and shoulders above the current crowd. Fresh and imaginative, ancient and modern,  it is ‘high’ fantasy with a vast sweep and scope, treating of warring nations and political greed, universal themes. However, it is simultaneously a sensitive and intimate story of individuals, both human and animal. And it is compellingly told. 

Thinking animal

Another very difficult thing for writers to do convincingly is to give thoughts and language to ‘real’ animals, as opposed to treating animals as human characters, as, say, Kieran Larwood does so entertainingly. It is easy to rob living creatures of their dignity, to make them objects of ridicule or blur real understanding of their thoughts and needs through totally inappropriate anthropomorphism. However, Nicola Davies builds on a deep understanding of nature and its living creatures. On top of this, she cleverly creates a fantasy where some humans are ‘listeners’ and can establish mind-to-mind connection with animals.  A few particularly sensitive and intelligent animals consequently learn to understand a range of human words. Through this credible writerly invention, we are able to enter the imagined thoughts and feelings of animals without them seeming to lose their natural form or characteristics. We still believe in them as animals.It is something very special. A new magic. Authorial magic. Animal magic that brings us closer to recognising the integrity and beauty of real animals, their right to existence on their own terms, not ours, their ineffable value to our world. At the same time she makes them very potent and compelling characters, integral to her narrative. Like her protagonist, Nicola Davies’ book is ‘a wild thing bound in words’. (p 392)

Good and evil

Consequently, her story is built around characters that engage deeply. There is Owl, the strange boy with the owl face, so often called ‘freak’ by other humans, but proving quite remarkable in his relationship with and commitment to his animal friends. He is a quite brilliant example of the importance of diversity and inclusion, recognising the potential of all. There are two young women, each, in different ways, with remarkable love for horses, and, ultimately (and very movingly) for each other. There is a rebel ‘pirate’ captain and her crew. There are a bear, a dog, an eagle, a sturgeon, representing the diverse wonders of nature’s creatures. All are brought to vivid life and play key roles, engaging both the hearts and minds of readers in this terrific story. But at its very centre is a tiger, the eponymous Skrimsli. S. F. Said recently wrote a magnificent novel about a ‘tyger’, and now here is another tiger, different  bur equally magnificent. Within his fantasy world, this tiger is real, rather than just a symbol of ‘fearful symmetry’, although Skrimsli is that as well.

There are, of course, chillingly evil characters too, as befits high fantasy: a cruel, mind-controlling circus owner and his disturbed son, a legitimate ruler’s usurping brother, and, most disturbing of all, two ghastly acrobat-assassins, vile enough to precipitate gut-churning loathing. Eventually,  however, all become subsumed in one overarching enemy, the terrible army of ‘Automators’.

Finding purpose

The emotional journey on which we are taken along with Owl and Skrimsli is remarkably powerful and intensely involving. Skrimsli grows from ‘runt’ cub to devoted friend, from cowed circus performer to a creature that discover his own strength and power. (‘You are not prey,’). And then, in one of the book’s most remarkable passages, he falls in love with something totally astonishing, a huge sailing ship, and a life on the ocean. Owl, whose early love and care started Skimsli’s remarkable development, himself grows from distraught ‘freak’ into a true keeper of the forest. At heart, they both seek and find purpose and identity, their true selves. 

Their story

The multi-perspective writing, recounting the interleaved tales of several of the major protagonist, moves the complex narrative on compellingly. This is storytelling and tension building of the highest order. Around one third of the way through is a heart-stopping climax that would be worthy of the end of many a fine book.  Assasination in the circus ring, involving a heart-wrenching moral dilemma, is swept away in a flood of disaster.  But this is not the end of this particular tale, not by such a long way. This skilled author continues to twist and turn her plot, with excitement and jeopardy piling ever on top of each other. Of course, like the best epic quests, there are periods of release and recovery too, as when Owl finds his ‘Rivendell’ with a family of poor but skilled mind-listeners. But overall the story builds and grips, even as it explores and develops its characters and relationships and works towards its remarkable outcomes.

Images

As if all of this was not enough, the whole tale is replete with parallels to our own world. There are issues of deforestation, military might, craze for power and commercial greed. It abounds in powerful metaphor, that could almost be called poetic. Here, amongst other telling images, are the whole world of natural wonder seen in the depth of an elephant’s eye, an encroaching railway that is both territorial aggrandisement and man’s intrusion into nature. Foremost, is a cruel circus that in time morphs into something akin to the bloodthirsty spectacle of a Roman amphitheatre. It speaks with devastating potency of man’s vile attempts to dominate and belittle wild creatures.

Our story

This book engenders that complete reader saturation that characterises only the very greatest of fantasy epics. Although it is very different indeed from either, think The Lord of the Rings or Watership Down in terms of total absorption in the world and compulsive narrative of an epic book. And through it all runs the power of story. Owl returns home to find his forest sad and broken, but he has learned how to begin to heal it. He tells the people there:

‘You are in this . . . broken forest because you stopped listening to stories. Stories show you what you can be if you are brave enough.. . . Tonight we can choose to make a new story, together, and to stop living inside this old, sad tale.’ (p 381)

Our world is, in large parts, one such sad tale. Nicola Davies’ Skrimsli is one such new story. And it is a hopeful one. At its end are seedlings in deforested ground. There are seas of grass and water - and of love. And ahead is the place where the sky and ocean meet.  

It is a book that will appeal to many age groups. It will feed hopeful imagination with activism and grow hopeful activism through imagination. It is undoubtedly one of my Books of the Year.