Ages 10-12: Harry Potter may be everywhere, but one book doesn't make a summer. And the long, easy days are perfect for checking out some great new arrivals, writes Niall MacMonagle.
By now, even extra-terrestials are reading the new Harry Potter, (reviewed in The Irish Times on Monday, June 23rd by Eileen Battersby). But one book doesn't make a summer and the long and easy days are perfect for checking out other new arrivals.
Sally Grindley's first novel, Feather Wars (Bloomsbury £5.99), looks at reliable old themes - war and bullying. Sam Lonsdale is 12, big-brother Matt has gone to fight and he feels very alone. Dad breeds pigeons and the bullies sneer "Cooooeee, How tweet, tweet, tweet!" but Sam learns that "more than 100,000 pigeons served our country in the first World War" and the reader learns that Hannibal used them when he crossed the Alps, Caesar when he conquered Gaul, Wellington at Waterloo. Bullying can never be justified and Grindley is very good at showing us the stupidity of it all, Sam's feeling of entrapment and survival. Though the plot creaks, my modern-miss daughter thought it "really unusual, really good".
In Jan Michael's prize-winning Just Joshua (O'Brien €6.95), Joshua lives where the sun shines all the time but life on this tropical island is no holiday. His father is a "mountainman", an outsider, and is viewed suspiciously by the people on the coast. Village life, sounds, scents, neighbours, the pace and poverty are easily pictured and atmospheric. Joshua, orphaned, feels an outsider too but rejects Mr and Mrs Nettar's adoption plans, even if Reverend Mother tells him "they've come halfway round the world for you", that "they've even paid". Joshua's gentle, intelligent exploration of who he is results in something different and convincing. It's a gem.
In Alice Hoffman's small-town America, the strange and magical often feature. In Aquamarine (Egmont £6.99), her children's book, there's a similar and successful mix. At summer's end, 12-year-olds Hailey and Claire, next-door neighbours and best friends, must part. "The last days of August were identical, blistering mornings fading into white-hot afternoons" and the girls go every day to the run-down, closing-down, deserted Capri Beach Club, where Raymond, "who seemed much too handsome to be as nice as he was", runs the snack shop. When a great storm wreaks havoc, Aquamarine, a mermaid, is trapped in the pool.
Sensitive, beautiful and, obviously, improbable, this is a story you would want to happen. A mermaid in love "is far more irrational than a jelly fish and more stubborn than a barnacle" but, with Hailey and Claire's help, Raymond and Aquamarine find happiness "far beyond the breaking waves". Hoffman's writing triumphs here.
Books are doorways to different worlds. The Divide by Elizabeth Kay (ChickenHouse, £11.99) is so designed that its cover cleverly becomes a folding-door leading to the story of Felix Sanders, who, because of a rare heart condition, pestered his parents to take him "somewhere exciting" before he died. We are in Costa Rica where 13-year-old Felix, high on the Divide between Pacific and Atlantic, has a dizzy spell. This busy, action-packed plot is for the fantasy-lover. Kay has created a cross-over world where the mythical and legendary are the norm. Griffins, Gnomes, Unicorns feature; there are devil-hyenas and transport is on Ironclaw's back. The lively look at contrasting worlds (no ice-cream, no printing!) was, for me, the most interesting aspect. There are poisons, potions, dangers at every turn but, with Betony's help, Felix is indeed fortunate. The word future "wasn't a bad joke anymore".
The storytelling voice in Ann Pilling's The Catnappers (Collins £4.99) is confiding, gentle, explanatory, sympathetic. Kitty and Miss McGee, now in their seventies, share a house on Golden Square in Appleford. After an almighty row, their handsome cat Nicholas goes missing. Skinny Kitty prays to St Jude, dumpy McGee to St Anthony. Placenames and plot are quaint and what I found twee a younger reader, I suspect, will find charming. The mysterious family, newly arrived at Number 26, Debbie the cleaning woman's daughter, Kitty's detective efforts, Fluffy - a Nicholas look-alike, the portrait of old age - "Inside, you never stop feeling like a child" says Miss McGee - and the happy ending, combine to make an easy, attractive tale. The 11-year-old in our house liked neither title, cover, nor blurb but loved everything else and "didn't think a strange story about old ladies could be that interesting!"
Marcel Möring's The Dream Room (Flamingo £6.99), an extraordinarily haunting and memorable story, is so good that it deserves to be read by young and old. Beautifully translated, this Dutch novel looks at parent/child relationships, the past as told to us, the memory of war. It subtly receates David's 12-year-old world "where everything was quiet and sheltered and friendly" and shows us a boy piecing together the complexities of adulthood, accepting disappointment and realising that "things weren't what they ought to be". Möring creates such vivid, original scenes (the model aeroplane industry or David cooking a better meal in a restaurant kitchen) that the short novel is amplified in the reading and stunningly proves that less is more.
Preacher's Boy (Oxford £4.99), by Katherine Paterson, also for the older reader, is outstanding. Robbie Hewitt, the son of a preacher man, a lad with a "prodigious vocabulary", and "a prime candidate for the Devil's payroll", has several adventures. In Vermont in 1899, hothead Robbie defends his simple-minded brother, almost drowns the bullying Ned Weston, sees his first motorcar and ends up in court because of tramp Zeb and daughter Vile. Fully realised, superbly told, with its perceptive, intelligent, engaging narrative voice echoing Huck Finn, Preacher's Boy is one of the best children's books I've read in a long time.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin