Anthropomorphic delights abound in The Moon Seeker by Dee Barragry (Walker, £7.99, 8+), who won the inaugural Staróg prize – a prestigious publishing competition run by Walker Books to support Irish talent – with her middle-grade manuscript.
There is a human lighthouse keeper at is heart – a young apprentice Lampwick – but the cast of characters who help him keep the lamps lit include Drumstick, the weathervane; Pongo, a pink elephant on foghorn duties; a black dragon called Charcoal, preserver of the flame; and Humphrey, a helpful sheepdog who is both sous chef and washerdog: Lampwick’s right-paw pup.
When the moon disappears one night, plunging the coast and the nearby village of Port Pintle into darkness, Lampwick thus has a whole team available to help him solve the mystery. Barragry builds a brilliantly vivid world, where quirky details of communication devices (melon launchers!) provide memorable moments of plot advancement. The Moon Seeker is a wildly original debut and a worthy prizewinner.
The Nightmare Club (Little Island, €7.19, 6+), a new series from the pseudonymous Annie Graves, is actually written by some of Ireland’s most prolific authors of fiction for young people. The first two titles in the series come from Alan Nolan and Deirdre O’Sullivan, providing a gentle scare to titillate the thrill-seeking early reader.
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The format follows a slumber-party storytelling session at Annie’s house, with each narrator charged with scaring the socks off their friends. In McGann’s The Wolfling’s Bite, Jonas tells a sinister story of a stuffed wolf toy that comes to life, while in O’Sullivan’s Help! My Brother is a Zombie!, Jack’s brother’s teenage tendencies have terrifying consequences. The short sentences, and oversized and well-spaced text offer a good in-between option for newly independent readers graduating to chapter books, while also being dyslexia friendly.
In Taking the Long Way Home by Jake Hope, with illustrations by Brian Fitzgerald, (Scallywag Press,£12.99, 2+) it is adventure rather than danger that delays two young travellers en route to their house after a long day at school. Zarah usually hates the journey, even with her dad’s shortcuts. They are “never short enough for her, even though he is always in a hurry”.
When Uncle Jerome comes to pick her up for a change, then, and he suggest taking the long way round, Zarah struggles to be enthusiastic, but as her uncle identifies pterodactyls in the undergrowth of the roadside woods, crocodiles in the park pond and yeti footprints in the grass on the way up the hill, the journey turns into an unforgettable experience.
Brian Fitzgerald’s illustrations lean into the surprising elements of this unexpected escapade, and the story provides lots of ideas to inspire parents in play, as much as children.
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Extended families play a key role in two different titles for two different age groups, which are also united in their approach to how simple objects can connect us. In Our Pebbles by Jarvis (Walker, £12.99, 2+), a little boy remembers a weekly shared ritual with his grandfather: a trip through the Wonky Woods to Pebble Beach, where they played imagination games, ate ice cream and collected stones so they could “paint our day together.” The pebbles become a real souvenir when Grandad can no longer get to the beach himself. It is a heartwarming story of connection, illustrated with Jarvis’s usual flair.
In Alex Horne’s The Last Pebble (Walker, £7.99, 9+), beachcombing is an activity that also connects Trader and his grandpa. When Trader finds an unusual stone at the beach one day, his grandpa is convinced he has found something extraordinary. In fact, as Trader will discover, the pebble’s power is its capacity to transform all his relationships, especially those tricky ones at school. Horne weaves many themes into this readable adventure story, with an engaging first-person style that hooks the reader from the get-go.
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“You don’t find treasure, it finds you.” That’s what mudlark Bo has been brought up to believe. When she finds a jewel in the rivershore near Battersea Bridge, her family’s fortunes look set to change, but Bo is more interested in the visions the Thames starts to offer her. Jessie Burton’s Hidden Treasure (Bloomsbury, £14.99, 19+) blends time-travelling adventure with thrilling rivalries and a compelling second World War setting. However, it is the atmospheric lyricism of its prose that makes it most memorable, and the glinting gold on the book’s hardback cover promises treasure that the story lives up to.
The only thing Liliana has to live up to in Liliana the Strong by Quentin Blake and Emma Chichester Clark (Two Hoots, £12.99, 2+) is her own reputation. She might be feeling poorly, but as her grandmother reminds her, she has launched ships and lifted lorries without breaking a sweat. She can surely overcome a little cold. Chichester Clarke’s gorgeously conceived pictures match Blake’s outlandish scenarios pattern by colourful pattern, making this book just the tonic for any young reader feeling under the weather.
