Books

Best new children’s books: actor Jack Ryder’s debut novel

Unadoptable children and plenty of tigers feature in this collection of adventures

Jack Ryder’s debut novel is an exciting tale that grounds its gentle fantasy in the emotional life of its young hero.

Sara Keating's face
Sara Keating
Sat Jul 18 2020 - 06:00

Just because your options for a holiday are limited this year, it doesn’t mean you can’t have all sorts of marvellous adventures. That’s what Jack discovers when he is left to his own devices when school closes and his dad has to work long days and late nights.

Jack, an only child of a single parent, is delighted when two rowdy boys move in next door. It isn’t long before he is pulled in to referee their arguments and keep lookout as they embark upon a series of escapades, which culminates in their discovery of an old ivy-covered house at the back of their garden where a strange and tricky girl, who thinks her name is Blossom, has set up camp.

Blossom becomes a blank canvas upon which Jack can project his own emotional drama: his loneliness, his grief for his absent mother. Luckily, she has the solution to his problems: enchanted gobstoppers that bestow magical powers upon their suckers.

Jack's Secret Summer (Hodder, £6.99, 8+), the debut novel from actor Jack Ryder, is an exciting tale that grounds its gentle fantasy in the emotional life of its young hero. Alice McKinley's illustrations include a trellis of ivy leaves on every page, while an attractive peep-through gilt-inflected cover adds an extra visual edge. The short chapters and clear typography make it especially suitable for newly independent readers ready to move from early readers to their first chapter book.

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Eleven-year old Elsie is also having a summer to remember in The Time Traveller and the Tiger (Zephyr. £12.99, 10+) by Tania Unsworth. Elsie's mother forgot the schools were closing, so she has been deposited with her Great Uncle John for a week while her forgetful parents sort out an alternative arrangement.

Elsie and her fictional alter ego Kelsie are not impressed, but there are surprises hidden in Great Uncle John’s countryside house: a tiger he shot when he was her age in India lies spread-eagled in front of the living room fireplace, and a time travelling flower has just sprung to life in the greenhouse. Elsie finds herself transported back to 1940s India, where she meets her uncle as a child, just as he is about to do something she knows he will come to regret.

Unsworth presents the reader with a vivid evocation of colonial India, which is rich with detail of the animal and plant life that dominate the jungle. The man-versus-nature theme provides a classic throughline, but the parallel plot involving Elsie’s invented heroine provides a rich relatable subtext that helps the reader draw connections between the historic events and the unfolding contemporary climate and conservation crisis.

Rikin Parekh's Fly Tiger Fly (Hodder, £12.99, 3+) concerns a much less fearsome feline. Young tiger cub Riku is surrounded by special tigers. There's Grandma Janice, the first tiger to be mistaken for a giraffe, and cousin Bella, the first tiger to take a selfie. Riku cannot wait to take his place on the Triumphant Tiger Tree beside them, but he just can't translate his dreams of flying into a reality. He tries stilts, beans and a fruity launchpad. He even makes some palm frond wings, but it is the creatures of the forest who will finally help him take his place among his ancestors.

Parekh’s story is a lovely fable about friendship, but it is poor Riku’s frazzled face as he is thwarted by reality again and again that kids will remember.

A tiger gazes out boldly from the front cover of Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright! (Nosy Crow, £25, all ages), an anthology of animal poems curated by Fiona Waters with watercolour cut-out illustrations from Britta Teckentrup. The title is drawn from William Blake's classic compilation of children's poems, but Waters strikes a balance between classic work from Ted Hughes, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, and Emily Dickinson and contemporary voices like Roger McGough, Dick King-Smith, and Grace Nichols.

The book takes a calendar approach with a poem for every day of the year, but readers will find themselves fastforwarding through the seasons to admire Teckentrup’s close-up portraits and distant landscapes, which provide a perfect visual invitation to poetry.

If you feel the need to wallow in winter already, Hana Tooke's Gothic mystery The Unadoptables (Puffin, £12.99, 10+) may be just what you need. Set in Amsterdam in 1880, it follows the fate of five unusual orphans who have a few things in common: their mysterious origins, their unconventional deposit at The Little Tulip Orphanage, and the brutal fact that – over the space of 12 long cruel years – no one has wanted to adopt them. Until now.

When Matron Gasbeek finds a pair of suspicious men willing to adopt all of them, the five friends, led by the mouthy Milou, set off across Amsterdam on a quest to find Milou’s parents, who she just knows are alive. The tribe of original characters and the exotic historic setting, where windmills and dutch bikes are employed with unique purpose, add an extra edge to this atmospheric debut.