Take two children from very different backgrounds, construct a narrative that brings them together, forge a relationship between them: such a recipe has been put to good use for hundreds of children’s and young-adult novels. In many cases, and particularly with novels aimed primarily at a pre-teen readership, these works of fiction fall into the category often referred to as “adventure stories”. This is a phrase which, since its earliest manifestations in the late 1800s, has evolved quite dramatically as it accommodates ever-changing notions of what constitutes “adventure” and ever-changing perceptions of what is appropriate for young people aged nine to 12 to be reading.
Today’s “adventures” may often show the strong influence of our scientific and technological age and the characters may be delineated with more psychological subtlety but one constant remains: at their centre, these are stories of survival, in which the pre-adolescents become increasingly curious about the strangeness of the world around them and, especially, about the behaviour of those adults who apparently control it. The setting may be mythical, imaginary, historical or contemporary but, whatever their environment, the young are given the opportunity to demonstrate their courage, determination and resilience and to begin to understand the notion of personal responsibility.
With about 40 years of children's novels behind her, Gillian Cross can always be relied upon to give us fictions which combine engrossing story-telling with wit and insight. Her new novel, Shadow Cat (Oxford University Press, £6.99), is in essence about freedom and how it is viewed and experienced by two different children. On the one hand, there is Feather, the adopted and over-protected daughter of Midir, a rock star living in a Scottish castle. On the other, there is Nolan, the son of a bipolar mother who, in one of her moments of spontaneous exuberance, takes him on a camper van road trip. How, he asks himself at one point, could he and Feather ever be friends?
In spite, however, of Nolan’s doubts, a friendship gradually develops, thanks to the arrival in their lives of the wild cat known as a serval. Originally playing its part as a concluding spectacle in Midir’s stage performances, the animal eventually attains its freedom, causing the children to join forces as its pursuers. But there are others equally keen for very different motives to track it down and while the ensuing confrontations make for some exciting reading they also allow a reader to appreciate some of the complexities of young friendships and older devious machinations.
The manner in which the conventions of the adventure story and those of science fiction can be made to coalesce convincingly is much in evidence in Paul Magrs’s Lost on Mars (Firefly Press, £7.99). Here, a group of third-generation colonisers embark on a trek across “the red Martian prairie” in the hope of finding a mysteriously “disappeared” father and grandmother. Responsibility for the narration of events is taken by Lora, a vivacious and resourceful 15-year-old whose role is gradually extended beyond that of a mere leader of a search party to that of a commentator on the planet’s history and the inter-relationships of its various waves of settlers. Some of the novel’s set pieces and cameo sketches are highly diverting, helping to create a fiction which is at once epic in its ambition and entertaining in its execution – and not without its darker moments.
"Adventures in Dystopia" might well serve as a shorthand summary of the speculative children's and young-adult fiction which has appeared in such quantity in recent years. A great deal of this has become formulaic and predictable, but few will want to apply such terms to Patricia Forde's The Wordsmith (Little Island, €8.99), a novel that truly stands apart for its originality and relevance. Primarily, it is a book about words, about language, about their power to civilise – and, in the wrong hands, to abuse and dehumanise. For a writer to deal with such themes it is the most basic of requirements that she herself should handle words in a manner which exploits their potential richness and resonance. Forde rises magnificently to the challenge.
A natural disaster known as the Melting has occurred and a new regime, led by one John Noa, has been established in a land called Ark. Noa’s aim is to ration language, the power of which he recognises and fears, for language, he argues, “is what makes man ungovernable”. The forces of opposition – the “Desecrators” as he sees them, though to themselves they are the “Creators” – are led by Letta, a young teenager whose official role is that of “wordsmith”. This is a role which involves her doling out vocabulary from the approved language “list” of some 500 words, a list on which, significantly, the word “hope” does not appear. With her growing understanding of the treachery and duplicity which have characterised the foundation and governance of Ark, she joins the battle against the agencies of repression and control, creating a formidable opposition which is both verbal and physical.
As with all quality dystopian literature, Forde’s novel blends the futuristic with the retrospective, demanding that her readers consider their own language histories and their underlying philosophies. That she does this in the context of an engaging narrative accessible to a young readership is a gratifying bonus.
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children’s books
