CHILDREN'S BOOKS: ANNA CAREYreviews The Tree of SeasonsBy Stephen Gately Hodder Stoughton, 306pp. £14.99
OVER THE PAST decade or so a variety of stars not previously known for their literary talents, including Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Gloria Estefan, have produced books aimed at children. These authors usually write picture books, presumably because they don't require too much text; one gets the impression that the average celebrity children's book was created in an idle afternoon between a hair appointment and a dance rehearsal. But as Madonna's appalling English Rosesbooks prove, creating a successful book for children is much easier said than done, and has nothing to do with how many albums you've sold.
This tradition doesn't bode well for Stephen Gately's new book, The Tree of Seasons. But the late Boyzone singer's literary debut is a very different thing. For one, it's not a picture book: it's a proper novel, more than 300 pages long. And for another, a huge amount of effort clearly went into it. As his widower, Andrew Cowles (whose acknowledgments at the start of the book would melt even the most cynical heart), has made clear, Gately never saw himself as a writer. But he did have a story he wanted to tell, with the help of collaborators Jules Williams and the established children's author June Considine, and his enthusiasm is evident throughout.
The Tree of Seasonsis set, rather pleasingly, in Co Wicklow, where our sibling heroes Josh, Michael and Beth Lotts live with their parents by the edge of a wild wood. Most of the wood belongs to Great-aunt Graves, who wants to sell it to developers, claiming that the trees are diseased. Great- aunt Graves is cold and cruel, but the children faintly remember that she wasn't always like this. And when they see strange lights shining in the woods and encounter its previously unknown magical population, they discover why she has changed.
The wood, it turns out, is home to the Tree of Seasons, whose roots contain the doors to four worlds, each representing a season and ruled by a benign monarch. But now the wicked Gridelda has taken over the Kingdom of Autumn and plans to take control of not only the other seasonal kingdoms but also the human world. To do this she has imprisoned the children’s aunt and taken her place. And now she’s after the children, too.
There's a touch of everything from Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Treeto Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, although the quality of the book is infinitely closer to Blyton than to the great Cooper. The prose is often overwrought – when the children defeat a wicked sea witch she gasps: "You have vanquished me" – and the predictable plot is rambling, with one dramatic scene jumping straight to the next. The names of the magical characters (Patina, Subfusc) sometimes suggest Gately chose them by opening a dictionary and using the first words he saw.
Yet it's not a bad book at all. It's full of good ideas – the once-nice aunt being replaced by an evil doppelganger is particularly chilling – the child characters are brave but not superhuman and the brisk pace somehow conveys Gately's own excitement in the world he has created. And he shows an understanding of young readers: his depiction of bullying and its effects on both bullies and victims is sensitive and, ultimately, hopeful. The Tree of Seasonsisn't destined to be a children's classic, but, like its good-natured author, it's impossible to dislike.
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist
