Children 9-12: Niall McMonagle on an autumn list of children's books with all the elements to reach its audience.
What's the buzz? At any one time a bundle of books will put us in the picture. The Booker shortlist, a bestsellers' list, publishers' catalogues - all reflect ourselves, our interests, fads and fashions. And this autumn's children's books remind us that we still love strong, improbable plots, historical settings, ghosts, happy endings of sorts and self- reliant, credible protagonists.
Elizabeth O'Hara's The Sparkling Rain (Poolbeg, €6.50) is a refreshingly different Irish novel. The Moody family has lived in Chestnut Cottage in idyllic France for eight years. Eccentric Lily, the mam, is "at least half mad" and Jack the Dad, the baddie, is always away on business, leaving the three children to scramble through. When the "fault-line" splits open, the family falls apart: Jack's imprisoned, Lily's dead, and Brian, Clara and David return to Ireland to their nasty Crabclaw relatives and institutional care. Gritty realism kicks in, improbabilities abound, but paradise is regained in a busy plot by way of an astonishing flight, in every sense, in the closing chapters. Readers want happiness and O'Hara delivers, but she also has Madame Bonne remind us that happiness is never a constant: "Sometimes is as good as anyone gets." My 11-year-old daughter adored this.
The House of Windjammer by V.A. Richardson (Bloomsbury £12.99) is a beautiful production in every way. Handsome to hold, its vivid, atmospheric writing tells a gripping tale of the Windjammer family's fall from fortune in 17th-century Amsterdam. The patriarch dies suddenly and Adam realises that "at 14 his childhood was now officially over". Scheming characters, deceptions, a foolish uncle, streets, alleyways, the waterfront, Dutch interiors, and the Windjammer home are brilliantly described. Richardson has a painterly eye and the reader is caught up in Adam's determination to save the family from ruin. Adam's involvement with Jade, the moneylender's daughter, a dramatic showdown at high noon, and a clever twist involving tulipmania make for an excellent tale.
Ghost narratives not only allow young readers to travel back and travel elsewhere, but ghosts, as Hamlet discovered, thrill, intrigue and liberate. Tom Pow's Scabbit Isle (Corgi £4.99) is a powerful ghost story. Sam Burns, whose twin sister was killed in a road accident, now lives in "a house without memories". Despite Mum's energetic optimism, Sam's family are the walking wounded, and when he sees a ghostly young girl and plague victim clutching her baby he discovers that the past plays a part in the present. Pow cleverly uses Mr Carruthers, the old museum curator, to bring the centuries-old love story of Janet and Edward alive and this in turn is echoed in the classroom scene where Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet is abandoned for Shakespeare's. Children, sometimes, resist printed dialect but Pow's handling of Scottish dialogue is vitally atmospheric. Matt, the school janitor, tells Sam: "Life's full of mysteries that it's no given to us tae understand and anybody, nae matter how educated, who thinks he's got an inkling of all the teeming mysteries of life is an eejit."
A really well-made, enjoyable and engagingly streetwise book; Missy called it her favourite kind of history lesson.
Another ghost story, another remote Scottish setting [all hail Macbeth!] in Eileen Dunlop's Weerdwood (Poolbeg, €6.50). Well-written (gulls swoop "over water grey and crinkly as an elephant's skin"), and carefully plotted, the first-person narrative engages immediately. Con and classmates volunteer to turn an old house, with its scary atmosphere - "sad and bad at the same time" - into a holiday centre for the disabled, and it's here that Con's nightmares become reality. Joseph Drummond "Piggy" Gillanders, once a horrible, bullying boy next door, reappears at Weerdwood as kitchen help and reformed drug addict. He is now known as Jake and, as Con discovers, he too has seen a ghost deerhound in the grounds. Add a bricked-up window to a boarded room, a death there, "away back" before the first World War, and Dunlop's story is up and running.
I thought the connections between then and now a little strained as Con and Jake together explore the truth. Uncovered are drownings, a hanging and a nervous breakdown, but this novel, like Tom Pow's, reminds us that the past is never past.
The Kids' Night In anthology (Collins, £6.99) piggybacks on a familiar format. Twenty-nine well-known children's authors, poets and illustrators contribute to the War Child charity, but the book is a series of starters rather than a meal. Celia Rees tells of a school trip to an Aztec exhibition. "Crap," says Del until Chris, his best mate, proves him wrong. Eoin Colfer's Mary Leary, hairdresser extraordinaire, turns to dyeing Noely's dog, Bruce, in a toilet, while, in Mary Hoffmann's story, the 14-year-old narrator, Nicola, shuttles between Dad in Poland and Mum in Australia. Having spent nine days a year travelling for nine years of her life, she decides to keep her feet on the ground. An accessible, varied, worthwhile collection.
Primary school teacher Kieran Fanning certainly knows how to hold an audience. His new book, Tempest of Trouble (Mentor €6.50), takes us on a busy, active and very enjoyable journey. That we're solving maths puzzles, learning the plot of a Shakespeare play and map-reading en route is the bonus. Experts often tell us to think interrogatively; this does it big time. And the illustrated page for every page of text will entice the most reluctant of readers.
"Growing up is hard," says Allison Pearson. "And stories are one of the ways in which we try it out, helping us to articulate our fears, even as we are heading towards them. The best children's literature throws a beam over the murky waters ahead: a lighthouse for life." These books do just that.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin