Ten to Twelve Year Olds: Niall MacMonagle on journeys of personal discovery
The best books involve and engross but they also enable us to become. Crazy Joe, in Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark, pondering the idea of growing up, asks "Why is it sad when I ask what will become of you and not sad when I ask what will you become?" Youngsters, above all, want to find themselves, to become; and an important part of that journey is their reading. Novels, especially those with characters who discover and create themselves as they go, reassure, inspire, empower. Then, reading is becoming.
Deep Water, by Ann Turnbull (Walker, £4.99), offers a compelling and realistic moral tangle. Jon and Ryan mitch school, steal a boat, almost drown. When Jon leaves his injured friend on a cliff edge and goes for help, fear of his hard-working, socially-aspiring single mum results in his doing nothing. Turnbull portrays Jon's tortured cowardice, anguish, cover-up, self-made mess and eventual courage in spare but very involving, effective writing. Fast and easy, slim but not slight, you couldn't go wrong with this.
Suspend belief and travel to Tallis, a "Middle-Agey" fantasy world "through a hole blasted by a falling star". Only child Tim, nicknamed "Timid", is Michael Molloy's hero in The House on Falling Star Hill (Chicken House, £12.99). Treggers live in giant trees; the Gurneys travel on gigantic pigs; Chanters send mind messages (who needs txting?) and the plot is a journey (map supplied) towards triumph and truth. Every page brings something strange and new and Molloy is undoubtedly inventive, but Tim's character lacks development and the plot is sometimes strained, sometimes too complicated. A family is reunited, a lost son is restored to his mother. Here, journey and arrival matter: Tim discovers true friendship, conquers his shyness, fights in a war and goodness wins the day.
An earthquake in 224BC toppled a bronze Colossus, and Nathan, in "hoodie and combats", while holidaying on that same Greek island, considers how "Bits of Colossus might be in the coffee-machine, the coins in the till". Lesley Howarth's Colossus (Oxford, £4.99) tells a richly imagined story. Sam and Ali are told of Nathan and Lennie, a story-within-a-story where myth is never background. Greece, its heat, sun and shadows, blaze on the page. Is the little Colossus that Nathan finds "magic" or "just a cheap souvenir"? Though modern ("Bar Kolossus is showing Wimbledon", parents are "the Olds") Howarth's novel swims with the mysterious past. Magic realism, ghosts and a lost twin brother help Nathan discover how to "step out of yourself, leave your ant-self behind". That grown-up Nat is revealed as narrator validates all. Fine, sophisticated, challenging story-telling.
The Baudelaire orphans are back and no prize for understanding Lemony Snicket's success. More Unfortunate Events, # 10, is The Slippery Slope (Egmont, £6.99). Young readers love mad, bad behaviour and transgressive armchair travelling, and the writing, as ever, is sharp as, well, lemon. We begin in a caravan hurtling down a mountain and end on a toboggan floating down a river. Sometimes, too clever by half can be wonderful.
Do kids still learn off by heart, as my generation did, the 1916 Proclamation? Elizabeth Lutzeier's Crying for the Enemy (Oxford, £4.99) tells of that momentous Monday, April 24th, 1916, when "freedom set fire to the city". Dates, facts and figures are less important in this retelling than the human dimension: moral conundrum, individual choice. Though Lutzeier's plot, in which the paths of country lad Michael, Daisy the American and privileged Sarah intersect, is neat; that two of the three die begs important questions. Nationality and violence - their justifications are seriously explored. As the title suggests, nothing is simple: "We don't hate the British . . . All we want is for Ireland to be free".
For 12s and over, The Gift, by James Riordan (Oxford, £4.99 ), tells of 14-year-old twins. Bee has cerebral palsy, and straight-talking Fee tells both their stories. Shop-lifting and a vulgar, amoral single mum with three partners and five children, clearly signals where we're at. "If there is a god, he or she can piss in your chips," says Fee; but Bee discovers poetry and Fee school spirit in this surprisingly likeable, gutsy and heart-warming story.
Kenneth Oppel's Airborn (Hodder, £10.99) is a high adventure in every sense. 15-year-old Matt Cruse, cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury hydrium-powered airship, tells a tale that never flags for 400 pages. Oppel's description of Captain Walken and his crew, the ship itself, the strange and vicious "cloud cat" creature, a tropical island, its forests and pirate village (pirates are named Crumlin, Rathgar: Oppel, a Canadian, spent a year in Dublin), the wilful Kate de Vries whom Matt falls for, the sharp dialogue - all are brilliantly done. At the outset, the old-fashioned entertaining storytelling, with its spectacularly clear picturing of events, reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson; but its momentum-gathering plot, shootings, dangers, savagery and suspense add a James Bond dimension. Though Kate and Matt "have as much future as a fish and a kangaroo", love triumphs. Set in an imaginary past, Airborn's contained world is totally absorbing, cleverly plotted, a terrific read. My 12-year-old daughter and I raced through it. No Harry Potter this summer - Oppel's Airborn more than makes up for it.
• Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin