Pre-teens: Niall MacMonagle rounds up the latest books for the 10-12 age group.
Glittering, coloured, little stars tumble from the pages of Alan Temperley's The Magician of Samarkand (Macmillan £9.99). It's a clever marketing ploy and, in this instance, entirely appropriate, for Temperley's world is one of wicked wizards, treasures, golden domes and spells. But good books, whether set in never-ever land, medieval China or gritty small-town Scotland, work their own magic when character, plot and fine writing combine to take us places.
Temperley's exotic tale tells of Anahita, the shoemaker's beautiful daughter, and the old, ugly, but powerful Zohak Ali who wants to marry her. When she refuses, Zohak tyrannises Samarkand: people go missing, are changed into animals and his portrait must hang in every home. "Inspectors come round. If they don't see it on display you get beaten." And his spells are horrible: a threatening fist turns white with leprosy; "stinging flies, thick as a rug" descend from nowhere. Anahita, whom Zohak turned ancient and ugly, is banished to a mountain cave. A hawk, lizard and rat play an important part in a story that is as charming as it is incredible and, yes, in the end, the "Ah!" factor wins through: Anahita, her youth and beauty restored, gets her prince.
In Catherine MacPhail's Wheels (Puffin £4.99 ) James Gordon, nearly 13, is an unlikely hero. Life is wrecked when his father is killed and though Mum walks away from the car crash unscathed, James will never walk again. The other driver, that night of blinding rain, also died. Or did he? This question is at the heart of the story and wheelchair-bound James is bitter: "I'd lost my life too in that accident. I couldn't walk. I'd never walk again". MacPhail's unsentimental portrayal of James strengthens the narrative. He discovers that there were two people in that van and is determined to discover the one who got away. His detective work leads him across town and into a different world; it leads him to Kirsty Shearer whose brother Sam died in the crash and James is convinced that the too-good-to-be-true youth leader Donny Scanlon is covering up the truth.
Wheels, a thriller and mystery in one, looks at how lives can be destroyed and re-made and, as James wrestles with moral dilemmas, MacPhail, here in top form, draws her readers in.
The Mum Hunt (Macmillan £4.99 ) by Gwyneth Rees comes in bright pinks and yellows, and is a people-person book. This is Esmie's story and though the ingredients are familiar the story is told with a chatty and lovely liveliness. Begin this and you will not put it down.
Eleven-year-old Esmie lives with police detective widower Dad, 15-year-old brother, Matthew, and 22-year-old Juliette, an oh-so-French au pair. Plots are hatched to find Dad a partner through the Lonely Hearts column but twists and turns result in confusions and walk-outs. Matty, the rebel adolescent adds realistic shade; "Nobody wants to say they are sorry. But sometimes we must. You will have to learn that, Matthew, if you do not want to lose the people in your life that you care about." The happy-enough ending is appropriate and, though its cover is clearly aimed at girls, I could well see 12-year-old boys sneaking a read.
Lynne Reid Banks, famous for her 1960 novel The L-Shaped Room, and in her 70s, now prefers to write for children. Her latest, The Dungeon ( Collins £10.99), a tale of bloody deeds, is set in medieval Scotland and China. Bruce McLennan, with "hair the colour of fire", "hideous memories", and "a thirst for revenge", orders a castle dungeon to be built where he hopes to imprison his arch-enemy McInnes. In China he buys a girl slave, Peony, whom he treats badly and on returning to Scotland blames her when he fails to avenge his dead wife and children. This well-written book gives a fine sense of ordinary people, cultural nuances and the ending, with its dungeon deaths, is both unexpected and sad. Though Peony's mysticism is interesting and local lad Fin's love for her touching, the China connection stretches things too far.
Faerie Wars (Bloomsbury £12.99 ) by Carlow-based Herbie Brennan is the big book in this batch. Ambitiously, impressively and marvellously plotted, it begins in realistic mode and, when Henry Atherton's headmistress mum, Martha, left his dad for another woman, I thought I was in a Woody Allen movie. But paralleling Henry's troubled, familiar world is Crown Prince Pyrgus Malvae's, the Purple Emperor's son. When Henry rescues what he thinks is a butterfly in Mr Fogarty's shed our world and another reality meet. "Einstein figured there were about a billion universes next door to this one," says straight-talking Fogarty. Though complicated, the telling is crystal clear. With its gutsy details, terrific descriptions, memorable characters, dramatic situations and great storyline Faerie Wars is a winner - an inspiration, never perspiration. And don't take my word for it. Several 12-year-olds I know, boys and girls, have read it; their verdict: brilliant!
In Me Again: (and Charlie) A Holiday in Bits and Pieces (The Chicken House £4.99) by Rebecca Stevens and Steve Jeanes, do-gooder Janet and football-mad Charlie tell their girl/boy tales of "Wow!" and woe and all other emotions from A to Z. "How sad/sick/cool/bizarre is that!" sums up their direct, confiding, recognisable tones and the page lay-out will send youngsters galloping through and gobbling up this entertaining tale of snowboarding and painting in France.
And finally, a serious and important non-fiction work. Many of the ten thousand refugee children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who left Nazi Germany for Britain never saw their families again. In One Small Suitcase (Puffin £4.99 ), Barry Turner draws on autobiographical accounts, newspaper reports, riveting photographs to convey, simply but powerfully, the heartbreak of the Kindertransporte, the tragedy of displacement and their subsequent lives. A lesson that needs to be learnt.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin