McTavish on the Move

Meg Rosoff’s and the Peachey family’s dog McTavish is back. It’s time for a move in McTavish on the Move. (Well, I suppose the title gives it away.) I understand Meg has recent experience of moving house – and it’s been put to good use, making everything pretty realistic. Except possibly for the ease with which Ma and Pa Peachey sell and buy the houses involved in this move.

Pa seems to have had a personality makeover, which terrifies his family, but in the end his sunny disposition (hah) and general happiness make for a positive moving experience.

Although Betty isn’t keen, and McTavish notices. Trust him, though. He can work out what to do, and he does so with gusto. My own first days at new schools would have been vastly improved with the McTavish magic.

I believe this was the fourth – yes, it was – and last McTavish story. If it has to be goodbye, it’s a heart-warming and moving one. (Sorry.)

And one can always live in the hope that Pa’s personality reverts permanently to his more morose behaviour.

Seven Ghosts

Even at the best of times I find Chris Priestley really scary. I mean, his writing. Sometimes I don’t read a book of his because I’m not feeling brave enough. Other times I save it until there are people nearby. Just in case.

For Halloween I don’t want to deny anyone the thrill, not to mention the trembling knees, of reading Chris’s latest offering for Barrington Stoke. You really don’t need to go out in the cold and dark and beg for sweets from strangers. Much better to tuck into Seven Ghosts and hope you will escape unscathed when you’re done.

It’s about a story-writing competition. Jake and a group of other children who have been shortlisted are being guided round the local stately house, to hear about, and maybe meet, the resident ghosts. Just for inspiration, you under-stand, so they can go away and write an even scarier story.

Jake seems to be the only one to feel uneasy, and the only one who can see certain things. Their guide feels a bit fishy, doesn’t she?

The dressed-up, fake ghosts strike Jake as rather feeble. But what about that cracked mirror?

Let’s just say that I was wise to wait until I wasn’t alone, and that bedtime would not have been an appropriate time to read Seven Ghosts.

Tin Boy

I’ve never seen Steve Cole so dark. And I’d not expected it in this short book for Barrington Stoke. But it’s excellent, and so very stirring.

Tin Boy is about a young boy in Indonesia, mining for tin in the most dangerous of ways. Just so we can have our mobile phones, and as cheaply as possible. I imagine that after reading this story about Tono, the young readers will chuck out their phones in disgust. Although, it’d be better if we all kept our gadgets until they die, so people like Tono do not have to die mining for tin.

Living with his uncle, Tono has to dive for tin, until the day he has a near fatal accident in the water. He finds a stone, which might be magic, giving him powers just like the heroes in the cartoons he inherited from his father.

And for a while that does seem to be the case, until…

This is powerful stuff; not at all like Steve’s other – excellent but lighter – fiction. I’d love to read more from serious Steve.

(Illustrations by Oriol Vidal)

White Eagles

This relatively short – because it’s for Barrington Stoke – novel by Elizabeth Wein, featuring a Polish teenager at the outbreak of WWII, is as wonderful and, yes, life affirming, as you’d want it to be.

I would obviously have welcomed a much longer novel, but White Eagles confirmed that you can have a full grown novel with few words. It’s as heartrending as Code Name Verity, as exciting and as sweet, as well.

Again, it’s worth being reminded that war didn’t only start in Britain. It broke out all over Europe, and it was equally devastating, or possibly more so. It’s easy to forget. And reading White Eagles I realised that there may well be an outbreak of fiction to ‘celebrate’ that it’s now 80 years since the war began. Unless one doesn’t mark the start?

18-year-old Kristina is a flying instructor in Warsaw, but when the Germans invade, she soon finds herself having to escape, with her plane, and before long nothing is as she’s known it.

Kristina is another young pilot in the mould of Maddie from Code Name Verity. I can read any number of stories about these early female pilots.

Letting Go

Is this my first Cat Clarke? I think it might be. Her short novel Letting Go, for Barrington Stoke, is quite a masterpiece.

It’s a story about Agnes and her ex-girlfriend Ellie and Ellie’s new boyfriend Steve. As will be obvious, this is painful, at least for Agnes. But a promise is a promise and here the three of them are, on their way up a mountain, where the weather is about to change for the worse.

None of them are happy and they fight.

And then things get really bad.

I loved the way the reader is allowed to get close to the characters and see what and who they are. As with most of us, they are both bad and good, but none of that matters because this soon turns into an emergency for which they are ill equipped.

It’s quite a grown-up story about three young people.

The Starlight Watchmaker

I could be wrong, but I don’t normally associate the Barrington Stoke books with science fiction. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover Lauren James and The Starlight Watchmaker.

This story was both fun and sweet and a little different. There is an android, my second in mere weeks, and little green men, not to mention a sort of stone character. They are all people. Although, the androids are perhaps seen as less than others.

Hugo is an abandoned android watchmaker, living and working alone, when he meets student Dorian, who is rich and spoilt.

Dorian has a problem. And soon it’s apparent that the problem is more widespread than it seemed at first, and it’s down to Hugo and Dorian to solve the puzzle and hopefully solve the danger that the planet might be in.

This is about friendship and equality, and how we are all different, but we are still valuable in our own way. And it’s exciting!

Eagle Warrior

Gill Lewis could make me an avid nature fan, and rather more interested in wildlife than I am now. That’s how good she is when she writes her ‘nature and animals’ stories. The stories are great, and the facts are presumably more correct than in most books, because I understand Gill knows her stuff.

In Eagle Warrior we meet Bobbie, who lives on a Scottish farm with her family, which includes her grandmother, with whom she has much in common. The two look out for the golden eagle that has been seen nearby, and they worry in case the rich landowner might kill the bird.

There is so much in this short book; wildlife, family relations, education and getting on with your neighbours.

Bobbie doesn’t just need to keep the eagle safe, but she has her own future to consider, and there are many ways of looking at what is important in life.

I loved this story.