It’s blockbuster season. Cressida Cowell, author of two successful series, returns with a new franchise that shares magical DNA with its immediate predecessor, The Wizards of Once. Starring two warring sets of step-siblings, Which Way to Anywhere (Hachette, £12.99 hardback) finds a family repressing its witchy past, the better to hide from interdimensional beings trying to regain a stolen map of their interlocking worlds.
With his ability to illustrate at will, young K2 O’Hero is in particular danger from THE EXCORIATOR (so villainous he is only ever referred to in block caps, exquisitely drawn by Cowell); plucky animated toothbrushes lighten the mood.
Back in our own dimension, we find middle-years sensation Robin Stevens. The first book in her new series, The Ministry of Unladylike Activity (Penguin, £12.99 hardback), stars May Wong, the little sister of Hazel from the previous franchise, Murder Most Unladylike.
It’s wartime and May feels trapped at boarding school. Keen to be a spy, she runs away in an effort to prove herself. Joining forces with Eric, whose German ancestry must be kept secret, the two pose as evacuees to spy on a family they think is helping the Nazis.
Inevitably, there’s a body count and much superb Agatha Christie-style whodunnitry. Portrayals of ordinary people caught in the war’s crosshairs underline the indiscriminate cruelty of xenophobia.
The Chestnut Roaster (Everything With Words, £7.99) is only Eve McDonnell’s second book, but the Irish author is shaping up to be a keeper. Like Katherine Rundell’s The Rooftoppers, The Chestnut Roaster is an atmospheric adventure set in long-ago Paris.
Tiny for her age, Piaf sells fragrant chestnuts on a street corner. Her beloved twin, Luc, has lost his memory but Piaf’s prodigious power of recall means she is constantly being overwhelmed by her past. Everything is wrong: the grown-ups think it’s 1887, not 1888, and gifted children are going missing. When Piaf herself nearly falls victim, she is plunged into a terrifying adventure in the Paris catacombs, dodging bones, rats and a memory thief. A pacy feast for the senses, dizzyingly illustrated by Ewa Beniak-Haremska.
The biggest return this month is that of SF Said, whose last kid-lit hit, Phoenix, came out in long-ago 2013; he is best known for the 2003 classic Varjak Paw. Set at the upper edge of the age range, Tyger (David Fickling Books, £12.99 hardback) is a tremendous counterfactual thriller that nods to William Blake and real historical events. The British empire is still going, bodies are still swinging from Tyburn gallows and slavery is un-abolished. Free people of colour are confined to the Soho ghetto.
Delivery boy Adam Alhambra is rescued from a mugging by a terrifying creature – another one of those pesky interdimensional beings, it turns out, but the good kind, trying to save humanity from itself. The tyger, though, is dying. Adam must dodge not just a terrible villain who wants tyger for his menagerie, but racist mobs protesting against the enclosure of the commons to save the beast – and his beloved London – from the bleak historical path it is on. It doesn’t take an interdimensional being to spot Tyger’s relevance to our historical moment.
For light relief, a couple of Socratic dialogues. The Gita: For Children by Roopa Pai (Swift Press, £12.99) adapts the Bhagavad Gita, one of India’s ancient texts, for a key stage 2+ audience. On the eve of a civil war, the warrior Arjuna has the collywobbles; his mentor, Krishna (a god in disguise), talks him through his options. Published to coincide with Diwali, The Gita – somewhere between folklore, self-help and RE – provides a window to the rich world of the subcontinent’s epics.
Richard Ayoade should need no introduction – he voiced Templeton in the CBBC series Strange Hill High and his absurdist instincts effortlessly outclass the vast majority of celeb children’s offerings. The Book That No One Wanted to Read (Walker Books, £10.99 hardback) is a freewheeling conversation between a shy book and a keen reader. Splendidly illustrated by Tor Freeman, The Book… combines snarky silliness with a paean to the limitless possibilities of the blank page.
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