Jackson, Mississippi native Angie Thomas, whose YA debut The Hate U Give hit hard in 2017, has turned her gaze on books for younger children. Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy (Walker) handles often familiar terrain with brio, using a cast of figures from American folklore and a smattering of Swahili.
Even pre-Harry Potter, a genre you might call “Oh no, it seems I am the chosen one!” has been a literary staple. Jackson resident Nic and her single father have often moved because of their gifts, lest unremarkables suspect there’s a magical world. But unanswered questions and her father being falsely (she hopes) accused of a crime spur Nic, her pals and her hellhound puppy on a quest to clear his name. It’s a formula, but Thomas is hardly formulaic. She strings out the tension for ages until the penny drops.
If Thomas imagines an advanced, egalitarian Black utopia called Uhuru, newcomer Pari Thomson offers up Greenwild: The World Behind the Door (Macmillan, June), where the enchantment of the natural world holds sway. There are ways in from the benighted Greyside; one of them in Kew Gardens.
Young Daisy is left by her beloved mother at a boarding school while she goes to South America on assignment as a brave foreign correspondent. When she is reported missing, Daisy knows sinister forces are afoot; escape is paramount. She barely makes it to the Greenwild, which is under threat as never before. Thomson is half-Persian, and this richly imagined adventure blends tales of magic pomegranate seeds and eco-fear with the might of what Dylan Thomas once called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”.
London is the setting for two more tales of bravery. In Carnegie medal-winner Katya Balen’s The Thames and Tide Club: The Secret City (Bloomsbury), for readers at the youngest end of chapter books, London is under threat from the unquiet Thames. It’s flooding bakeries and threatening the estate Clem and her friends live on. As mudlarkers, her gang have a special relationship with the river. When Clem discovers a metal ring she has found has weird powers, they are plunged into an underwater adventure awash with puns, bumptious snails and piratical eels. Naturally, the cause of all the problems is a disgruntled aristocratic porpoise in a pink ballgown.
Set in Victorian London, Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star (HarperCollins) – by another debutant, Laura Noakes – reinvigorates the “ghastly orphanage” genre; historical fiction with a modern eye. It’s 1899, and the empire exhibition is coming, showcasing treasure from all over the empire – treasure that is largely stolen, as young Diya, of Indian heritage, points out.
Diya, Cosima and their friends in the Home for Unfortunate Girls are worked mercilessly, rarely allowed out. But they must act given they are, for reasons unexplained, about to be handed over to the exhibition’s dodgy Lord Fitzroy. It’s a spirited fightback from the impoverished, different and disabled children as Cos and co mount a heist to buy themselves out of penury – and to solve the mystery of Cosima’s own parentage. Noakes’s matter-of-fact critique of empire and social injustice – peopled by a slew of differently abled characters – reverberates with historical detail and derring-do. A great nonfiction companion would be Stolen History: The Truth About the British Empire and How It Shapes Us (Penguin, June) by Empireland author Sathnam Sanghera. Museums and HP sauce come under scrutiny as Sanghera outlines how the school syllabus fails to engage with the legacy of empire.
Finally, one aimed at 11+ readers hungry for thrills, but not ready for full-fat YA. Once a month, children are in charge in the town of Tremorglade. The adults all “Turn” – into werewolves, AKA Rippers – and must be caged up with some raw meat and clothes until the morning when the wolfishness wears off. In Bite Risk (Simon & Schuster, June) SJ Wills proves a dab hand at world creation, sketching friendships and rivalries against a backdrop of post-disruption normality.
But why don’t people ever leave Tremorglade? Could the elderly Harold’s conspiracy theories about Seaquest, the company that provides healthcare, deliveries and pretty much everything else, have legs? Naturally, the truth tears up more certainties than the slavering beasts.
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