In his memoir, Many Different Kinds of Love, Michael Rosen hoped to recover from Covid to write a book “about a French dog called Gaston le Dog”. The former children’s laureate survived. Now here’s the book.
Pitched at the youngest end of chapter tales, The Incredible Adventures of Gaston le Dog (Walker Books) follows a farm dog who dreams of returning to an idyllic beach. His odyssey takes twists and turns; a villainous version of Puss in Boots and some gloriously French-named animals – Libellule the dragonfly – figure. But Gaston’s beach is not as he remembers it. And he learns that reality can be both disappointing – and an improvement on fairytales.
The picture/chapter book divide ill serves some illustrated books with subject matter aimed at non-little kids. Three stand out this autumn.
It may be November, but shouldn’t it always be Black History Month? In Football’s Champions of Change (Welbeck) the sports presenter Damian Johnson recounts the history of footballing heroics by people of colour, allied to a trenchant analysis of anti-racist efforts and ongoing battles, such as the lack of representation in management.
Frances Hardinge, meanwhile, is a terrific YA author going younger in Island of Whispers (Macmillan, illustrated by Emily Gravett). Milo is the younger son of a ferryman, charged with taking dead souls on their final journey. He knows he’s too sensitive to inherit the job. But disaster strikes and he must steer his cargo of spirits – pursued by an anguished lord who can’t accept his daughter’s death, plus some sinister, headless birds. Milo’s consideration towards the dead turns out to be his strongest suit.
I’m not keen on cheery books urging kids to help sort out the climate catastrophe. But Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth (Allen & Unwin) by Steve Mushin, a “maverick inventor” born in Scotland and working between Australia and New Zealand, is a big-format story full of scientific polysyllables, Heath-Robinson-esque contraptions and audacious hope. Poo is involved – but also sewer submarines filtering water to supply vertical city farm-jungle-wildlife habitats.
Currently, there’s a seasonal profusion of books with “snow”, “elf” and “reindeer” in the titles, doing what they say on the tin. But the climate weighs heavy in The Ice Children (Macmillan) by MG Leonard (Beetle Boy, Twitch), which, like Gaston, reuses fairytales imaginatively.
Bianca’s little brother is found frozen in the park. No one believes her when she gleans that a strange book, and some even stranger children, are involved. As more youngsters succumb, Bianca goes rogue to uncover a plot by Jack Frost to stop his sister the Snow Queen from dying as the planet heats. “We need to become the government,” conclude the children.
Adam Baron writes sage and tender middle-years offerings rooted in the everyday: his latest, Oscar’s Lion (HarperCollins, with great illustrations by Benji Davies) skews younger than his Boy Underwater series. Somewhere in south London, a lion comes to tea. Having eaten Oscar’s parents, the beast nonetheless sets about looking after Oscar, who settles into this unsettling new arrangement. This is a lyrical, magic realist adventure about wish fulfilment, love and loss. Just when it seems to imply the lion is getting hungry again, it ends like a warm hug.
Richard “The Wolf Road” Lambert has won many plaudits. His excellent latest, The Republic of Dreams (Everything With Words), returns to the double world of Shadow Town (2021). Over in Balthasar, young queen-to-be Tamurlaine discovers a plot against her life. In our world, her friend Toby must stop the villainous Malladain from recruiting more young Dreamers to that nefarious end. But there’s a lot more powering this satisfying sequel, not least loyalty, the legacy of flawed fathers and the benefits of a republic over a kingdom.
The American novelist Donna Barba Higuera isn’t well known here, despite her Newbery medal. Her transporting new book, Alebrijes (Templar Publishing), after the fantastical creatures of Mexican art, weaves the past into a dystopian tale of survival for the upper end of key stage 2.
Four hundred years after a cataclysmic event, the Cascabels labour and the cruel Pocatelan elite rule southern California; everyone lives in fear of what’s outside the city walls. Orphans Leandro and Gabi do what they can to get by.
Soon, though, Higuera takes a sharp and original turn into sci-fi. Some old-world tech is not defunct, the children discover – and new ways of life are possible. But Leandro and his new allies’ plans to bust their loved ones out of Pocatelan requires stealth, ingenuity and some very nuanced moral calibration. Engrossing.
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