The Secret Deep by Lindsay Galvin

2018

Aster’s mother died of cancer.  She and her sister Poppy travel to New Zealand to live with their aunt.  But Aunt Iona is not living in the respectable semi that she had sent photos of to the girls’ social worker.  She is living on an ecovillage where she is secretly conducting research into a vaccination that will prevent cancer. There is a predisposition to it in their family; their mother and grandmother both died of it. She gives the vaccine to the girls, telling them it is a tetanus jab.

Iona had been working with Jonathan Nygard. He had wanted the blood from Iona’s trial patients to use in an actual cure for cancer.  Coincidentally he had used it on Sam’s grandfather. The girls had met Sam on the plane.

Iona takes the whole of the colony out on a boat trip. Poppy leaves her hoodie and phone on the shore. Sam finds them when he goes looking for the girls. He takes the sim card out of the phone and loads it on to his computer.  He finds out the coordinates of where Ion has moved the colony to.  

Iona had put the patients now including her to nieces into hibernation. Iona, Aster and a couple of the others come out of hibernation after the rest.

Nygra had found a fossil of a mermaid and that become important in the vaccine that Iona was producing and the cure he was working on. An astonishing side effect is that once the patients are in the water they develop gills and can stay underwater for a long time.  They also continue to be able to breathe on land.

They establish that the hibernation is an important part of making the drug effective.

Iona and Nygard are killed during a final show-down. Aster, who has always been good at maths and science at school, resolves to continue her aunt’s work.        

The novel is 276 pages long in the paperback edition. The text is blocked and has a normal adult font. 

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Voyage on the great Titanic by Ellen Emerson White

 

1998

Margret Anne Brady has been brought up in convent. She is hired as a companion for a Mrs Carstairs, and American lady who is returning to New York to  meet her first grandchild.  Her daughter has just given birth.  Margaret hopes to join her brother William who is already living in Boston.  Of course, in the early hours of 14 April 1912 the Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks.  Margaret, Mrs Carstairs and her dog Florence all survive. The cabin boy, Robert, who has befriended Margaret does not. Margaret names one of her children after Robert.  She does manage to meet up with her brother who finds her in New York.     

Margaret uses a sophisticated language for a young girl who has been brought up in convent. This may affect the reader.  For this reason I also recommend it for lower secondary.  The text is delivered in diary form     

There is a useful timeline at the end of the book and some interesting photos with quite detailed notes.

The text is blocked and uses a serif font and has difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. The print is small throughout the book and even smaller when it accompanies the photos. The novel is 189 pages long.  

When Fishes Flew by Michael Morpurgo

 

2021

Nandi’s Great Aunt Ellie usually visits them every year. She comes from the Greek island of Ithaca. Nandi’s father is Greek but he and his family live in Australia.  Then Aunt Ellie stops coming; she is getting too old.  When Nandi is seventeen she works in a café and saves up in order to go and visit her great aunt.  She arrives at her aunt’s home only to find that Ellie has left.  According to neighbour and friend Maria, Ellie has been doing this regularly but always comes home safely.  Nobody knows where she goes. Nandi develops a friendship with a flying-fish who is the incarnation of the Greek god Proteus. He tells her much about her aunt’s past and present. Aunt Ellie returns, bringing with her two orphans from Syria. Aunt Ellie has worked all of her life caring for people less fortunate than herself.  Her young husband, Alexis, died less than a year after they were married. Nandi decides to live with her aunt and the two girls she has adopted. Every year she pays for her Australian family to come and stay for a few weeks.        

As ever Michael Morpurgo uses a rich voice to tell this story.

The text is accompanied by line drawings which illustrate the story.  There are also some maps.

The text is blocked and uses a simple font but one that has difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. It is double-spaced. The text is 179 pages long.  

October, October by Katya Balen (illustrations by Angela Harding)

2020

October lives in the woods with her father. They have a house and it even has central heating and freezers.  They get milk and eggs form a local farmer. Despite this certain measure of civilisation they do enjoy the wild.  October’s mother left long ago as she missed the city.  

October’s father has an accident one day. He falls from a tree, damaging his spine. October has to go and live with her mother.  She finds London difficult and for the first time she has to go to school. Yet she gradually becomes reconciled to school, makes friends with Yusuf, becomes a mud lark and gradually accepts that her mother cares for her.  She even begins to find some affection for her mother.

Her father does recover and he and October return to live in the woods. Now though she keeps contact with her mother and the friends she has made in London.  

At the beginning of the story October rescues a baby owl. Somewhat reluctantly her father helps her to care for it. When she moves to London the beast plan is to take her owl, Stig, to an owl sanctuary where she is further looked after and trained to be released into the wild. October accepts in the end that this is the best plan.

The text is quite literary and Katya Balen is very skilled in her use of language. It is 291 pages in blocked text in and adult font but double-spaced. There are a few monochrome illustrations.  It is written mainly in prose but there are some verses.  

Hide and Seek by Robin Scott-Elliot

 2021

Amélie’s parents and older brother are taken by the Gestapo form their Paris apartment as she hides in the wardrobe with her mother’s fur coat.  She survives for a while by eating all the food that is left in the apartment.  She spends her days in the museum.  She has removed her Star of David from her coat but Cécile who works there realises this. Cécile takes Amélie in.  Cécile works for the Resistance and soon Amélie is doing the same.  However, there is a traitor in the network.  Amélie and Cécile wrongly accuse Alain. It is in fact Raymond, whom Amélie pushes form a train when she realises this.  Amélie lies about her age and is eventually recruited for the SOE (Special Operations Executive) after she has accompanied a British airman back to England. There she goes first to a boarding school and then to a government establishment where she is trained for SOE.  That she is a native speaker of French is very useful. This enables her to return to Paris where she also becomes involved in rescuing Jewish children.  Some are hidden amongst families in Paris and the others are smuggled into Switzerland. One little boy, Lou, doesn’t make it through the fence and returns to Paris with Amélie where they both wait for the end of the war and for their older brothers to return. The final scene is of Amélie meeting her brother Paulie at the station. We do not learn whether her parents or Lou’s brother return.    

This is a fiction but some real characters are mentioned in the text.  An afterword by Robin  Scott-Elliot explains this.         

The book is 325 pages long in blocked text which uses an adult font. 

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The Art of Kate Greenaway by Ina Taylor

1991  

This book gives us a brief introduction to Kate Greenaway’s life. We get to know a little about the young woman who never really grew up. She is portrayed as naïve, a very talented artist and seamstress, and as a rather shy person. She makes a lot of money from her work but then overspends somewhat though she never really gets into extreme difficulties.

The account whets the appetite for more information about Greenaway. Adults might now like to read a more in-depth biography. There is probably enough material here for a secondary school student who wished to complete a school project though more may be needed for GCSE Art or A-Level art.

There are many very well annotated examples of Greenaway’s work.     

The book is 127 pages long, hardback, and it contains a useful bibliography at the end.    

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