Pirates and smugglers and ghosts, oh my!

Image: lonelyplanet.com

This post will be part of Playing By The Book's blog carnival I'm Looking For A Book About... on seaside and all things beachy. Please do go and check out the others!

I think if I was to do any kind of proper analysis, Cornwall and the West Country in general would feature very highly as a setting for children's fiction. From two of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series to Enid Blyton's Famous Five, the combination of mythology, wild landscape, sea, caves and lawless history has been an irresistible combination for authors. And for adults, Daphne du Maurier's novels, such as My Cousin Rachel, Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, evoke the history and landscape of Cornwall very powerfully.

Image: waterstones.com

Dead Man's Cove by Lauren St John is a wonderful mystery adventure story, in the tradition of Malcolm Saville, but it is thoroughly up to date. 11 year old Laura Marlin is an orphan, living in a children's home, when she learns that she has an uncle and she will be going to live with him. She arrives at his house in Cornwall in the middle of the night, and finds him oddly relaxed about her care. All she is told is that she must not go to Dead Man's Cove. However, Laura's hero is Matt Walker, a detective in a series of novels, and various events have piqued her curiosity: where does her uncle, Calvin Redfern, go in the middle of the night? Why is the housekeeper so interested in him? And what is the secret connected to the strange, silent boy Tariq, nephew of the owners of the North Star Grocery? Laura, accompanied by her trusty three-legged husky, must find out.

This is a really wonderful book. The atmosphere of a Cornish seaside town out of season is wonderfully conveyed, and the geography and geology of the place are integral to the plot. I loved the way that the romantic past of smugglers is undercut by the modern realities of criminal gangs. Fabulous, and I can't wait to read the next book.

Image: fionadunbar.com

Venus Rocks by Fiona Dunbar is the third in the Kitty Slade series; I reviewed the second, Fire and Roses, here. Kitty lives with her grandmother and brother and sister, Sam and Flossie. They are home schooled, following incidents at Kitty's school in the first novel, Divine Freaks, where Kitty discovered her rare condition, Phantorama- the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Being home schooled means that the family are able to spend a lot of time travelling in their camper van, the Hippo. In this novel the family are in Pelporth (based on Polperro, Fowey and Port Isaac), staying with their Aunt Phoebe, Uncle Sean and cousins Ty and Ashley. So far, Kitty has seen only solitary ghosts, but here in Pelporth she sees not only a whole ghost ship, but also a very persistent ghost girl, who Kitty discovers is Beth, who disguised herself as a cabin boy to stow away, follow her lover Jed and escape her brutal father. 

The Venus has a gruesome reputation: people who see it die soon afterwards. Kitty must solve the mystery of the ship (who it turns out was not simply a merchantman, but a privateer, a government-sponsored pirate ship), reunite Beth the ghost girl with her lost love and also deal with some present-day nefarious goings on, which threatens to involve Ashley's former friend Megan. 

The Cornish atmosphere, landscape, folklore and history again permeates the book, and is integral to the plot. Readers will learn a good deal about tides, caves, marine biology and geography from reading both books; any upper KS2 (8-11 year olds) studying Cornwall as a contrasting location in Geography, or indeed visiting Cornwall on holiday would enhance their learning from these books. However, they are both fantastic reads and I would recommend them! Dead Man's Cove for 9+, Venus Rocks for 10+. Happy reading!

There's a ghost in my house...

I recently finished the wonderful new book by Cathy McPhail, Out of the Depths. Set in a Scottish school, it is the story of Tyler Lawless, who sees dead people. The story opens wonderfully: "I saw my teacher in the queue at the supermarket last Christmas. Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. She'd been dead for six months."

Image: catherinemcphail.co.uk

Tyler's ability to see ghosts is not necessarily a positive thing though; it gets her in trouble at one school, the reputation of being a self-dramatising liar, and jeapordises her ability to settle at her new school. St Anthony's Academy had been a Catholic boys' school, though it is now coeducational and multi-faith. On her first day, she notices that the statues of the saints appear to be moving. Even more strangely, she sees a boy in her classroom that nobody else has noticed. Her new friends tell her about the murder that happened at the school years ago, of a troubled boy called Ben Kincaid. Tyler realises that the boy she can see is Ben. Then he asks her to help him... A gripping story; the final twist I really didn't see coming. I can't wait for the next one!

Image: orchardbooks.co.uk

Another great series about a girl who can see ghosts is Fiona Dunbar's Kitty Slade. Fire and Roses is the second in the series; the third, Venus Rocks, has just been published. Kitty is now home schooled by her Greek grandmother (events in the first story means that she can't stay at school!) In this story, Kitty and her family are visiting an old family friend. Strange Poltergeist activity at their house leads Kitty to discover that they are under a curse because of their ancestor Sir Ambrose Vyner. Another ghost, John Wilkes, a fellow member of the Hellfire Club (a drinking club that invoked Bacchus and Venus and engaged in various practices designed to shock society) appears to Kitty, and she must solve a mystery to break the curse and ensure her friends can stay in their home. Much of the action of the book takes place in and near the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, South East England; a great feature of the book is that young readers will learn some of the history and geography of the area alongside enjoying the story. 

This book is lighter in tone than Out of the Depths; Fiona Dunbar aims to write stories similar to the Famous Five; I felt it was more like Nancy Drew crossed with Scooby Doo. Very enjoyable.

Out of the Depths I would recommend to 11+, and Fire and Roses to 10+. Two very enjoyable books.

The title of this post is from the Northern Soul classic, R. Dean Taylor's Ghost In My House.