Paddy Donnelly’s new picture book Dodos are NOT Extinct (O’Brien Press, £6.99, 3+) is a playful introduction to evolution, reframing extinction as an animal’s natural instinct to survive. Dodo’s aren’t really extinct, they have just dressed themselves up as toucans. Woolly mammoths, meanwhile, have shaved their fur and are hiding in plain sight in an elephant stampede. That pelican you see? Well, it may be pterodactyl with a prosthetic beak. Donnelly’s illustrations excel at capturing a cheeky ‘don’t look at me’ expression in the various animal characters’ eyes, while a short non-fiction postscript puts the book’s talking points into a child-friendly, real-world context.
In Lynne Reid Bank’s exciting new middle-grade novel The Red Red Dragon (Walker Books, £12.99, 10+) fiery creatures of legend are also speaking out to the human world, in a celebration of difference that has lessons for us “uprights” too. When Ferocity is born, it isn’t apparent that he is different from any other dragon. But as he grows from hatchling to “mumbo”, his Mag and Dag realise that he is red, a colour distinction that becomes his nickname. But that is not Ferocity’s only difference. He has the capacity to think differently too, and that is why he is charged with finding a solution to the kingdom’s coal crisis. Ferocity’s quest is staged on the back of brilliant world-building by Reid Banks: from the historical human war known as the Great Ridding to the development of a new democratic, peaceful dragon state and the evolution of dragon language and “think space.” The central dragon-human friendship that evolves anchors the story in optimism that had gentle lessons about empathy to offer. The Red Red Dragon is a masterclass in storytelling from one of Britain’s classic children’s writers.
Fairy Hill (O’Brien Press, £11.99, 10+) is a new novel from Marita Conlon-McKenna, one of Ireland’s best-known children’s storytellers. Set in Sligo, it follows 13-year-old Londoner Anna, who has returned to her father’s homestead under the shadow of Ben Bulben for the summer. The journey she takes is metaphorical too, as Anna tries to find a place for herself in her father’s new family. Anna’s family circumstances give Conlon-McKenna a rich social real-world context against which to place the otherworldly aspects of the story, which sings into a long history of Irish legend and lore. W.B. Yeats’ poem The Stolen Child comes vividly to mind when Anna’s young brother Jack disappears: she fears he has been stolen by the fairies. Conlon-McKenna’s clever positioning of Anna’s rational fears beside the enchanted fantasy adds a thrilling edge, suggesting that the boundaries between the two worlds are even thinner than legends might have us believe.
The boundaries between the real world and fantasy become delightfully blurred in Daisy Hirst’s picture book Get Real Mallory! (Walker Books, £12.99, 3+). When Nomi’s busy brother, Stephen, starts teasing her about the drawing she has just made of a dog she insists is life-like, he admonishes her to “get real!” Unknowingly, his rude rejection of his sister works as a spell, and Nomi’s two-dimensional dog Mallory jumps off the page to life. While Stephen gets on with his homework, Nomi and Mallory have all kinds of adventures, one of which eventually involves her brother too. The wacky storyline, spunky heroine and colourfully naif art style makes Hirst’s book an inspirational and visually appealing tale. Get Real Mallory! works as brilliant stimulation for the young imagination as well.
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[ The Irish Times books of the year: Best children’s books of 2022Opens in new window ]
“Yours shall be a solitary life by necessity” – so decrees The Time Tider’s Handbook, which 12-year-old Mara finds under the steering wheel of the battered van in which she lives with her father. Mara has long had questions about her father’s job and their strange way of life. The book’s appearance answers many of them, but it also means that she must commit forever to her father’s isolated, itinerant ways, and Mara thinks she would prefer to be a normal child, to live in a house, to go to school. Sinéad O’Hart’s The Time Tider (Little Tiger, £7.99, 8+) is enriched by a real world pull that continues to draw Mara to it, even as she realises she cannot shed her newfound knowledge of the Time Tider’s gift. Both worlds, meanwhile, are vividly realised in limpid prose. In the real world, Mara faces the threat posed by kind strangers who want to help her and the disgust of others who reject her and her father because of their strange lifestyle and dishevelment. In the Warps, however, the soft places that provide safety for Mara from those real-world dangers pose a different kind of danger to the rest of the world. Mara and her new friend Jan must intervene. The Time Tider is a slippery fantasy-adventure, with a genuinely thrilling ending, which is probably more suitable for a 10+ audience than the recommended 8+ guideline.
