Greetings and all good wishes for 2018!
Today's the day when Awfully Big Book Reviews re-opens for the year. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's chosen titles as the weeks go by. I really love the interests and enthusiasms among the team of Reviewers and that they will bring a greater diversity of titles than one person's reading list might offer.
Apologies, however, for the repeat of a review below,although I'm not saying sorry for the choice at all as a) the author is the other editor of the ABBA blog and b) the story is a bold, brave adventure mostly set somewhere warmer than here.
Besides, the review, having been written a while back, will not be bringing you any of the coughs, sneezes, wheezes and bugs currently bothering me and my writing brain. The year, as they say, can only get better. (Achooooo!) Right, here we go . . .
Sometimes, as you start reading a new book, you forget
that you know the writer personally, finding yourself instead in the grip of a wonderfully
well-written story. Who is it by? you vaguely think. Who? . . . Oh! . .
.Of course! It’s So-and-so’s book! How
nice! I’d forgotten that . . . What a pleasure!
Which is what happened as I
read JACK
FORTUNE AND THE SEARCH FOR THE HIDDEN VALLEY, a novel for 8-12 year
olds, written by Sue Purkiss, co-editor of the Awfully Big Blog Adventure.
Inspired by the lives of
18th century plant-hunters, Sue has written a fast-moving historical adventure story.
Jack Fortune, the young hero, is energetic
and interestingly naughty. Bored and with no school to attend, he can’t resist devising
tricks - ones that made me laugh - mostly on his stern widowed Aunt Constance
and her guests. He is immediately likeable and trouble!
Jack accidentally causes
real damage, so Constance summons her scholarly
bachelor brother, Uncle Edmund, as it is his turn to take responsibility for his
nephew. Uncle Edmund refuses.
Not only is he unused to children, but he is
about to set off on his first plant-hunting trip to India. Jack, hearing this exciting
news, wants to go along with Uncle Edmund and Aunt Constance, unable to take
any more, agrees.
Jack and his uncle – and
the reader – experience a new life full of challenge and interesting people
and places. They sail to Calcutta,
cross the great plain and travel through the jungle before reaching a high
mountain kingdom with a hidden valley. All the way, Jack and his uncle face setbacks
and dangers: vagabonds, wild animals, “mountain
sickness” and, at last, reports of a huge, legendary being who attacks
intruders to the Hidden
Valley. Moreover, an unknown
traitor is spoiling the expedition party’s food supplies and causing problems with
local villagers. Who wishes them ill? Is
it Sonam, their guide or Thondup, the heir to the throne, whom Jack has begun
to admire?
Sue Purkiss’s plot moves
along with plenty of pace and action and just enough description to fix the
story in its historical time and place, and without overloading her young
reader’s enjoyment. She also touches lightly and skilfully on darker issues such
as servants and colonisation, but lets the bold adventure end as happily as it
should.
However, I felt the book was
about more than the plant-hunting quest: Jack and Uncle Edmund make a wonderfully
odd and warm partnership, and the hardships met on the expedition teach them more
about the other. Bookish Uncle Edmund slowly reveals his bravely determined
nature and his passion for plant-hunting - especially for the blue flower that
will restore the family fame and fortune. Meanwhile, faced with real demands and
responsibilities rather than tea-parties and polite manners, Jack becomes the
boy hero he was meant to be and is even able to accept his own inherited artistic
gifts.
I liked JACK FORTUNE AND THE SEARCH FOR THE HIDDEN VALLEY very
much because, despite the difficulties Jack and his Uncle face, the adventure is a
positive and hopeful experience and one that might encourage children to look
beyond everyday life and issues in school and out into a wider world.
Alma Books
have also created some downloadable activities to support of this title: http://almabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Jack-Fortune-Activity-Book.pdf
as well as an interview with the author Sue
Purkiss: http://almabooks.com/interview-sue-purkiss-author-jack-fortune/
Penny Dolan
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