Locket & Wilde's DREADFULLY HAUNTING MYSTERIES The Ghosts of the Manor, by Lucy Strange & Pam Smy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

This is an absolutely gorgeous book, heavy and glinting and choc-full of illustration and story. 

Lucy Strange has written a ghostly mystery full of wonderful characters and humour and genuine ghosty thrill  ...   despite one of the child heroes being one of the ghosts. Pam Smy's wonderful illustrations on almost every spread, filling some spreads, properly play the story between words and images, again achieving atmosphere, character and humour. And the odd clue to spot! 

Matilda has to play 'dead Edna', a ghost child brought to life during her Aunt's ghostly stage show, but then the two of them, along with Uncle Barnabus and Colin the parrot, get employed at a mysterious manor house where there seems to be at least one real haunting. There is. But there's also dastardly thievery afoot, and its up to Matilda and the ghost boy she befriends to bring the culprits to justice. Meanwhile, exactly what are her 'Aunt' and 'Uncle' up to? 

Great fun, and offering the highest quality illustration and writing for middle grade readers. I'm very glad there are more stories about these two to come!

'The Mermaid in the Millpond', written by Lucy Strange, illustrated by Pam Smy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

As soon as I first heard about this book I wanted to get my hands on it. I’ve always loved Pam Smy’s beautiful and powerful illustration work. Isn’t that cover a beauty? Note that the mermaid looks a standard mermaid at first glance … but that left hand is clearly froggy-webbed; as strange as the author’s surname!

 

I had spent a happy couple of years researching and then writing my own children’s novel about a London girl sent from a workhouse to work in a northern cotton mill in Victorian times, just as Bess does in this story. But my novel (‘The Twisted Threads of Polly Freeman’) has no mermaid in it, and it was the mixing of a mythical mermaid with a historical setting that particularly caught my interest. We don’t often see fantasy and history played together in a new story.

 

This is a compelling story of two orphans trapped and owned by a terrifying Victorian mill system, and facing the menace of a monstrous sounding mermaid in the mill pond when they decide to run away. That mermaid is said to eat people! She is definitely wild and beastly, eating a fish live with her sharp teeth, breathing through gills. But maybe she, too, is trapped and in need of help? 

 

This is a brief but exciting adventure, which also explores freedom and the need we all have for friends. 

 

This is a Barrington Stoke novel, short and accessible to read, aimed at a reading age of eight plus, but of interest to older children (and adults) too. Many readers are going to love it.