October, October, by Katya Balen, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

         This is a wonderfully fresh and beautifully written story about love and hate and loss and discovery.

Eleven year old October lives more or less wild with her dad in a forest, and she loves life that way. ‘The woman who is my mother’ had left when October was very small, and October doesn’t want anything more to do with her. But her mother wants to visit on October’s twelfth birthday. And something awful happens. Dad has a horrific accident. Suddenly October has no choice but to go with ‘the woman who is her mother’ to her home and life in busy London. It is all so alien, and October longs for Dad to recover so that they can resume their wild life. But it takes time for Dad to mend … and in that time October and her mother get to know each other, October makes a child friend, goes to school, and enjoys a different kind of discovery to be found in mudlarking on the banks of the Thames. 

Whilst the adults try and work out the best way to care for October, she is working out how best to care for an orphaned baby owl. 

A book that’s as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.