Puffin

Swans are said to mate for life and The Stone Swan builds on the love and anguish of such a relationship as the focus for a lesson in environmental responsibility. A pair of swans, lagging behind the rest of their flight, take solitary refuge in a wetland adjacent to a new housing estate, unaware that it is targeted for ‘development’. The cygnets hatch as the water levels subside and the male swan becomes trapped in a tangle of exposed rubbish and plastic twine. He is near death from exhaustion when a child from the nearby estate finds and frees him. But the peril is not over, for a causeway is being built across the wetland, isolating the swan family from the rest of the flock. The male manages to climb to the top of the roadway, but he will not go on without his mate and she will not leave without her babies. The story ends as she and her young, now fully fledged, fly off to join the flock on their annual migration while the human child witnesses her last farewell to the swan-shaped stone that has appeared on the causeway. Bell’s sombre illustrations in ink and watercolour reinforce the tragic mood of the story. A final page provides background information and references for this timely picture book that could be used effectively in primary school ecology studies.

The authors of these four books use a narrative device common to much fantasy fiction: the notion of quest. Sometimes that quest requires a physical journey, and sometimes it involves searching for something closer to home, but the very process is almost invariably life-changing for the characters involved.

Kierin Meehan’s Hannah’s Winter was one of the most promising débuts in some time. Her second novel, the ambitious Night Singing, attests to Meehan’s importance as a new writer for the middle-school years reader. There’s a magical quality to Night Singing and, although it is not a fantasy, a sense of the fantastic pervades the novel. Meehan has woven various plot strands and numerous characters into a delightful and, at times, deeply moving whole. Her characters, some of whom are wildly eccentric, never seem less than real, and her plot, although full of extraordinary coincidences – coincidences that, in less capable hands, would be both lazy and unconvincing – is believable and satisfying.