Ruth Starke

Stories of children in the maelstrom: the horror of mandatory detention; the appalling cruelty of how some orphans are treated by those responsible for them; and youngsters caught in the heartbreak and dislocation of family breakdown – such is the stuff of these three important novels for young people. No coy sensibilities are spared in these reflections of modem life. Here are ordinary adults and children caught up in extraordinary events. All three books show how life can be hard, but that one must meet its sorrows and afflictions with courage, good humour and good friends. Each story is about what happens when a child becomes a victim to events beyond his or her control, be they personal or political, dramatic or mundane.

In the list of life’s most stressful events, family breakups and moving home are way up there in the top ten, and one often follows the other, compounding the trauma. This is the situation for eleven-year-old Rain in Catherine Bateson’s Rain May and Captain Daniel, when her mother, Maggie, sells their inner-city house in the aftermath of divorce. They head for the country to turn Grandma’s deceased estate into a dream home. Maggie’s hopes are higher than her daughter’s: she foresees serenity, harmony, and self-sufficiency; Rain expects ‘Boringsville’.

When she sat down in that Edinburgh café almost three years ago to write Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling apparently determined that it would take a further six books to tell the complete story of her pubescent wizard. Millions of entranced and thoroughly hooked readers around the world are now breathlessly awaiting volume four. The books are immensely readable with a strong narrative drive, and Rowling cleverly leaves major plot points unanswered; one has to get the next in the series or die of curiosity. The same technique has served John Marsden well. Pity the poor parent who back in 1993 all unknowingly bought Tomorrow, When the War Began and then saw a further six titles progressively hit the bookshops, all in hardback first release, and all extending the saga. Many readers, including this one, wish he had stopped at number three but the temptation to continue must have been huge.