Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke

First published in 2012

Ghost Knight is cute and fun; a great story for both girls and boys with just the right mix of humour, genuine thrills and a positive message. Jon moves to boarding school and finds himself the victim of a band of ghosts intent on killing him for revenge, because they have a long history with Jon’s family lineage. With the help of his new best friend Ella, and the ghost of a noble knight with a debt to fulfil, Jon fights back and learns courage and humility in the process.

Fabulous settings – a boarding school, old cathedrals, haunted moors – this is the stuff adventure stories are made of! All of it is based, of course, on real places and people – Salisbury Cathedral in England, the knight William Longspee, and numerous other references dotted throughout. You can tell Funke loves the material she is working with, and is also having great fun with it. This is fabulous because it helps the book steer away from being a dry history lesson masquerading as a story. Ghost Knight is genuinely quite creepy and your heart will pound right along with Jon and Ella as they race from place to place, trying to stay one step ahead of the ghastly spirits.

Ghost Knight has plenty of funny moments – a lot of it silly, and a lot of it coming from Jon’s distaste of his mum’s new boyfriend, ‘The Beard’. This is humour that never tries too hard and is quite charming, and Jon’s dry asides help to alleviate the more thrilling moments so that younger children will not get scared.

The two central characters – Jon and Ella – are wonderful, and their relationship at that exact age I love – where they go from the ‘I Hate Boys/Girls’ stage to realising there might actually be some attraction there. Jon does have a little crush on Ella but the two form a lovely friendship and a strong bond. Ella has a bit of Hermione in her, and Jon just a touch of Ron, but together they are a great team and it is nice to see this in children’s books. Peripheral characters are strong too, whether they are human or otherwise – well-rounded and lacking ‘cariacture’ qualities.

Most of all I love how this book is presented – it is a gorgeous little volume and the black and white illustrations are some of the best I’ve seen in a children’s book – gorgeous, informative, and totally enhancing the story. I found Ghost Knight to be a real winner and would recommend it whole-heartedly to the 8-11 age group.

Pure by Andrew Miller

This is not so much a review as a brief rave about how brilliant and beautiful I think this book is. Pure is my favourite read this year so far. For me, it was one of those books that you wait and hope to come across, that makes you realise how incredible writing and language and books can be.

I have read some reviews that expressed slight criticism because Pure isn't really big on plot or narrative drive. For me, this didn't even factor. I was so immersed and intrigued in the world Andrew Miller created, and so taken in by his beautiful writing, that I kept returning to the book at every available moment.

There is simplicity here, but also gorgeous, breathtaking descriptions and reflections. Yes, the book does pretty much cover the methodical destruction of Les Innocents, but it is so fascinating. And without anything of great distinction actually happening, a palpable sense of dread and atmosphere builds and builds. This book is earthy but at the same time has a refined elegance. It is humane, with the large and small fallibilities and fancies of people laid out effortlessly on the page. It has a lovely optimism while still retaining an authentic feeling of despair and disillusion.

The historical detail, the philosophy, is there, but it is all mixed into a much greater idea that concerns the workings of the human soul. The ordinary is made beautiful and alive.

This is literary writing at its loveliest. I thought Pure was dazzling and I was utterly enchanted by it.

The Secret of the Lonely Isles, by Joanne van Os

First published by Random House, 2011

I really wanted this book to be awesome, because I have a burning desire for just about every Australian kids or YA book to be a roaring success and excellent writing and awesomely mind-blowing. A few of them do end up being just that (and I inevitably end up raving about them on my blog). Others try valiantly to get there and almost do and I become quite fond of them. But then there are some that just prove disappointing on all accounts, and this is how I feel about The Secret of the Lonely Isles, Joanne Van Os' offering of a boy who goes on a sailing adventure with his Aunt to discover family secrets.

My feeling is that this was meant to be a tale of adventure aimed at children, except it lacks that feeling of excitement and danger. It feels by-the-numbers. It feels a little too simplistic and contrived. There is way too much set-up for too little pay off, and when ‘the adventure’ actually begins we are just about halfway through the book already, and by that time it feels like the author has already run out of ideas.

If this book was meant to be an adventure story, it should focus on the adventure – the thrill and hardship of sailing, that sense of secret and discovery, of the quickened pulse when you know that stakes have just got a whole lot higher. Adding in all the family problems at the beginning of the book does not bring much to the story, and once again it all just feels unoriginal and contrived – all the boxes have been ticked. In my opinion it would have been better to put them all on the boat to begin with and have the problems festering and causing tension and becoming claustrophobic within the confines of the boat. Having those first few chapters as just a basic info-dump of Jem’s family problems kind of feels like a cheap attempt at emotion-grabbing, and then it is all just resolved so simply and easily in a few pages at the end. This is not rewarding for the reader.

Also, writing dialogue/dialect exactly the way the characters sound and speak is annoying and hard to read. I didn’t enjoy and think there are ways around it so it isn’t so obvious to the reader. For me, the dialogue didn’t ring true to begin with – it seems to be aiming for something that it doesn’t quite reach.

I don’t think The Secret of the Lonely Isles is bad or the writing lazy, I just don’t think it quite achieved what it was trying to be – I think perhaps it just doesn’t understand its intended audience? Good potential, particularly for a school/educational readership, but I wouldn’t recommend.