Age 7-9

This is a kind of Don Quixote for children. It is the tale of an optimistic innocent, Mr Scarecrow, and his servant Jack, a boy who understands the world much better than his master. They travel through an Italianate landscape in the wake of the destruction left by a corrupt family, the Buffalonis. With the birds as allies, the scarecrow and Jack find a way to make the world better. The book expresses sophisticated ideas, satirising big business, warmongering politics and legal obfuscation, and has a powerful morality advocating politeness, kindness, hope and courage. The scarecrow falls in love, rather like Cervantes’ Ragged Knight with Lucinda, with a broomstick with which he is ultimately united. Constantly misreading events (cheerfully admiring, for instance, the splendid appearance of an approaching enemy army), the scarecrow assumes, like Quixote, that it is his cleverness and fearlessness that save the day when, in fact, it is Jack whose quickness of mind engineers narrow escapes. It is a remarkable skill to make simplicity and even silliness embrace such complexity yet offer children so much wisdom. Somehow, it’s not surprising that Pullman can do it.

(Doubleday £10.99)

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