THE STAR OF KAZAN (9+)
By Eva Ibbotson
Macmillan, £12.99; 388pp
ISBN 1 405 02054 7
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If a really special children’s novel arrives in my house, I can always tell because of the total silence. I’ve long since accepted that my daughter will squirrel a good book away to her room, but the only times my son has done this has been with the works of J. K. Rowling, Eva Ibbotson — and now, Cressida Cowell. What luck to have new novels by two of them out this month! Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon is the book I still thrust at parents of reluctant readers of 7-9, and How to be a Pirate is its sequel. Hiccup, a future hero and “dragon whisperer”, begins life as polite, timid and the most useless, bullied boy in the Hooligan tribe. Yet with his tiny dragon, Toothless, he killed the giant Green Death and saved the tribe which was prepared to send him into exile.

Now, his victory fading, he is the only one smart enough to be suspicious when a coffin with the words “Do not open this box” is found at sea. Inside is a smarmy charmer who claims to have a map to the legendary treasure left by a piratical ancestor. It’s on an island guarded by deadly creatures and can be won only by a hero equipped with a special sword, phenomenal luck . . . and, as it turns out, real brains.

Everything about this burgeoning series, from the author’s mad drawings to her sympathy for a clever person forced to live with stupid ones, is irresistibly witty, especially to those secretly lacking in self-confidence. The selfishness of Toothless, whose better nature occasionally wins through just in time, the thunderous lunacy of Hiccup’s father, Stoic the Vast, and the diffident courage of Hiccup make this even better than the first. Cowell is a new star in children’s fiction.

And so too is Eva Ibbotson. As the author of numerous magical adventure stories, including The Secret of Platform 13 to which the first Harry Potter novel was indebted, Ibbotson was loved but not lauded until she wrote Journey to the River Sea, one of the real classics of modern childhood. Her latest, The Star of Kazan, also eschews magic, and is set stolidly in imperial Vienna, where the lively foundling Annika is being instructed in the domestic arts from the bosom of an affectionate, eccentric household. When an aristocratic woman claims Annika and sweeps her off to a lonely castle, nobody suspects an evil plot that will not only rob our heroine of a fabulous treasure but possibly murder her, too.

Ibbotson excels at describing not only the world of the senses but that of the heart. The glories of Viennese cooking are described with tender precision, but it is the characters you care passionately about as they move toward mysterious yet thrilling enlightenment. Ibbotson’s genius is for creating people (and animals) whom you instantly recognise and love. Each book will give children a summer of silent bliss.

Read on

• Hiccup the Viking who was Seasick by Cressida Cowell (Hodder) 3+
• There's a Viking in My Bed by Jeremy Strong (Puffin) 6+
• Beowulf: Dragonslayer by Rosemary Sutcliff (Red Fox) 9+
• The Haunting of Hiram by Eva Ibbotson (Macmillan) 7+ends

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