RIDING TYCHO
By Jan Mark
Macmillan Children’s, £9.99; 160pp
ISBN 0 333 99773 5
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If it’s true that 80 per cent of women under 24 now don’t bother to vote, it certainly isn’t for lack of political fiction. Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the first adult novels brighter girls of 11+ try, closely followed by Brave New World and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. This fusion of socialist dystopia, ecological catastrophe and feminist nightmare is an increasingly common theme in fiction aimed at older children, and two new novels recast these ingredients in sizzling form.

Ann Halam’s Siberia is so original and compelling that the film rights should be instantly snapped up. Its narrator, Rosita, arrives “in the middle of nowhere” with her Mama, to make nails in a freezing camp. Rosita thinks Mama can do magic, keeping “little fairy pets” in a flat case she keeps hidden from the Fitness Police. Her mother is not a witch, however, but a scientist from the Institute, who has smuggled out the seeds of all the real wild animals which once lived in the world in an incubator. The care and protection of these “Lindquist kits” form a deep bond not only between mother and daughter but between Rosita and the tiny creatures she must protect. One day, Mama says, they will cross the wilderness and forests and ice to find the other city where the sun always shines . . .

It doesn’t happen like that, of course. Rosita is sent away to a brutal boarding school, and when she escapes, she is shrewder, has a crippled leg and finds her Mama gone. But the Lindquists are still there, and Rosita, now Sloe, must embark on an epic journey to find her mother. In a brilliant reworking of the famous fairytale, Love of Three Oranges, she grows a single kit in moments of dire need, and each one becomes an animal that helps her — whether by killing vermin or giving her a ride on its back. “Mischievous, inquisitive, affectionate and bold”, they will enchant a young reader almost as much as the daemons in His Dark Materials. But it is the character of Sloe herself, as she battles the treachery of geography, a crippled body and the human heart, that brings tears to the eyes long before her extraordinary reunion with her beloved mother.

Not all Jan Mark novels are equally good — the most-hyped, like The Eclipse of the Century I found unreadable. But at her best, she is a marvel of inventive wit, and Riding Tycho is, happily, one of those. Once again we see a young girl growing up and realising that life does not have to be this way. Demetria is regularly beaten by boys and, like all girls and women, expected to knit continually. Girls are told they can’t swim, or fish, or defend themselves and it’s only when a Political is billeted with them that she starts to asks questions. Among the many clever surprises Mark springs is the sudden revelation that our heroine is living on a different planet, settled by people from Earth — but a planet whose social structures are monstrously deformed.

Before long, Demetria’s new friend has been killed or exiled for making a kite, and she has learnt to swim as well as think for herself. She escapes from her wretched island, riding a log, in what is to be a continuing adventure which we already know will almost cost her life. It is a thrilling tale, written with grace, economy and anger. Both of these heroines find they can resist bullying only by running away, but the journey they undertake is one that will stir many young readers to confront questions about the way their own worlds are run.

Read on

• The Conquerors by David McKee (Andersen Press) 4+
  
• The Angel of Nitshill Road by Anne Fine (Egmont) 6+
  
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin (Pocket Books) 10+
  
• The Supernaturalists by Eoin Colfer (Puffin) 11+

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