Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
illustrated by John Lawrence
Age 10+
This little volume contains a novella (95 pages) from the world of Pullman's His Dark Materials, recounting the first meeting between the cowboy aeronaut, Lee Scoresby, and the armoured bear, Iorek Byrnison, two of the most engaging characters in the trilogy. It contains facsimiles of letters by Lyra, which reveal something of what became of her after the end of The Amber Spyglass, and there is also is a game, complete with counters, for 4-6 players “and their daemons” - a balloon race to the Pole (the last player outside the Polar Maelstrom wins). It is an exquisite object, finely produced, with skilled and handsome woodcuts of the streets and harbour of “Novy Odense” on the Barents Sea, which has the atmosphere of a frontier town in a western. When Scoresby and his daemon arrive by hot-air balloon, a political contest is under way for the office of mayor (the frontrunner stands on a “get-rid-of-the-bears” ticket). Scoresby is Bogartesque: laconic and tough on the outside, but moral and soft-hearted on the inside, and there is a flicker of romantic interest. But the real bond in the book is forged (after a gunfight) between the cowboy and the bear: the beginning of a beautiful friendship (David Fickling £9.99).

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