STEPHEN IS A BOY WITH a secret. For four years, he has kept a monster locked up in a hiding place. He spends all his money buying it a pig a month, but the monster is getting bigger, stronger and hungrier. Soon, very soon, it will break free from its rusting cage...

So begins a gripping and original new children’s novelist. Ally Kennen grew up on a farm that was a foster home to many children, and her debut rings with talent and compelling detail.

You love Stephen from the first sentence: “Here is a list of the ten worst things I have done.” Some of his crimes are petty or funny, such as forcing his three-year-old brother to smoke a fag or stealing a neighbour’s bra from the washing line, but by the end of the list you understand why he is in care.

He is an arsonist, thief and rebel and it is only a matter of time before he becomes a real criminal like his father. His foster parents think that he is spending his money on drugs. The truth is far more dangerous — he has a beast that started as a vicious baby and is now nearly 13ft long.

Stephen cannot bring himself to abandon his monster or to report it to the police, and it is this which makes him such a complex and engaging character. He is a boy with a genuine tragedy in his life, and he responds to it with his defiant wit, deep loyalty and secretive nature.

“Deep down in his heart, he is frightened of me. I am trouble,” Stephen says of his foster father, unconsciously identifying with the beast he protects. He has only four weeks left before he gets kicked out to live in a rough hostel where there are police raids and stabbings.

Stephen does not ask for our pity, but his life is harder than any 17-year-old’s should be, and his problems will strike a chord with readers who are disadvantaged or alienated from their homes. He must survive, feeding himself, paying bills, earning money and paying tax; but throbbing underneath it all is this enormous creature waiting, like Grendel in the swamp — and a small dog that he loves and has lost.

I really love this book: it is so good to discover a writer who does not depend on the supernatural for suspense. Kennen has taken an urban legend and turned it into a tense, funny and touching tale of how a troubled adolescent could, against extraordinary odds, gain control of his life. Gorgeously jacketed with lumpy scales and a glowing yellow eye, Beast should be a monster hit.

Martin Waddell’s Boneless and the Tinker is inspired by Irish legends about boggarts. A lonely spirit which might be a cow, a horse or a granny, haunts a farm and frightens everyone away. One day, a poor family comes by and, finding the farm deserted but well kept, moves in. Life goes well, for “whatever Kit did, Boneless did more”, until a tinker arrives. He offers to sell Kit’s pretty wife some pots and pans in return for a kiss; then some lace; then some fool’s gold. Boneless is increasingly outraged, and ends up by driving the young couple back on to the road.

Filled with the rhythmic music of an oral tale, this is part of a splendidly spooky series by Waddell that new readers aged 4 and over will enjoy, especially as the lyrical illustrations by James Mayhew add to the drama. Anger, rudeness, treachery and violence stalk us from the day we are born. All children begin by fearing monsters, and must learn how to manage them, inside or out.

What's more...

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (3+)
by Maurice Sendak
Red Fox, £5.99
Mad Max for tots.

THE MONSTER BED (4+)
by Jeanne Willis and Susan Varley
Red Fox, £1.50
Humans are only in stories . . .

CLEVER POLLY AND THE STUPID WOLF (6+)
by Catherine Storr and Marjorie-Ann Watts
Puffin, available secondhand from www.abebooks.co.uk
Inspirational heroine.

TROLL FELL (8+)
by Katherine Langrish
HarperCollins, £5.99
Superb Viking adventure.

BEOWULF: DRAGONSLAYER (10+)
by Rosemary Sutcliff
Red Fox, £4.99
The daddy of them all.

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