Hetty Feather by Jacqueline Wilson
Doubleday, £12.99, age 8+ Buy the book

The Death-defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean
OUP, £12.99, age 9+ Buy the book

In 1739 a kindly sea captain, Thomas Coram, horrified by the misery of English orphans, founded this country’s first children’s charity, the Foundling Hospital. The heartrending sorrows of giving up a child have already inspired one modern classic, Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy. Now, in Hetty Feather, Jacqueline Wilson (pictured right) has come up with another .

If you are trying to wean your child off Jacqueline Wilson, you will probably groan. The self-pitying sameness in the narrative voice of her contemporary heroines can fail to tax brighter children, but Hetty Feather is of another order. With a directness that is as dramatic as it is affecting, she tells her story — from her anonymous, abandoned babyhood to the time when she has half of London looking for her on the week of Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee.

Hetty is born with the unquenchable spirit of a redhead, but her hair draws attention to her as “an abomination, spawn of the Devil”. Throughout a turbulent young life, her hair, imagination and temper lead her into trouble, for when a child longs as ardently as she does to find her real mother, she is likely to pick up the wrong clues. She grows up with kindly foster parents in the country, where her adored foster brother, Jem, smuggles her into a visiting circus, admires her cleverness and fills her with dreams that they will eventually marry. But first Hetty and her poor, frail foster brother Gideon must be sent back to the hospital in London, the one to train as a servant, the other as a soldier.

Hetty Feather is the most compelling tale Wilson has told, and the silhouettes by her faithful illustrator, Nick Sharratt, are also a delight. The writing is studded with wonderful, vivid details, from the way darned stockings hurt young feet to Hetty’s eager young body and mind, bursting with joy, sorrow or the need to pee.

Like many Wilson heroines, Hetty wants to become a writer, and her ghoulish tales protect her from bullies. Thanks to a generous servant, Ida, and a best friend, her time is not utterly wretched; but being hungry, angry, punished and forced to learn feminine skills, such as needlework and cooking, mean that it is only a matter of time before she runs away and discovers some unexpected truths concerning her origin.

Her tale is realistic (delicately shadowed with a consciousness of vice that a child can safely apprehend), and when she does find real happiness, the moment is genuinely touching.

Hetty Feather is perfectly paired with Geraldine McCaughrean’s The Death-defying Pepper Roux. McCaughrean has won many prizes, but has often, alas, failed to tell a good story. Her tale of Pepper Roux, whose untimely death at 14 is predicted at birth by his superstitious aunt, is also a leap forward.

From first to last, this splendid book is funny, charming, eccentric and written in McCaughrean’s characteristically gorgeous prose. Essentially, it’s a chase story, for the imaginative, religious Pepper wakes up on the day of his doom and manages to stay one step ahead of death. He successfully takes on different identities, though his tendency to see the best in everyone, from thieves to journalists, has hysterical results.

His two aunts — “big, ponderous women . . . so full of tragedy that they could barely make their corsets hook up” — are the real problem, but adult evil exists and good-hearted Pepper has to learn how to counter his overprotected life.

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