Switchers

Tess is a loner, setting herself apart because there is no point in getting close to people when her parents are always on the move. She also has a secret - she is 'Switcher', able to take on any animal from she chooses and live as that creature. Then Tess meets Kevin, another secret Switcher, who has come to enlist her help to save the world from climatic changes as it ices over.

Unevenly written and sometimes jerkily structured (the scenes in the Pentagon are particularly unconvincing) this adventure novel is at the same time a powerful and imaginative portrait of two troubled children whose magical powers induce inner as well as outer changes. Kevin, mistrustful and withdrawn, is 'not good at being a boy'. His experience of people is such that: 'I don't know how to look at them and I don't understand the way they look at me.'

In an unexpected and poignant ending, the wholeness and intimacy that Kevin finds only when he has switched, lead him not to switch back. Tess too is then drawn into making the same irrevocable choice: 'Tess's heart leapt, racing ahead of her into the night skies where she would be flying with her friend.'

Thompson is a strong and, for the most part, subtle writer whose inside portrayal of the animal world is both daring and accomplished. This impressive first also looks good with its attractively illustrated (by Darren Lock) and well designed jacket.