Children of Winter

Jill Paton Walsh having covered the plague in Eyam, Berlie Doherty has deftly centred her Derbyshire plague story on another, unspecified village. The tragic events of the past vividly superimpose themselves on three modern-day children sheltering in an oldcruck barn. Their receptivity is heightened by their likely kinship to three ancestors, who used the barn in 1666 as a refuge from the pestilence and barely survived to tell the tale. After the creaky start the tale within the tale slowly unfolds with a strong sense of Derbyshire, but not too much of history. For readership in the upper junior/lower secondary range.