The Witch That Wasn't

Everyone has a list of fears - some rational, others less so. For 8-year-old Rose it was the house on the corner and old Mrs Pritchard. For Connor, her father, back in his Irish childhood days it was the dark, dark nights and Gerry the poteen distiller with his purple birth-marked face. Connor's story, told in the cosy living room of a terraced house in London, about his encounters with Gerry in the dark of the Irish countryside and their next meeting on the dangerous bog, helps Rose to overcome her own irrational fears. A very fine story: depth of characterisation and evocation of place and time are rarely so perfectly conveyed in a book for the under-tens.