Barkbelly

A storytelling treat about a wooden boy, Barkbelly, who flees from the old rural world where he has been adopted and where blossom parties and the farming of magical urchin spikes have had some darker possibilities within them even before an awful accident. He encounters a series of marvellous adventures of kaleidoscopic variety including the heartless factory of endless jam making (where Barkbelly is uniquely able to cycle suspended over the boiling, spitting vats of jam to stir them), the exotic and deeply kind world of the circus and the cruel and dashing life of pirates. Reaching the island of his strange origins, and the slavery into which he and so many others are traded, ought in best linear fashion to bring him to his rightful birthplace except that he must of course return to his first home to face what he has done. This is magical and wonderfully exciting storytelling, which lifts effortlessly aloud off the page fuelled by the musical rhythms of the language and the tidal rhythms of traditional stories. Taken in a delightfully assured way through this richness of creations (where one section alone would do most books proud) we learn that human qualities are what really matter. Evils and unhappiness are encountered and endured but it is good deeds, friendship, honour, courage and love which earn the happy ending.