Jodie

Jodie is struggling to recover from a family tragedy – exactly what, we’re not sure, though her older brother is in prison. The family have moved, and she’s slowly managed to start attending school again but has no friends at all. The bleak, dangerous salt marshes that are the location for the school geography trip therefore match her mood and provide the perfect backdrop for this uncanny ghost story. In her isolated state, Jodie is the only one to hear the haunting, melancholy barking of a small dog. Determined to help, she finds herself trapped in the mud as the tide comes flooding into the estuary. In moving and beautifully foreshadowed closing scenes, help comes from the most unexpected quarters.

Written for dyslexia specialists Barrington Stoke, the story is a model of brevity, the short, uncomplicated sentences conveying the shifting moods – loneliness, despair, hope, recovery – with real depth. Hilary McKay brings all her characters vividly to life, our understanding of them changing as events unfold, and the ghost story she creates is chilling one moment, filled with warmth the next, like clouds and sunlight racing across marshes.