Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism

Orphan Molly lives at Hardwick House orphanage under the far from benevolent care of Miss Adderstone. Her only escape from bullying and deprivation is in daydreams or the occasional visit from Mrs Trinklebury, the kind village woman who looked after her when she was small. In a series of fast-moving events Molly and her friend, Rocky, use hypnotism (learnt about from a library book) to create a better life for themselves. So far so rather standard children’s book fare, albeit with pacey plotting – but where Byng is more deeply adventurous is in the final section of the story where Molly and Rocky become aware for the need for inner as well as material transformations. Thus, is Molly only liked because she can hypnotise people into liking her? There is also no need for revenge in this novel – the orphanage bully, Hazel, in turn risks facing herself and confronting the possibility of inner change (unlike the horrid sisters in Eva Ibbotson’s Journey to the River Sea).

The song that Mrs Trinklebury used to sing to her small charges (‘Forgive, little bird, that brown cuckoo/ For pushing you out of your nests./ It’s what mamma cuckoo taught it to do/ She taught that pushing is best.’) resonates throughout this novel about nestless children. It could be used to support Oliver James’s recent and deeply unsurprising thesis* that poor early childhood parenting or the lack of any parenting can indeed f**k you up.

* They F**k You Up by Oliver James is published by Bloomsbury.