Which Way to Anywhere

This rollicking story never lets up in energy, inventiveness and almost excessive good humour. If normally silent books could talk, this one would be shouting its head off, with the author’s comic black and white illustrations also eager to join in the noise. But it starts on a quieter note as the author writes very personally about the recent death of her beloved father. Her story also describes a moving final parental separation that can never be bridged however much all concerned wish otherwise.  

For the rest of the time death appears not as an impending tragedy but as a constant threat. This is because K2 O’Hero and his twin sister Izzabird are forced to use their secret magic powers to rescue their kidnapped baby sister. Their appearance in an imaginary world now turned real goes down badly with other powerful fantasy figures, already there and not wanting any competition.  The children are also not helped by a new stepbrother and sister intent on disrupting family life as much as possible. 

Huge capital letters break out when a crisis gets really serious, with occasional hand-written invitation to readers to write their own thing on an otherwise blank page. The writing itself is sometimes inelegant, as in ‘Everest stumbled on on foot, bleeding.’ But there is also a Dhalesque love of invented language. ‘I don’t like Cyril… he’s an absquoloot weasel-meaner of a human being.’  Older readers may occasionally wish for a little more subtlety, but younger ones will probably love it. Cressida Cowell is a genuine one-off; her writing energy unaffected by all the time she has had to take off as Children’s Laureate.  Started 25 years ago, this story now forms the cornerstone for what looks likely to be yet another wildly popular series still to come.