Christmas books review: Young Adults

Published on Thursday 4 December 2008 15:53

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL outstanding novels for teenagers and young adults published this year and David Almond's Jackdaw Summer (Hodder, £10.99) is arguably top of the pile. Liam has a wild imagination, possibly inherited from his writer-father and artist-mum. When a jackdaw appears to deliberately lead him and his friend to an abandoned baby, it triggers a summer of strained loyalty, unforeseen cruelty and dangerous confrontations.

Other highlights this year have included Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker, 7.99). "The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say." As far as opening lines go, you don't get much better, and this exciting future fantasy simply accelerates from there. Prentisstown is a community of men left isolated in the marshes after a virus killed all of the women. The virus also left the men with the uncontrollable ability to read each other's thoughts, those of animals too. Todd Hewitt is the last boy in town and when he discovers a lone girl who has no "noise" he realises they must escape. While there are echoes of several sci-fi standards and the main story is a long Logan's Run-style chase, Ness has crafted an impressively powerful novel.

Bog Child (David Fickling, 10.99) by Siobhan Dowd, opens on the border between Ireland's north and south in 1981. After Fergus finds the body of an Iron Age girl buried in a peat bog, he begins to hear her voice, see her in dreams, and the dual stories of her ancient sacrifice and his modern troubles unfold. He wants the girl he loves to love him back, he wants to stop being strong-armed by the local Provos, he wants to save his brother who is on hunger strike in the Maze prison, and he wants to escape it all by getting away to college. Often funny, sometimes shocking; just as you think you can guess what's coming next the plot unfurls more surprises. This book spills over with compassion and hope.

It's been frustrating to see The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Andersen Press, 5.99) by Sherman Alexie fly under most people's radars this year. Maybe it's because we Brits don't feel able to connect with the story of Arnold Spirit Jr, the confused Native American of the title. How wrong we'd be. Junior is a remarkable hero, and the story of his hard-won but bittersweet triumphs are universal, compelling and often downright hilarious. He's a smart 14-year-old and wannabe cartoonist who realises his only hope of fulfilling these dreams is to break from his family and do his own thing. But his loved ones feel betrayed by his decision, while the new people he meets simply don't want to accept him. Stuck in the middle, Junior's plight is often heartbreaking but never mawkish – he'd much rather respond with sarcasm than self-pity.

Finally, huge congratulations to JA Henderson and Bunker 10 (OUP, 5.99), winner of the older readers category of the Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books 2008.

Pinewood Military Installation is home to seven teenage geniuses being groomed/trained by scientists and army chiefs. But teenagers will be teenagers and the strict regime is hard to live with when all Jimmy Hicks wants to do is meet his girlfriend. Full of death, destruction and a plot that crackles, this has obviously appealed to those readers who prefer their fiction to explode off the page.

&#149 Keith Gray, The Scotsman's young fiction reviewer, is the only Scot shortlisted for this year's Costa book awards, to be announced in January.