About the Book
A Texan schoolgirl's feet will only point north... towards the Arctic. Earth Mother requires her help to save the world from a terror lying deep inside the Mountains of Sorrow. Something to do with a mysterious chamber of ice. And something to do with her Granny who lies ill in hospital. But feisty Jenny soon makes friends with the annoying spherical Snowball people, with hairy little mountain folk and with a small snow cat; friends that she and a Japanese boy she meets up with are going to need big time... An eco-fantasy for young readers set in North America.
About the Author :
A retired hospital physician, Oliver Eade took to writing in 2005. Over fifty of his short stories have been published, several winning prizes, and many appear in two collections, Walls of Words for adults and Stories for Children Aged 7 to 77. His first young readers' book, Moon Rabbit, journeys to Mythological China (his wife is Chinese) and was a winner of the Writers' and Artists' 2007 New Novel Competition plus longlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, 2008. The sequel, Monkey King's Revenge, was a children's genre finalist for the 2012 People's Book Prize. Northwards, a young readers' dark fantasy, based in Texas and the Arctic, was published in 2010. The Rainbow Animal, a fun spoof on war, is also set in North America where his two eldest granddaughters live. His debut adult novel, A Single Petal, which won the Local Legend 2012 Spiritual Writing Competition, is set in Tang Dynasty China. Voices, an adult novel of family love, intrigue, and deceit, is set in London whilst The Parth Path is set in a post-apocalyptic Scotland run by women for women and was inspired by Socrates' famous saying, 'Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior'. The Terminus, Oliver's debut young adult novel, returns to the city in which he was brought up; a city now changed beyond recognition from the drab post-World War II era and which, in a post-apocalyptic world, gives humankind a second chance. The From Beast to God trilogy, The Golden Jaguar of the Sun, The Merging and Revelation, follows a Texan boy and a Mexican girl on a life-journey involving drug gangsters, ancient Aztec, Mayan, and Native Mythology, blending European and Native American beliefs. The Kelpie's Eyes was inspired by a visit with his American granddaughters to the Grey Mare's Tail, and weaves Scottish mythology into a tale of sisterly love. It won the 2018 Georgina Hawtrey-Woore Young Adult Novel Award. Number Twenty-four, a coming-of-age teenage novel, follows a Scots boy and Chinese girl from Hawick to 'Dogtopia', a land where human and dog roles are reversed whilst The Zookeeper's Daughter, co-written with the writer's nine-year-old Swiss granddaughter during the COVID-19 lockdown, is about a brave little girl who is magically transported into the lives of animals who are endangered because of what humans are doing to our planet. He has also written several plays, one of which, The Gap, inspired by being caught up in the Great Sichuan Earthquake of 2008, and shortlisted for the Rowan Tree One-Act Play Competition, went on tour in Scotland in 2012. Another, The Other Cat, a darkly humorous take on Schrödinger's famous feline, won the 2018 Segora International One-Act Play Competition and toured the Scottish Borders with two more of his plays in 2019. Although not confined to any specific genre, Oliver feels most comfortable in that magical space between reality and fantasy; the space into and out of which children slip so easily in their play; the place of dreams and myths and legends, and deeply ingrained in many cultures across the globe. He has lead writing and drama workshops for children in the Borders, Perthshire, London, the USA, and Thailand and held a regular writing class, with his wife, for home-schooled children before the COVID pandemic, and is the 2021 prose judge for the Society Of Medical Writers' Summer Creative Writing Competition and playwriting judge for the 2021 Segora International One-Act Playwriting Competition.
Review :
I really enjoyed this story. Oliver Eade's latest children's story for the eight to twelve year olds is another fantasy journey with wonderful descriptions and imaginative creatures. Readers who enjoyed Oliver's first novel, "Moon Rabbit" will not be disappointed with "Northwards". This time the hero is Jenny Macnamara from Texas. She wakes one morning to find that her feet will only point Northwards! And it is to the North, to the Arctic Circle that Jenny is destined to go, travelling in a white limo and with a mission that only Gaia, the Earth Mother knows. For it is in the Arctic, in the frozen ice chambers that a terrifying plan of evil is being hatched by the wicked Lord Kranyak.
Drawing on knowledge from the Native North American cultures, Oliver has skilfully blended fantasy with fact. Jenny has her "Kachina" doll, a gift from her grandmother who is dying in the hospital. Kachinas, according to the Native Americans, are magical spirits who can communicate with the ancestors to protect people. And Jenny needs all the protection possible as she undertakes her mission.
I thoroughly enjoyed "Northwards" with its delightful mix of fanciful characters - none of whom should terrify the young reader. We just know that Jenny, with the help of her new found Japanese friend, Hiro, will succeed no matter what grotesque and frightening experiences they have to go through in order to save the world.
It is a pleasure to read a modern children's fantasy which moves along in a similar fashion to "The Wizard of Oz" and just as we are kept guessing whether Dorothy will ever be able to return safely to Kansas, we turn each page eagerly in "Northwards" hoping that Jenny, too, will make it home and overcome all the dire characters she meets. Perhaps Jenny's words will provide a fitting conclusion to this review:
"Jenny was hardly listening. In her mind she saw Gaia, and as she superimposed the face of Gaia with that of her Granny she realised the eyes, though a different colour, and the smile...the things that mattered...they were the same. Granny was Gaia, and part of Granny was also her. Granny had already passed away when her feet pivoted northwards that morning. It was all beginning to make sense. Granny saved the world...and Hiro...through her, Jenny Macnamara...."
Children will follow the story while the adults will understand the symbolism. I recommend "Northwards" to both.
