For as long as I can remember I have loved stories set in cities. Cities are full of hustle and bustle, noise and life, movement and change and – best of all – jam-packed with places to get lost in and find adventure!
I love Emil, who sets off full of innocence and good cheer to visit his grandma in Berlin, when – uh oh – a sinister man in a black bowler hat steals all his money while he is sleeping on the train. What follows is a glorious caper across the city, as Emil and all the children of Berlin team up to use wit and cunning to pursue and capture the thief. Kastner published Emil and the Detectives in 1929, and it is thought to be the first children’s book to positively portray the city as a place of excitement and adventure. It also has my favourite villain, Herr Grundeis in it. Wonderful!
Don’t expect to encounter the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe within the pages of this book. Paul Berna’s classic is set in the back streets of Paris, on the periphery of the city, where a band of scruffy children get entangled in the theft of a hundred million francs from the Paris-Ventimiglia Express. This is a lovely adventure, packed with likeable characters, twists, turns and a satisfying comeuppance for the villains.
Ten year old Claudia is funny, smart and sophisticated, and when she decides to run away, it is not to the boring old countryside, but to the razzle dazzle of New York City. Here, she and her brother Jamie camp out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pound the city streets, use the typewriter outside the Olivetti store on Fifth Avenue, eat lunch at the Automat, and visit New York Public Library to solve a mystery surrounding one of the museum’s exhibits. There is something special about New York that has inspired many children’s writers to capture the spirit of the city in their books. I love them all, but because of Claudia, this is the one I love most.
Set in a distant, dystopian future, the predatory traction city of London is a terrible place, with the richest living in luxury on the top tiers and the poorest living in squalor far down below. But there is another, more hopeful city in Reeve’s book. Batmunkh Gompa is beautiful, carved from rock with tiers of terraces and balconies, sparkling lakes, lush gardens, and brightly coloured taxi balloons. With its slogan ‘we shall make the world green again’, this is the utopian dream – and definitely the one I’d prefer to live in.
With The Pear Affair comes a detective story set in the sixties, complete with a search for a missing person, hidden tunnels, and a plot to ruin lives for the gain of a few.
The gripping pace of this story makes this a hard story to put down and the many threads and questions form a very satisfying ending that the reader is not expecting. All of this is set against the beautiful backdrop of Paris, complete with its beautiful hotels, shops and landmarks, its smells and colours, and its exciting hidden depths. A very satisfying read.
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Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?
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yes
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