The Tulip Touch

Anne Fine's The Tulip Touch is a dark and very gripping story for 11 year olds about a friendship Natalie just can't walk away from.

What happens

Natalie has grown up in hotels. When her dad takes over the Palace, a huge old place with peacocks on the lawns, the family ends up staying for good. She's thrilled. Over a hundred rooms to explore!

Then she meets Tulip, standing alone in a cornfield holding a kitten whose eyes aren't even open yet. Tulip lives on the scruffy farm beyond the trees. Hardly anyone at school will go near her.

Natalie decides they'll be friends anyway. Tulip invents all their games (with names like Road of Bones and Rats in a Firestorm). At school she tells wild lies with one tiny detail that makes you half believe her. Natalie's dad calls that the Tulip touch.

Natalie tells it all looking back, and there's a feeling of unease right from the first chapter. She's honest about how much she adored Tulip. She's just as honest about the times she stood by and watched.

It's a strange, sad pull to read. One minute Tulip is glowing at the Palace's Christmas in a borrowed velvet dress. The next she's handing a boy a wrapped "present" of dried dog mess and smiling as he cries in his mum's car. So why does Natalie stay? She keeps asking herself that too.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Things are clearly very wrong at Tulip's house. The house is dirty and smelly. Her mum hums tunelessly without stopping. Her dad bellows threats at her from his truck. Natalie starts to wonder whether Tulip's scariest lines in their games are really his. The kitten disappears and Natalie suspects the worst.

Tulip's games turn cruel as well, including one that leaves Natalie's little brother screaming with fear. Natalie joins in more than once.

So it isn't one for a child who'd be upset by a home where a child is frightened, or by meanness that nobody stops in time. If your reader is ready for a story that makes them think hard about friendship and loyalty, there's a LOT here to talk about together.

What to read next

If they'd like more of Anne Fine's sharp eye for what children notice about the grown-ups around them, try Madame Doubtfire. It's much funnier, but just as honest about families. Three children spend Tuesday teas with a dad who can't stop being rude about their mum, and they secretly read every letter their mum sends him.