The Creature of the Pines

Adam Gidwitz's The Creature of the Pines is a funny, slightly spooky adventure for 7 year olds about a school trip that turns up a creature from an old legend.

What happens

Elliot Eisner is starting at a new school three weeks late. Worse, it's his very first day and his class is off on a field trip. (Who does that to a new kid?)

He ends up on the back seat of the bus next to Uchenna, who was new last year too. She laughs at his joke and that's it, they're friends.

Their guide is Professor Fauna, the teacher everyone's scared of. He tells the class the Pine Barrens of New Jersey are full of bears, bobcats and rattlesnakes, and that if they don't do as he says they will DIE. He quickly adds that he won't be the one doing it.

Then Elliot and Uchenna hear growling in the bushes. Uchenna goes straight in. Elliot, to his own total surprise, follows her.

What they find is about the size of a cat. It has wings, claws, hooves, sharp little teeth and blue fur, and it's tangled up in a balloon ribbon.

Getting that ribbon off is very funny and a bit tense. Uchenna purrs at it to calm it down. Elliot tempts it with his mum's almond bar and warns her that if he dies, he's suing.

Later on an old lady called Dr Thomas tells the class the story of the Jersey Devil. It sounds an awful lot like what they've just met!

Elliot is the best kind of nervous. He memorises maps in case he needs to escape and knows exactly what to do if a bear attacks. He says "good gracious" because his grandma won't let him say anything worse. Uchenna, meanwhile, would quite like to meet a bobcat.

There's real stuff tucked in as well. A plant that eats insects, river water as brown as tea, and Dr Thomas's story of who came to live in the Pines, including people escaping slavery. It's told warmly and simply, and it might spark a few questions.

If you've got a reader who worries about everything but secretly loves facts about dangerous animals, Elliot is going to feel like a friend.

What to read next

If they're after another worrier on a monster's trail, try The Wrath of the Woolington Wyrm, the first of Karen Foxlee's Miss Mary-Kate Martin books. Mary-Kate packs her lucky things for a trip to a quiet village where some people say a creature from an old story has come back.