All the Way Down

Stewart Foster's All the Way Down is a tense, tender story for 11 year olds about three kids at summer camp who end up trapped deep underground.

What happens

It opens after it's all over. Milo is at an awards ceremony at Wembley, stuck in a suit he hates, with cameras in his face. Oscar is there too. But Effie, the third of them, hasn't turned up, and Milo can't stop scanning the crowd for her. He's slept with the light on every night since.

Then we go back eight weeks, to the first morning of camp in Cornwall. Twelve kids with "problems" are dropped off at Swallow Heights, a dusty old site with a rusty mine tower on the hill.

Milo is the quiet one. He wears a parka that's far too small for him. And he has a voice in his head that nobody knows about. It belongs to Luke, his six-year-old brother, who tells chicken jokes and begs to watch Spider-Man.

Luke isn't at camp. Milo's little brother has died, and nobody in the family can bring themselves to say the word. So Luke keeps blurting things out through Milo's mouth (usually at the worst possible moment, in front of everyone).

Oscar is loud and cocky and smuggling a second phone. Effie is kind and sharp and says he's like a bumblebee, buzzing about and then stinging. Watching the three of them work each other out is a real pleasure, with Milo's "friend or enemy?" game running quietly under all of it.

Reading it feels like being right inside Milo's head. You hear his worries, his little jokes with Luke and the things he wishes he could say out loud. It's funny in places, which makes the sad bits land even harder.

Something to be ready for. The whole book sits on grief. There are memories of the machines beside Luke's hospital bed, and of Mum crying when Milo leaves home. Then there's the mine itself, dark and narrow and frightening, and the nightmares Milo has afterwards.

A child who's lost someone close might find it very hard going. It might also be the book that makes them feel understood. For a reader who likes an adventure that turns out to be about a lot more than escaping, it's brilliant.

What to read next

For more Stewart Foster, try Check Mates. Felix has ADHD, keeps getting sent to the school isolation room and is about to spend a lot more time with his granddad.