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Nicola Penfold's Beyond the Frozen Horizon is an Arctic adventure for 11 year olds about a girl in a greener future who gets to fly for the very first time.
In Rory's world, strict Climate Laws have changed everything. Planes are for essential travel only, new forests have been planted everywhere and wild places are protected. So when her mum, a geologist, takes her out of Year Eight for six weeks to work on a mining project in Svalbard, Rory can hardly believe it.
She's lonely at school and teased for being quiet and strange. This trip is her escape. She's got a yellow Polaroid camera from her dad and a list of every Arctic animal she hopes to spot (polar bears at the top, obviously).
The company Mum's working for, Greenlight, wants to reopen an old mining town and dig for rare earth metals. They're the metals that go into batteries, wind turbines and electric cars. It sounds like a good thing. But not everyone in the Arctic is pleased to see them, and Mum has just found out there are families, children included, living in the "ghost town" they're heading for.
Rory tells the story herself, and she notices everything. Mountains topped with snow like icing sugar. A stuffed polar bear towering over the airport luggage belt. The coins with holes in the middle. You feel her excitement fizzing, and then the little flutters of nerves as the light fades on her first evening.
The best thing is that the book doesn't hand out easy answers. Rory's mum believes in the mine. Her dad, who lives in a hut in one of the new forests, thinks people should learn to live with less. Rory is stuck in the middle and isn't sure what's true. Which side would your reader take?
There's some sadness too. Her parents have split up, her best friend moved away and she's been missing school to escape the girls who pick on her. It's all handled gently, and it makes you root for her even more.
For a child who loves wild animals, big landscapes and stories that ask what's fair to the planet and to people, this is a thoughtful, exciting choice.
If Rory's world gets them thinking, try Nicola Penfold's Where the World Turns Wild. It's another future where people and nature are kept apart. Juniper and her little brother Bear live in a city where animals, trees and flowers are forbidden.
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