Enchanted Files 2 – Hatched

Bruce Coville's Hatched is a funny, big-hearted fantasy for 8 year olds told through the diary of a griffin who's pretty sure he's rubbish at being a griffin.

What happens

Gerald Overflight is supposed to be brave and fierce. He's half eagle and half lion, and every griffling has to learn the griffins' Code word for word. But he's nervous, he'd rather do sky ballet than play air battles and he writes very bad poems when he's upset.

And he's got a deadline. In twenty-four days it's his Tenth Hatchday, and by then he has to find a True Treasure all by himself. If he doesn't, he'll be declared not a true griffin, in front of everyone. His brother Cyril and sister Violet are already sure he'll fail.

So Gerald decides to run away to the human world. Or at least he decides to decide. He dithers for days (he knows dithering is very ungriffinlike, which only makes it worse).

The whole book is a scrapbook of bits and pieces. Gerald's diary sits alongside letters, school memos, encyclopedia entries and pages from the journal of a boy called Brad. Brad's school is making him keep a journal all summer, so he writes a dull official one for his teacher (exactly three paragraphs of three sentences) and a real one for himself.

What's clever is that you often know more than Gerald does. His beloved teacher Master Abelard, a gnome just six inches tall, is secretly nudging him to leave, for reasons of his own. Your reader will be dying to warn Gerald!

It's properly silly in places. There's a poem about Cyril's "huge stinky farts" and a list of forbidden university topics that includes "dragon digestive systems". Then it turns tender without any warning. Gerald hates the thought of his dad's disappointment, and Brad is still missing his own dad and can't bring himself to write about why.

What to read next

If your reader keeps a diary, or loves a book they can dip in and out of, the mixed-up pages make it really easy to keep going. And if they'd like to start from the first of these Enchanted Files, Diary of a Mad Brownie is the one to grab. It's written the same way, by a 150-year-old brownie from Scotland who is bound by an old curse to one human family.