Harper 05 – Harper and the Sea of Secrets

Cerrie Burnell's Harper and the Sea of Secrets is a dreamy, musical adventure for 7 year olds about a girl with a flying umbrella and a seaside festival with no instruments.

What happens

This is the fifth Harper book. Harper lives at the top of the Tall Apartment Block in the City of Clouds, where it rains every single day in six different ways. She flies about in her magical Scarlet Umbrella, flipped upside down like a little boat, with her cat Midnight never far behind.

One morning a gull swoops down with a letter from Great Aunt Sassy, who's away by the sea. The orchestra playing at the Songs of the Sea festival has lost every one of its instruments.

So the neighbours dig out a double bass, a drum, a trombone and a piano, and tie the lot to the umbrella. Off go four children, a cat and a wolf, with a trail of instruments clanging through the sky. What a picture!

Harper's friends are a big part of the charm. Liesel is tiny and wild and scampers about like a mouse. Her brother Ferdie is a serious boy with a serious scarf and a pencil behind his ear. Nate can hardly see, but he walks through the dark as easily as the day, with his wolf Smoke at his side.

The City of Gulls is full of crooked lanes, junk shops and pebbly beaches. There's an old map of smugglers' tunnels, a boatful of grumpy bearded fishermen and strange music drifting up from the waves at night. Who has taken the instruments? And what is singing in the sea?

It reads like a lullaby a lot of the time. The sentences are soft and full of colour, and there's always something lovely to picture. It would make a very good bedtime read (you may find yourself humming).

There's nothing frightening, just a pitch-black tunnel under the sea and a bit of mystery. It's a complete little adventure, so it works on its own if this is where you start.

What to read next

If they fall for Harper, go back to where it all began with Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella. That's the book where Harper first unlocks the umbrella from its birdcage, on the same day Midnight goes missing.