In Darkling Wood

Emma Carroll's In Darkling Wood is a story for 9 year olds about a girl sent to stay with a grandmother she's never known, just when her family needs her most.

What happens

At 3.23 in the morning, Mum's pager goes off. A heart has been found for Alice's little brother Theo, who's been waiting for a transplant. Suddenly they're speeding down the motorway to a London hospital.

Alice was supposed to stay with her best friend. Instead she's handed over to Nell, her dad's mum, who she can't remember at all. Nell comes with a huge, whiskery dog called Borage, a freezing old house with no internet, and a plan to cut down the whole of Darkling Wood.

The villagers are furious about the trees. Then odd things start to happen. The white crosses marking the trees for felling vanish. Alice's lost bobble hat turns up on the gatepost, folded neatly and turned inside out. And a girl in a long red coat keeps appearing among the trees.

Her name is Flo. She shakes hands like a grown-up, she's terrified of dogs and she's quite sure the wood is full of fairies who won't take kindly to being chopped down.

Between Alice's chapters there are letters written in November 1918, from a girl at Darkling Cottage to her brother Alfred, still away with his regiment. The war has just ended and she can't wait for him to come home. How do the two stories fit together? Working that out is half the magic.

Alice is such a real narrator. She checks Theo is still breathing when nobody's watching. She makes him a get-well card with T-rexes that look more like killer pigs. And she's cross with her dad, who never seems to answer his phone.

A quick heads-up for grown-ups. The book opens with a stranger dying so that Theo can have a heart, and then Theo picks up an infection. The 1918 letters mention a father with shrapnel in his leg who screams in the night, and influenza in the house. The opening chapters are gentle about all of it, but a child with a poorly brother or sister may find it close to home (or rather comforting).

What to read next

If they love the wintry, slightly spooky feel, try The Snow Sister, also by Emma Carroll. It's Christmas Eve, Pearl is still missing her sister Agnes, and a letter arrives about an uncle's will.