Is Anybody There?

Jean Ure's Is Anybody There? is a story for 11 year olds whose narrator can see things she would rather not, and who gets into the wrong car one December night.

What happens

Jo's mum is a clairvoyant. People bring her a watch or a bracelet, she holds it and concentrates, and she tells them things about themselves they had half forgotten.

Jo has the same gift. She found out at nine, playing with her nan's gold propelling pencil, when a great surge of joy that was not hers came over her and she started dancing round the room. She had seen her nan young, and happy, and dancing with a grandad she had never met.

Her mum was not delighted. "Oh, this cursed legacy!"

So Jo keeps quiet about it, mostly. The exceptions are Chloe and Dee, her two best mates, who call it The Game and think it is the best fun going.

The three of them are the heart of this book. Chloe cannot sit still, cannot keep a secret and is mad about anything with blood in it. Dee is the organised one who has always done her homework and will definitely end up head girl. Jo is somewhere in between, and she narrates the whole thing with a running commentary that will make your reader laugh and squirm at the same time (there is a long and very good passage about the horror of turning up in jeans when everyone else is dressed to kill).

Then comes the end-of-term meal at the pizza place, a saved cab fare, a boy who does not notice her, and a lift from a man she has met exactly once.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The opening chapter is a near abduction, told from the inside. Jo realises she is being driven the wrong way, out of town, towards the gravel pits, and she is frightened out of her wits. She gets out. Nothing happens to her. But the fear is very real, she carries the shame of it for ages, and a classmate goes missing later on.

The other thing is the age. Jo has just turned thirteen and she is in Year 8, worrying about boys and clothes and whether she will ever have a figure. It is all mild stuff. A confident reader will be fine with it. A more anxious one probably will not.

What to read next

For another girl who inherited a family gift she never asked for, try the Ravenfall Inn. Anna is thirteen, her family run a magical guesthouse on the edge of the Otherworld, and the one power she has is seeing how people are going to die.