Knights and Bikes

Gabrielle Kent's Knights and Bikes is a treasure-hunting adventure for 7 year olds about two girls, one very loud goose and an island full of legends.

What happens

Demelza Penrose is "nine and five months" and she'll tell you so. She lives in her own little camper next to her dad's house on Penfurzy Island, with a pet goose called Captain Honkers. One stormy night, someone picks the lock.

Demelza attacks with a foam sword. The monster under the blanket turns out to be Nessa, a girl not much older than her, who stowed away on the last ferry and won't say why. By the end of the night they're spit sisters. (Exactly as squelchy as it sounds.)

Then things get serious. Her dad can't make the camper park pay, and he might have to sell it, along with the crazy golf course her mum painted with the legend of the knights of Penfurzy and their cursed treasure. Tucked inside a papier-mâché lobster in her mum's old shed, the girls find a notebook. Her mum had been hunting for the treasure herself!

It's loud, messy and VERY funny. A digger ends up going over a cliff (the girls jump out first), Captain Honkers dive-bombs anyone who's mean to Demelza, and every grown-up in the record shop has a different, sillier version of the legend. Demelza talks in big dramatic speeches ("Die, creature of the night!") and gets her long words slightly wrong, which is half the fun.

There's a creepy side too. A strange mist is creeping round the town, and it makes people do very odd things. Nothing too frightening, but it's a proper mystery.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Demelza's mum died before the story starts. She fell near the cliffs, and Demelza keeps a tiny shed full of her paintings to remember her by. It comes up early and it's handled gently, but a child who has lost someone might want a grown-up close by for those pages.

If you've got a reader who likes their heroes brave, bossy and a little bit ridiculous, Demelza is a treat. The friendship between her and Nessa is really sweet too, two girls who've both been lonely and suddenly aren't.

What to read next

For another girl on a small island with a summer adventure ahead of her, try Elen's Island. Elen is packed off to stay with a grandmother she can't remember, on an island off Wales, and she is furious about it (at first).