Nevermoor – Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow

Jessica Townsend's Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow is a dark, funny fantasy for 9 year olds that takes Morrigan back to the Wundrous Society with her friends.

What happens

It's the last day of the autumn term. Morrigan and the other eight members of Unit 919 travel to lessons in their very own train carriage, and it's the cosiest thing (beanbags, a wood-burning stove and a biscuit jar that's rarely empty). There's a mystery class on the timetable called C&D, and the whole unit spends the day trying to guess what it stands for. Chips and Dip is a popular vote.

The real answer is much stranger. The class is shown film of their own welcome night, a year before, and of everything they never noticed. Scaly creatures crawling up behind them in the dark. Bird-things pretending to be people in the trees. Windows oozing red down the walls. They'd been cleverly distracted from all of it.

It turns out the city of Nevermoor is full of monsters, and the Society quietly keeps them out of sight. Morrigan dares to ask why ordinary people can't just be told, and half the room laughs at her. The answer she gets is one worth thinking about. Frightened people can be dangerous too.

Townsend's world is so stuffed with detail you feel you could walk around in it. Morrigan's front door to the station is inside a wardrobe! Who wouldn't want that? Thaddea volunteers to hunt baby sewer beasts because it sounds like fun. Mahir is teaching everyone rude words in his favourite languages. The jokes sit right alongside proper creepiness, and that mix is the whole joy of these books.

Morrigan has plenty on her plate too. Not everyone at the Society is happy she's there, and some older students hiss at her in the corridors. Her unit has her back, though, and that friendship is lovely to read.

It's worth saying that so much of this builds on Morrigan's first year that you'll want to start with the very first book of the series if your reader is new to it.

What to read next

If they love the idea of a secret organisation keeping monsters away from ordinary people, Amari and the Night Brothers is a great match. Amari is recruited to a hidden bureau that looks after the supernatural world, and it keeps it all secret for much the same reason.