Return to Roar

Jenny McLachlan's Return to Roar is a fantasy adventure for 8 year olds about twins going back to the world they invented when they were small.

What happens

Arthur and Rose Trout made up Roar together, a place with dragons, mermaids, a ninja wizard called Win and a pool you jump into off a waterfall. The way in is an old folding cot in Grandad's attic. You crawl inside the mattress, think hard about Roar and keep crawling.

It's half-term, Mum and Dad are off walking in Scotland, and the twins are supposed to be having a quiet week at Grandad's. Instead they're packing a map in a waterproof wallet. Grandad has written his Top Tips on a blackboard. No running on the dragons. Be home by three on Sunday. Avoid all unnecessary winding up of Crowky (he's unstable).

Crowky is a scarecrow with crow's wings, and he's the reason Arthur jumps every time a bird flaps past. Things from our world can let people out of Roar, and Arthur has a horrible feeling Crowky might have one. Nobody else is worried. Arthur can't let it go.

Arthur tells the story and he's great company. He's the careful twin, scared of heights, nervous about crawling into that mattress and hopeless at pretending he isn't. Rose is braver, bossier and desperate to find her missing merwitch friend Mitch. She also calls him a "funge" (a fun sponge), which might catch on in your house.

It's genuinely funny. Win has booby-trapped his cave with a bucket of apples, then eaten all but one. Arthur climbs onto a unicorn he's sure wants a rider (it was just eating a worm) and ends up hanging from a branch by his T-shirt.

Under the jokes there's a quieter story about growing up. Rose has a new gang of friends at secondary school, and the day starts with them leaving her to pick up her dropped cupcakes on her own. Arthur has one friend and he's having his tonsils out. You can feel the twins working out whether Roar still fits them.

It does get tense, with a proper villain in the background, so a very jumpy reader might want to share it. If your reader loves the idea that their own games could be real somewhere, this is a treat.

What to read next

This is a return trip, so if they haven't been yet, The Land of Roar is where Arthur first spots a wizard's shadow at Grandad's attic window.