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Jeanne Willis's Shamanka is a strange, magical adventure for 10 year olds about a girl, an orang-utan and a notebook full of spells.
Sam Khaan is nearly thirteen and lives in a crumbling London flat with her Aunt Candy. Aunt Candy used to be a circus contortionist. Now she drinks gin for breakfast, calls Sam "Spam" and hates magic more than anything.
Sam's only real friend is Lola, the orang-utan who brought her up (and taught her sleight of hand before she could walk).
Locked in the attic one day, Sam finds a goatskin pouch. Inside is an ancient book of chants and a photo of a magician called the Dark Prince of Tabuh. He has the same blond streak in his dark hair as Sam. Could he be the father she's never known?
The whole thing is told by the mysterious Masked Magician, who talks straight to your reader. It feels a bit like being pulled up on stage at a magic show. Is it all real, or is it all a trick? That's the question the book keeps asking.
Between chapters there are instructions for real tricks, like pushing a cup through a table or palming a coin. That's a lovely touch for any child who's secretly practising magic in their bedroom.
There's a lot here that's tough for this shelf, though. Aunt Candy is drunk and cruel. She locks Sam away, tells her nasty lies about how her mother died and sends Lola off to a laboratory. An early stage trick has a monkey-boy chopped to pieces (he jumps back out alive). There's a dead sparrow, and a school bully who uses a nasty slur.
The witch doctor and his village are also drawn in a very old-fashioned, cartoonish way, with jokes about cannibals, and some families won't be comfortable with that. So this one suits a confident reader at the older end, ideally with a grown-up around to chat it through.
If they're gripped by magic that just might be real, try Circus Mirandus. Micah is stuck with a great-aunt as bitter as her black tea, while his poorly grandfather has something magical to tell him about the circus from his old stories.
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