Sunwing

Kenneth Oppel's Sunwing is a winter adventure for 9 year olds about a young bat who refuses to sleep through the cold because he's going to find his father.

What happens

Shade is a Silverwing, small and stubborn and never very good at holding his tongue. Most of his colony is tucked up asleep for the winter. He's out in the frozen forest instead, with his mum, the old elder Frieda, his friend Marina and a handful of others, following directions to a strange Human building.

His father went looking for that building before Shade was even born. Everyone thinks owls got him. Shade is sure he's alive.

This is the second Silverwing book and it picks up straight after the first, so start with Silverwing if your reader hasn't met Shade yet. A lot of what happened last time comes up in the opening pages.

The first chapter is a brilliant chase. A white owl that should be hibernating spots them, and Shade has to drop an enormous icicle on its head using nothing but sound. (He doesn't quite manage it on his own, and Marina is very quick to point that out.)

Then they find the building. Inside it's a summer forest under a glass roof, full of moths and warm streams and thousands of friendly bats. No owls at all. They can even watch the sun come up. It looks like everything the bats have ever been promised.

So why can't they get out?

That's the bit that makes this one so gripping. A stern bearded bat called Arcadia runs the place and does NOT like questions. Shade asks them anyway. He's the only one who keeps searching for a way out while everyone else settles in, and you'll be right there with him thinking something isn't right.

There's lots of fun too. Shade is grumpy about Chinook flying beside Marina, and he privately nicknames Arcadia Beard Breath. Who hasn't had a friend suddenly laugh at someone else's jokes?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The villain is properly scary. Goth is a huge cannibal bat who eats other bats. A dark bat god speaks to him in a cave, and in his dreams he tells Shade he'll eat his beating heart. A child who's easily frightened by monsters might find those chapters a lot. If your reader likes a real villain and real danger, they'll love it.

What to read next

If they're after another small animal who can tell something is wrong when nobody in charge will listen, try Watership Down. Fiver is the smallest rabbit in his warren and only his brother believes his warning. There's real fighting in it too, so it's no gentler than this one.