The Boy Who Saved a Bear

Nizrana Farook's The Boy Who Saved a Bear is an edge-of-your-seat adventure for 10 year olds, with a priceless key, two ruthless villains and a VERY scary bear.

What happens

Nuwan is twelve and fed up. His big brother Krish is the golden child of the family, and nobody thinks Nuwan can do anything right. So when Krish is ill, Nuwan decides to take over his job. It's a two-day walk to deliver library books to a monk in the King's City. His parents say no. He goes anyway.

The day he sets off, the whole town is out to watch a line of elephants. They're carrying an ancient key that should open a hidden treasure store in an old king's statue. Nuwan sneaks into the library for a closer look, and picks up an extra book on the way out.

Hidden inside it is the real key.

Soon the head librarian and her husband are chasing him through the forest, and they want it back. Nuwan dives into a cave to hide. And in the dark, something is breathing.

It's Karadi, the bear every parent in town uses to frighten children into eating their dinner. She's real, she has a white patch on her leg, and she's enormous.

What follows is a brilliant chase, with Nuwan stuck between the villains and the bear. At one point he's so desperate that he does something truly bonkers with the key (you'll never guess where it ends up). And slowly, he starts to wonder whether Karadi is quite as fierce as everyone says.

It's set in Serendib, a made-up kingdom a lot like Sri Lanka. You can almost feel the heat coming off the cracked red earth. Lunch is roasted palmyra sprouts and sapodilla fruit picked on the way. The early chapters are short and many end on a cliffhanger, so it's very hard to put down.

Nuwan is easy to root for. He's a bit cocky and not always sensible. But anyone who's felt compared with a brother or sister will understand why he's so desperate to prove himself.

There's plenty of peril, and Karadi is properly frightening at first. It's adventure-story scary, though, rather than upsetting.

What to read next

For more adventures in Serendib, try The Girl Who Stole an Elephant. Chaya is a thief with a talent for breaking into palaces, and it opens with her running from the guards with a pouch full of jewels.