The Climbers

Keith Gray's The Climbers is a gripping friendship story for 11 year olds about a boy who can't bear the thought of someone being better than him.

What happens

Nobody in the village climbs better than Sully. Everyone knows it, mostly because he keeps telling them. The kids here climb everything, and each of the big trees in the park is named by the first person to get to the top. All except the tallest. Sully has been planning to climb it this summer and call it Sullivan's Skystabber.

Then a new kid called Nottingham turns up. He falls out of the twisty willow on his first go, dusts himself off and goes straight back up to the top. Everyone's impressed. Everyone except Sully.

It's all told by Sully himself, and he's brilliantly honest about the ugly bits. He actually hopes Nottingham falls. Then he feels guilty for being glad. You're right inside his jealousy, and it's uncomfortable in the best way. Has your reader ever felt a bit put out by the new kid? They'll get it.

The two boys start playing mean tricks on each other, and each one is nastier than the last. It's all building towards a race up the one tree nobody has named yet, on Sunday morning.

Meanwhile his best friend Mish is changing. She'd rather finish her French homework than time his climbs, and she's started thinking about university. Sully doesn't know what to do with that, and his temper doesn't help.

It's worth knowing this sits at the older end of the shelf. Sully and his friends are fifteen, and there's a fair bit of mild swearing (think "damn" and "bloody"). One of the trees even has a swear word in its nickname, which comes up quite a lot. Sully's big brother comes home smelling of beer and slaps him round the head, and money is clearly tight at home. It's all handled in a very real way, but a younger reader might be taken aback. For a confident reader who's ready for something with a bit of grit, it's great.

The climbing is thrilling too. You feel every snapping branch and every scrape, and there's lots of real tree know-how woven in.

What to read next

If they like stories about a friendship pushed to its limits, Keith Gray's The Den has two boys out on their bikes on the first day of the summer holidays, one of them desperate to stay away from home, who find a trapdoor where an old cottage used to stand.