The Curio Collectors

Eloise Williams's The Curio Collectors is a short historical mystery for 8 year olds about two travelling children, a carved shell and a very shifty gentleman.

What happens

Lily is twelve and Tom is ten. They live on the road with Ma Hawker, who took them in, and Winnie the horse (who wears one of Ma's old hats with holes cut for her ears). Everywhere they stop, they put on a show with their collection of curios. Ma makes up stories about every one. A narwhal tusk becomes a unicorn's horn!

Money is very tight, though. So when a boy in a field offers Lily "treasure" from a pharaoh's pyramid, she hands over Ma's coins. Would you have trusted him? Lily did, and she gets a case of junk. The only useful thing in it is a big clam shell with odd carvings, which Ma jams into a hole in one of the storage cases.

Then they reach London. A young maid badly wants that shell, and she's frightened of something. That night a smiling gentleman with a moustache creeps up to the caravan at midnight, asking very politely about shells from overseas.

Lily tells the story as it happens and she's lovely company. She's proud and a bit prickly, and she feels awful about the money. Solving the mystery is partly her way of putting it right. Tom is dreamy and sweet, the kind of boy who explains to the horse how he'd paint the sky. The way they tease each other (she once chased him with a chamber pot) feels very real.

It moves fast. There's creeping through a big cemetery at night, a man with a pistol and a mad dash across London. It's tense rather than gory. Worth knowing too that the family are properly poor, and there's a quiet moment where Lily gives Tom her soup and goes hungry.

If you've got a reader who likes a mystery with a clear villain and a clever girl at the heart of it, this is a great fit. It's also a nice way into stories set long ago, as nothing in it needs any history to follow.

What to read next

If they enjoy a girl who can talk her way out of trouble, try Honesty and Lies by the same author. Honesty is thirteen and has run away from Wales to London in the middle of winter, with a quick tongue and a knack for stories and not much else.