The House of One Hundred Clocks

A. M. Howell's The House of One Hundred Clocks is a shivery mystery for 10 year olds about a girl, her mother's parrot and a house where no clock must ever stop.

What happens

Helena's mother died nearly a year before the story starts. Now her father, a clockmaker, has taken a job in Cambridge looking after the clocks of Mr Westcott, a very rich and very odd man. Helena brings Orbit, the Blue-fronted Amazon parrot her mother adored. He still squawks nursery rhymes, and "Mother, Mother, Mother".

Then comes the contract. If a single clock stops or gets damaged, Helena and her father lose everything they own. And nothing they see or hear in the house can ever be talked about. Would you sign that? Her father does, without a word to her.

The house is strange from the first minute. Almost every room is crammed with clocks, and when they strike the hour they all go off at once (Stanley, the young man who seems to do every job in the house, clamps his hands over his ears). Mr Westcott sleeps up in the servants' rooms. Drawings of flying machines are pinned to the walls. A little mirror on a yellow ribbon appears on Orbit's cage. And there's a boy on a chair by the door who's gone the moment Helena looks away.

It's a very atmospheric read. You hear the ticking and chiming all the time, and Helena's questions keep piling up because nobody will answer them. She tends to say what she thinks before she's thought it (her mother called that one of her most endearing and troublesome qualities), which makes her easy company.

Underneath the spookiness there's something sad and gentle. Helena teaches Orbit her mother's phrases so he won't forget them. And she can see her father pouring himself into his clocks rather than talking to her.

Grief sits right at the centre of this one. It's never graphic, but it might hit hard for a child who has lost someone close. For a reader who likes a creepy house and a puzzle to solve, the shivers are the fun kind.

What to read next

If they'd like another A. M. Howell, try The Garden of Lost Secrets. Clara arrives at a great country estate with a secret in her pocket and a long list of places she mustn't go.