The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow

Katherine Woodfine's The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow is a department store mystery for 9 year olds, set in a London of omnibuses, smog and gloved shop girls.

What happens

Sophie Taylor sells hats for a living now. A year ago the idea of earning her own living would never have crossed her mind.

She used to be Sophie Taylor-Cavendish, with a garden at Orchard House and someone to tie her hair ribbon just so. Her father is gone and so is the money. At work she sticks to plain old Taylor, because the full version would do her no favours at all.

The other girls have already decided she's stuck-up. They call her Your Ladyship. When they want to be really horrid they call her Sour-milk Sophie.

Papa's advice was to keep calm and never let the enemy see they've rattled you. Sophie has quietly noticed that this works very badly on shop girls.

Then there's Billy, the apprentice porter, who gets clipped round the head by his own uncle and hides behind the coats reading a story-paper about a boy detective who cracks the case when nobody else can. You can probably guess where he's heading.

Sinclair's hasn't opened yet. When it does, the draw will be a display of jewels, including a tiara that belonged to Marie Antoinette and a clockwork sparrow that plays a different tune every time.

You know perfectly well what is going to happen to that sparrow. Half the fun is watching it come closer.

It's a proper treat to read. The store is a whole world of royal-blue and gold boxes, plate glass behind silk curtains, carpet your feet sink into and air thick with perfume. Then you go through a door into the back passages where everyone is somebody's dogsbody and the work actually happens.

Sophie and Billy are both people the grown-ups look straight past. That is exactly why they notice things.

Something to be ready for. Sophie's father is gone before the story begins. The book doesn't spell out what happened to him, but she thinks of him entirely in the past tense and the comfortable life went with him. It isn't dwelt on. It just sits underneath everything she does, surfacing in quiet moments when she remembers his face and his study full of maps. The unkindness from the other girls is constant too, and no grown-up steps in. If your reader is raw about losing someone, those early chapters might land harder than you'd expect. For most, that stubborn chin of Sophie's is precisely why they'll be on her side from the start.

What to read next

There's a good follow-on for this one. Cogheart puts a girl into very similar trouble. Her father vanishes from an airship, she's left with a clockwork fox and a letter she mustn't show anyone, and there are silver-eyed men in the shadows.