Read The Subtle Knife free in the Little Reads app.
Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife is a tense fantasy for 11 year olds about a boy on the run who steps through a hole in the air and into another world.
Will is twelve and he looks after his mum. She is frightened of people who are not there. He has been covering for her since he was seven and he is very good at it.
Then two men start turning up at the house. They want a green leather writing case that belonged to his father. His mum has hidden it somewhere and Will has no idea where.
So he walks her round to his old piano teacher and asks, very politely, whether she can stay a few days. Then he goes home to search.
One of the men creeps upstairs in the dark, trips over Will's cat and cracks his head on the hall table at the bottom. He dies. Will is certain he killed him, and it is still sitting with him pages later. All of this is in the opening chapter rather than a twist saved up for the end.
His mum's illness is on the page just as plainly. She counts every slat on every park bench. She has put makeup on one eye and not the other and neither of them has noticed. A child who worries about a grown up not coping may find that bit harder than the death.
If your reader is fine with all that, what comes next is properly exciting.
Will follows a tabby cat to a roundabout on the edge of Oxford. The cat paws at a patch of air and walks into it. Will pushes his bag through and crawls after her.
On the other side it is hot and starry and there are palm trees. A whole seaside city. Cafes lit up, half finished drinks left on the tables, a cigarette burned down in an ashtray. Not one person anywhere. He takes a lemonade from the cooler and drops a pound coin in the till anyway, which tells you most of what you need to know about him.
Then a door bursts open on an upstairs landing and a filthy, snarling girl comes at him with a wildcat.
She's called Lyra, and this is not where her story starts. She turns up already carrying a golden instrument she can somehow read. She already trusts an armoured bear called Iorek. A witch in another world is out looking for her. Your reader can follow all of it cold. It lands much better if they don't have to.
So if Lyra is new to them, hand over Northern Lights first. That one has her hiding behind an armchair in an Oxford college, eavesdropping on Scholars, with no idea yet about the ice or the bears.
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