The Worlds We Leave Behind

A. F. Harrold's The Worlds We Leave Behind is an eerie, unsettling story for 11 year olds about a boy who is offered the chance to make his enemies disappear.

What happens

Hex and Tommo have been best mates since the day they were born. On a hot day in the holidays they head down to the rope swing in the woods, and a little girl called Sascha tags along uninvited. Then it all goes wrong. Hex throws a clod of mud, then another, and the last one turns out to be a stone. Sascha falls and breaks her arm.

Tommo runs for help. Hex runs away.

The next day Sascha's big sister finds him in the woods and punches him, and he flees deep into the trees with a huge grey dog pacing beside him. He comes out in a clearing that shouldn't be there, next to a thatched cottage. The woman inside patches up his lip and makes him an offer. Say the word, and the people who hurt him will be snipped out of the world as if they'd never existed.

That's the chilling bit. She's so kind about it. She makes revenge sound sensible, even generous. And Hex is angry enough to listen. He goes home with an acorn in his pocket that he only has to crush.

What makes this book special is being inside Hex's head. He does things first and finds the reasons afterwards, if he finds them at all. He's not always easy to like (what he does with a classmate's wet trousers is hard to read). But you understand exactly how it feels to be the kid who always gets it wrong. Isn't that most of us at some point?

It's written in short, sharp lines, often one sentence to a paragraph, which makes it race along. And Hex isn't the only one who's been made an offer, which is where things get really twisty.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Sascha's injury is described plainly, with her arm "the wrong shape" and blood in the stream. There's a punch, a nasty fall, and a lot of anger. The whole idea of people being wiped from existence could stay with a sensitive reader for a while.

For a reader who likes their stories cosy, this one will feel heavy. For an older reader who enjoys a book that makes them think about right and wrong (and doesn't hand them easy answers), it's brilliant.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, A. F. Harrold also wrote The Song From Somewhere Else, where a girl called Frank is being picked on at the rec while she puts up posters for her missing cat.