Viking Ships at Sunrise

Viking Ships at Sunrise by Mary Pope Osborne drops 7 year olds onto a foggy Irish island where books are the most precious thing anyone owns.

What happens

Jack and Annie have become Master Librarians. Morgan has sent them to save four ancient stories, and this is the third one.

The title is written in Latin on a scrap of paper. That is all they get. No research book at first, no map, and a warning that Vikings are raiding the coast.

The tree house arrives on a clifftop above a grey sea, before the sun is up. Annie trips over her long scratchy dress. A rope drops down the steps in front of them, which turns out to belong to a very cheerful bald monk called Brother Patrick.

What follows is unusually lovely for an adventure book. Brother Patrick walks them round his monastery. Here is the bakery. Here is the hut where the monks cobble their own sandals. And here, best of all, is the library, warm and gold with candlelight, full of monks reading and painting and playing chess.

Annie decides this is what civilisation looks like. Jack says out loud that he loves this place, and you can tell he means it.

Brother Michael, who is very old, has been painting one book for his entire life. His paints are made of earth and plants. He writes on sheepskin with goose quill pens. When the serpent ships appear on the horizon, what he does with that book is the moment the whole story turns on.

That is the thing this book does really well. It makes a reader understand why someone would risk everything for a book, without ever saying so directly.

There are Vikings, and they are not made cuddly. Brother Patrick explains that when the monks see the serpent ships they must hide or be taken as slaves. Later Jack and Annie watch warriors with axes and iron helmets gathering below the cliff. It is tense rather than bloody, and the monks get a warning in time, but a child who worries about people being hurt will feel that stretch.

Annie also goes under the water in a heavy dress and has to haul herself along a rope. Short, but genuinely frightening.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Hour of the Olympics is the fourth and last of these missions, with Annie up against a rule that says girls are not allowed anywhere near the Games.