Read Yonder free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Ali Standish's Yonder is a moving mystery for 9 year olds about a boy searching for the friend who once stood up for him.
It's June 1943 in Foggy Gap, a small town in the Appalachian mountains. Danny's dad is away fighting in the war. His mum is running the town newspaper and expecting a baby. And one Friday morning Jack Bailey, his best friend, doesn't turn up for their paper round.
Everyone in town thinks of Jack as a hero. Three years earlier he dived into a flooded river and saved two little girls. For Danny, though, the day that mattered was the day Jack pulled a bully off him by the baseball field.
Now Jack has vanished, a week before his sixteenth birthday, and Danny won't rest until he tracks him down. He'd like to be a detective like Nancy Drew, from the books his old friend Lou lends him (in secret, of course).
Danny tells the story looking back, and he's honest about the times he wasn't brave. He hides when the bullies go after Lou. He tells the principal he saw nothing. You feel how badly he wants to be the hero of the story, and how hard that turns out to be.
The town feels so real. No sugar left in the ration book. Victory gardens and scrap metal drives. Little flags in the windows with a blue star for someone away at the war.
It's a gentle-paced book with some hard things in it. A classmate's father has been killed in the war. Jack's father is frightening, with a rifle by the door, and he kicks the dog when Danny and his mum call round. The bullying is nasty, and the town treats an old German widow on the hill like a villain.
A sensitive reader might find Mr Bailey upsetting. A reader who likes big questions will find plenty to chew on. What makes someone a hero, and what does everyone else owe them?
If they like a mystery that's really about people, try August Isle, also by Ali Standish. Miranda is sent to stay on the little island where her mum spent every summer as a girl, and her mum has never been willing to talk about it.
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