Lindsay Galvin’s My Friend the Octopus is a seaside mystery for 11 year olds about a girl left behind in Brighton while her mother vanishes to Paris.<\/p>\n
Vinnie Fyfe is twelve, and her whole world is her mother’s hat shop in London. She sketches the designs and her mother runs the business. They’re a team, and they’re never apart.<\/p>\n
Then Mother wakes her in the middle of the night, fully dressed and packed. They creep out through the attic of the house next door. Why all the secrecy? And why does Mother pull her down onto the train floor to hide from their old shop manager? Vinnie notices her gripping a long hatpin, point upwards.<\/p>\n
By breakfast they’re in Brighton, at Aunt Bets’ tearoom on the roof of the aquarium. And by the time the teapot is empty, Mother has announced she’s off to Paris on business. For two weeks. Maybe a month. Vinnie is staying here.<\/p>\n
Poor Vinnie! She’s been desperate to see the sea for years, and now she can’t enjoy it one bit.<\/p>\n
Aunt Bets is brilliant though. She bakes before dawn, wears bloomers under her skirts and whizzes Vinnie down to the aquarium on the back of her bicycle, with Vinnie’s eyes squeezed shut the whole way. There’s a lot of warmth and quite a bit of comedy in the way these two get to know each other.<\/p>\n
Down in the aquarium it’s a whole other world. Glowing tanks, spider crabs, a family of sea lions. And one enormous tank standing almost empty, with no name plate. Then five men roll in a barrel big enough to hold two of them, and something inside it starts to move all by itself (the title might give you a clue).<\/p>\n
It’s told by Vinnie herself, so you feel every wobble. She’s never done anything on her own, and even being sent on an errand is a big deal. Reading is hard for her too, because the letters jump about, and she’s quietly brave about that as well.<\/p>\n
There’s also a proper mystery brewing. A boy called Charlie, who wants to be a journalist, shows Vinnie a newspaper saying her mother’s disappearance has caused a stir. Vinnie had no idea.<\/p>\n
If you’ve got a reader who likes a clever, old-fashioned mystery with trams, bathing machines and hatpins, this is a treat. It’s a slow, atmospheric start rather than a rush.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Galvin takes readers to sea again in Darwin’s Dragons, where the ship’s fiddler and cabin boy Syms Covington is out on the Galapagos with Mr Darwin himself, riding giant tortoises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lindsay Galvin’s My Friend the Octopus is a seaside mystery for 11 year olds about a girl left behind in Brighton while her mother vanishes to Paris. Vinnie Fyfe is twelve, and her whole world is her mother’s hat shop in London. She sketches the designs and her mother runs the business. They’re a team, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13011,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7177,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Darwin's Dragons","lr_seo_hook":"A mother who vanishes, a Brighton tearoom and something alive in a barrel.","lr_series_id":0,"lr_series_name":"","lr_series_position":0,"lr_series_label":""},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[28],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[622],"class_list":["post-8191","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-11-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-lindsay-galvin"],"yoast_title":"My Friend the Octopus by Lindsay Galvin | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A mother who vanishes, a Brighton tearoom and something alive in a barrel. For ages 11+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n