Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People is a fantasy for 9 year olds about an entire world living down among the hairs of a carpet.<\/p>\n
Dust falls. Things grow in it. Tribes hunt and trade and argue along roads built between the hairs, and none of them has the faintest idea what a carpet is.<\/p>\n
The Munrungs are one of those tribes. Glurk is their chief, strong enough to wrestle a snarg and wearing its teeth to prove it, and his thoughts move “like dumplings in a stew” but they do get there.<\/p>\n
His younger brother Snibril is the opposite. Small, quick, a watcher rather than a chaser.<\/p>\n
And then there’s Pismire, the tribe’s shaman, who won’t do any of the chanting and bone-throwing the other shamans go in for. He washes. He hands out pills and tells people to take one at bedtime. His idea of magic is watching an animal until you know where to wait for it.<\/p>\n
He is the best thing in the book by a mile.<\/p>\n
The trouble starts with a headache. Snibril’s head aches, the animals vanish, the air goes still, and then something enormous comes down on the Carpet from above. Hairs fall like trees. The village stockade splits. Glurk’s home is flattened.<\/p>\n
The tribe loads its carts and leaves, because whatever has arrived has brought worse things with it. Creatures with claws, ridden by something that has brains as well as teeth.<\/p>\n
Before you hand it over, know that the opening is not gentle. A village is smashed in the first chapter, a whole walled town is destroyed with everyone in it, and the first proper battle comes soon after, with a rider killed in front of Snibril and his brother left poisoned and unconscious. It isn’t gory, but it is real, and people the characters know do die.<\/p>\n
The other thing is the words. Pismire says things like “Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction”. The narrator wanders off into jokes about tax collectors and clerks who can’t spell.<\/p>\n
A confident reader will love that. A child who is still working at it may want you alongside for the first few chapters, and honestly it’s better read aloud anyway.<\/p>\n
What you get in return is Pratchett being funny and serious in the same breath, which not many books manage.<\/p>\n
If the Carpet turns out to be a bit much, Dragons at Crumbling Castle is the easier way in to him. Short, daft stories, and a king whose knights are all off sick or visiting their grannies when the dragons turn up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People is a fantasy for 9 year olds about an entire world living down among the hairs of a carpet. Dust falls. Things grow in it. Tribes hunt and trade and argue along roads built between the hairs, and none of them has the faintest idea what a carpet is. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11392,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7292,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Dragons at Crumbling Castle","lr_seo_hook":"A whole world lives down in the pile of a carpet, and it is under attack."},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[970],"class_list":["post-8909","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-terry-pratchett"],"yoast_title":"The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A whole world lives down in the pile of a carpet, and it is under attack. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n