Venice in peril

    

    What fun this book is! Sparky, highly imaginative, extensively researched: a very original kind of guide book to Venice, and a well-paced story for older children, or indeed anyone who enjoys a jolly good yarn.

    Michelle Lovric's The Undrowned Child is set in 1899 and features Teodora, an eleven-year-old Neapolitan girl with special gifts who comes upon a magical book called The Key to the Secret City, and with the help of Renzo - who, according to an old prophecy, is the city's "Studious Son" - saves Venice when it's in great peril. That's to simplify events enormously - it's so richly inventive that there are all manner of twists and turns and marvellous devices such as curry-loving mermaids who speak in the most saltily distinctive manner, vicious seagulls, "Baddened Magic", potions, curses, spells and whatnot.

    The book's sequel, The Mourning Emporium, is due out next month and I am looking forward to reading it after this delicious introduction to Teodora and Renzo and their adventures. Michelle's writing is so fresh and lively and there's a great deal of humour throughout which provides a nice balance to the cliff-hanging danger and the fantastical goings-on, but there's also much history at the book's roots, and given the author's obvious love for Venice, the unique setting is most convincingly presented while the foreground story fairly runs away with the reader. As I said, it's tremendous fun, and you'll get a flavour of it on this lovely website.