Sky
Sky is a fantasy novel that revels in nature and the countryside. It revolves around a magical white owl Lara discovers whilst on holiday in the snowy Highlands of Scotland, a creature which opens for her a portal into the past.
Lara’s mother has been ill, and the family is visiting Lara’s grandparents for Christmas. Her grandfather is a keen birdwatcher. Soon after arriving, Lara spots a rare snowy owl and finds a feather, which she treasures. When she wanders off alone, she meets a troubled and old-fashioned girl called Amelia. Amelia has recently lost her mother and is sad and scared: she feels certain that she is seeing her mother’s ghost, and her older cousin Arthur is spiteful to her.
Gradually Lara realises that she has stumbled into the past lives of the former residents of the Big House – a hotel in Lara’s reality. The past and present are connected by the presence of the snowy owls that, in the past, where it is soon spring, are rearing their young in a nest on the moors. The story of the owls trying to rear their chicks, and the resolution of Amelia’s haunting, are tied together by the actions of Arthur, and Lara’s clever, courageous exposure of his plans. Both girls find their anxieties resolved, and the magical white feather Lara treasures may yet enable them to meet and have further adventures in the future.
There is a pleasing interplay in this book between past and present, fantasy and reality, as if the two blend and merge, sometimes, on the borders of our consciousness. As Lara says on meeting the strangely dressed Amelia, ‘everything just felt a bit… fairy tale. As if it wouldn’t be strange to have an owl turn into a girl.’ Recommended for 8 – 12-year-olds.
