Kip of the Mountain (Emma Gourlay, HarperCollins)

Emma Gourlay’s debut novel for readers aged 8–12 is the madcap adventure of Kip Boowitt, who lives on South Africa’s Table Mountain. Beleaguered by a distant dad and cruel schoolmates, Kip eagerly awaits the arrival of Something Odd, which appears to every person on their 12th birthday. The creature she meets is just what she’s been hoping for: a friend in the shape of the enormously cute Buffel. Unfortunately, Kip isn’t the only one who thinks he’s special, and when he’s kidnapped, she’ll have to use all her ingenuity and bravery to get him home. Kip’s unique and believable voice provides a solid scaffold for this zany world where armadillos can become car wheels, and squirrels do their own ironing. Among this whacky world-building are gorgeous descriptions of the natural world. The book is set very gently against the backdrop of apartheid and some younger readers may miss the gravity of the historical context, but Gourlay specifies in the foreword that she didn’t want to write an ‘issues book’. Instead, she tackles the universal themes of confronting your fears and learning to accept help from unlikely allies. The more earnest portions of Kip of the Mountain will appeal to fans of The Travelling Bookshop series, while the humorous escapades bring to mind The Dangerous Business of Being Trilby Moffatt.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Annie Waters sells books, writes about books and podcasts about books. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews