THE SUNKEN LAND BEGINS TO RISE AGAIN

M John Harrison unflinchingly documents every gardener’s true nightmare.

RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Jennifer Bell Publisher Walker Books

A group of kids are sucked into a fantasy gaming world, an accident that will have fatal results for them if they don’t play along with the game. So far, so Jumanji. But wait, stay with us!

While Jennifer Bell’s entertaining children’s adventure might riff on some familiar tropes, she has so much fun coming up with frankly bananas plot twists that all thoughts of Robin Williams or The Rock evaporate.

What we get instead is a fiendishly inventive tale featuring three likeable 13-year-olds – Arthur, Ren and Cecily – who must jump through portals across planets while hunting for the key to get them home. Along the way they encounter inspirational historical figures who have also been plucked from their own points in time by the game’s ruthless co-creators (some of whom must be defeated, natch).

This means there are plenty of educational opportunities for young readers to learn about important folk – and the choice of characters are deliciously diverse: alongside “obvious” figures such as Sir Isaac Newton or Thomas Edison are Mary Shelley and female Samurai warrior Tamoe Gozen.

Add in robots, a dog with a surprising skillset and a clock ticking towards a horrible deadline (the kids will all turn to slime if they fail to get home!), and Wonderscape turns out to be a great bit of escapism.