Greenland sharks are amazing. They live in very cold waters, at considerable depth, are huge and live for hundreds of years. Julia’s marine biologist mum is determined to find one. Julia’s dad has landed a job for the summer automating a lighthouse in the Shetland Islands, so they have uprooted from Cornwall to the northernmost island in the UK, Unst.
Julia’s mum reckons that she has a good chance of spotting a Greenland shark in the waters north of the island and so she hires a boat with a skipper for two weeks. With both parents busy, Julia and her cat, Noodle, are left to their own devices. She becomes friends with a boy of Indian heritage, Kin, who hauls a telescope up the fire ladder on the outside of the lighthouse to watch the stars and planets. However, Kin is subject to bullying by other boys and Julia’s mum has issues of her own.
Husband-and-wife team Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston have been collaborators before, but this is their first novel. It is a beautifully written and illustrated story which moves along at a great pace but tackles some difficult mental health topics without in any way being preachy or didactic.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
Age Guide 9+
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kiran Millwood Hargrave was born in Surrey in 1990, and her earliest ambition was to be a cat, closely followed by a cat-owner or the first woman on Mars. She has achieved only one of these things, but discovered that being a writer lets you imagine whatever you want.
She started writing poetry in her final year at university, producing three poetry books and a play before she turned to children’s fiction. Her bestselling debut The Girl of Ink & Stars, about a mapmaker’s daughter who must save her island, won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2017 and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year. Her second standalone story, The Island at the End of Everything, was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and the Costa Children’s Book Award, and long listed for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Her third book, The Way Past Winter, was the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year 2018.
Her debut YA title, The Deathless Girls, was long listed for the Diverse Book Awards 2020, and shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and the Foyles Children’s Book of the Year. Her first book for adults, The Mercies, was subject to a 13-way auction and debuted at number 1 on The Times Bestseller Chart, and number 5 on the Sunday Times Bestseller List. It was named an NYT Notable Book of the Year, and won a Betty Trask Award.
Kiran lives in Oxford with her husband, the artist Tom de Freston, and the fulfilment of one of her earliest ambitions: their rescue cats, Luna and Marly.
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