The Boy Who Lost His Spark

After Jem, his younger sister Verity, and their mother move from a city flat to a hillside cottage, peculiar things begin occurring and strange noises are heard. Jem bottles up his emotions, but he misses the city, is more suited to drawing than to schoolwork, and becomes irritated as Verity chatters on about a nouka—a mysterious local being that she says is the source of the mischievous tricks plaguing the pale-skinned family’s new home. In this comfortable-feeling tale by previous collaborators O’Farrell and Terrazzini (When the Stammer Came to Stay), romantic, lushly washed spreads reveal that the nouka is real, adorably chinchilla-esque with black fur and shining eyes. Jem and the nouka draw ever closer to an encounter as the creature longs to free Jem from his stifled emotions, and the child’s search immerses him in an intoxicating new world (“Bracken and soil and twigs were filling his hair, his clothes, his nails”). Remniscent of The Giggler Treatment and Five Children and It, this read supplies magic, mischief, and rural charm—as well as a happy ending. Song lyrics and music conclude. Ages 6–9. (Apr.)