A Talent for Trouble

by Natasha Farrant

Overview

A girl determined to follow her dream persuades two friends to join her for an off-the-grid adventure that becomes a survival story as they confront storms, illness, injury, and a gang of international jewel thieves.

Desperate to meet up with her unpredictable father, quiet Alice persuades two friends to abandon their boarding school’s orienteering exercise and head for a remote, inaccessible island. As they confront storms, illness, injury, and a gang of international jewel thieves, the quest tests their courage and loyalty and strengthens the bonds of friendship. Readers will cheer the runaways on, laugh with them at their foibles, and share Alice’s pleasure in overcoming the obstacles that stand in her way. This combination adventure, school story, and family story will delight fans of all three genres.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328580788
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/19/2019
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Natasha Farrant is a literary scout and has written fiction for young people and adults. She lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

One

Goodbye, Cherry Grange

IMAGINE A HOUSE, in a garden. The paint is flaking and the chimney is cracked and the uncut grass is wild. But ignore all that. Look here instead, at the giant wisteria with a vine as thick as your arm, its purple flowers dripping against the old stone wall. Look at the swing hanging from that ancient oak, those cherry trees planted in a circle around the house. One of the trees is so close to a window that in summer, when it fruits, the girl who lives here can reach out to pick the cherries.
      Imagine that—picking cherries from your bedroom window!
      The house, Cherry Grange, was named for the trees. A man called Albert Mistlethwaite built it over a hundred years ago when he came home from a war, and his family has lived here ever since.
      That’s a lot of cherries, and pies, and cakes, and pots of jam.
      We’ll go inside now. Do you see those pale rectangles on the hall floor, those other pale rectangles on the walls? They were made by rugs and pictures, but those have gone now, along with all the furniture. There’s nothing left but dust and sunlight.
      Let’s move on! Here is the kitchen—and here is the family, finishing breakfast.
      Small, pale eleven-year-old Alice sits cross-legged on the counter with her nose in a book, tracing the words with her finger as she reads, chewing the end of one of her stiff dark braids. Her father, Barney (you may have seen him once on television), stands drinking coffee by the window with his back to the room, while his older sister, Alice’s aunt Patience, in paint-spattered overalls, dries crockery at the sink.
      The last of the Mistlethwaites, in their natural habitat. Take a good look—you’ll not see this again. For the house is sold, and today they are moving out.

Editorial Reviews

"A rewarding novel with distinctive settings, well-drawn characters, and a satisfying conclusion." —Booklist, STARRED Review  "[D]elightfully in the spirit of classic British school stories...[a] buoyant coming-of-age tale....Smashing: a romantic, ripping yarn set in the mobile-phone era."—Kirkus "Readers will enjoy accompanying Alice and her friends on this fast-paced adventure." —School Library Journal —

From the Publisher

2019-08-26
At a ramshackle Scottish boarding school, three children begin a hair-raising adventure.

Why must Alice's home, Cherry Grange, be sold? Ever since her mum died four years ago, Alice—a dark-haired, white 11-year-old—has been a shadow of her former self. Her beloved father is unreliable, and her aunt decides nothing will help Alice but a fresh start. So it's off to Stormy Loch Academy for Alice. It's an odd sort of place: full of Challenges, where students discover Talents, and actions have Consequences. (Both characters and narrator have a tendency to speak with capitalized significance.) More importantly, the building is a storybook castle, with forbidden towers and pigs to feed. Despite an extremely rough start, Alice comes to depend on two of her classmates. Jesse Okuyo is a tall, multiracial rule-follower, and Fergus Mackenzie is a rule-breaking white redhead and the bane of Jesse's existence. On the Great Orienteering Challenge, the three discover that Alice's mercurial father has entangled them in a dangerous adventure, complete with foreign criminals, shootings, and an island chase. The adventure is self-consciously—and delightfully—in the spirit of classic British school stories: Alice's favorite book is Eva Ibbotson's Amazon adventure, Journey to the River Sea (2001), and the foreshadowing narrative voice is markedly old school. Prose peppered with ellipses and dashes at times drags this otherwise-buoyant coming-of-age tale into languid meanders.

Smashing: a romantic, ripping yarn set in the mobile-phone era. (Adventure. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews