The Giant Under the Snow

Fantasy for children who don't read fantasy. As per the map at the opening, it's all readily en-compassable - the bus stop, the woods where Jonk (Jonquil) wanders on the class outing, the grassy mound shaped like a hand, yielding an interlaced brooch, and Elizabeth's house, refuge from the huge black dog; but the more sinister for encroaching on the city commonplaces of Jonk, her supportive boyfriend Bill, their skeptical neighbor Arf. Sturdy kids with real families, they're drawn by conviction into the ancient struggle between Elizabeth and the warlord, master of the Green Man. Who is stirring, slowly rising in the ground, even as the black dog appears here, there, everywhere, the stringy leather men whip the air with their voices, and the belt to which the brooch is buckle and seal of power is stolen - stolen in the museum while the three friends cower, each light extinguished, each footstep, each. shadow freshly felt. So it is, pulsingly, when, flight-borne by Elizabeth's drawstring bags, they hover and glide and soar above city and backlands seeking to safeguard the buckle that will save her. What a Garner or a Mayne would plumb for meaning, what in lesser hands would shrivel into a stunt, is sustained both by the bare energy of the narrative and the force of the kids' personalities. Their natural attachment - to each other, to Elizabeth, to the weaker side in a contest - makes the unnatural proceedings more devastating. (Kirkus Reviews)