I opened Northwood with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Brian Falkner’s high action, futuristic young adult novels kept me on the edge of my seat. Could he work the same magic for a younger audience?
Cecelia Undergarment, the heroine of Northwood, is unusual. This is not because she lives in a house shaped like a giant bunch of balloons, although it does make things very interesting from the start. No, her most unusual feature is that she understands animals and they understand her. She doesn’t guess what animals say, she knows.
When she rescues Rocky, a starving Samoyd, from its angry owner, things go wrong. He tries to bulldoze her house to the ground, which sets off the safety mechanism in the attic. Cecelia and Rocky float away in the balloon-shaped attic, and end up lost in Northwood. No one has ever come out of Northwood alive. Will Cecelia and Rocky find a way?
There’s excitement, intrigue, a villain or two and insurmountable odds - just the ingredients for a fast-paced action adventure.
Title: Northwood
Author: Brian Falkner
Illustrator: Donovan Bixley
Publisher: Walker Books, $19.95 RRP
Publication Date: August, 2011
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781921529801
For ages: 8 +
Type: Junior Fiction