Margaret Mahy: The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

By MARGIE THOMSON

When Sophie Sapwood finds an old whalebone pendant at the back of a chest of drawers and puts it on, adventure springs to life. An unhappy ghost awakes, evil characters are lit with greed and bad intention, and the spirit of pure adventure is found in both her father, the famous explorer Bonniface Sapwood, and his erstwhile pupil but now rival, the naturalist Corona Wottley.

A race to the Antarctic ensues, to find the old ship The Riddle, trapped in the frozen wastes for many years, and possibly holding the key to an unresolved mystery - and, perhaps, to a great wealth of diamonds.

Mahy is a terrific writer who always dignifies her young readers with sparkling language and her trademark blending of the fantastical with a true reading of human nature and the human spirit.

Her imagery is often breathtaking - "The silence of the Antarctic arched over all sounds", "old, old, old, the Antarctic sea whispered", "a huge, dry cold came at him like a ravenous dragon" - and her characters are vividly, deftly drawn.

Bonniface is, in his own haphazardly Mahy-esque way, a positive father-figure, but not at the expense of the grown-up woman character Corona. The three children, Sophie and her brothers Edward and little Hotspur, are likeable, vulnerable yet grounded in a way that the adults are not always.

A great story for older children.

HarperCollins

$12.95