This book was not the author’s idea. It is the product of the Big Idea competition, a scheme in which the winner gets their grand plan for a book written by an established children’s writer. That’s my kind of prize: you get a novel published, but you don’t have the agony of writing it.
Neal Jackson, the 2014 prizewinner, lucked out when he was matched with Emma Carroll, the author of The Girl Who Walked on Air and Strange Star. His idea could have floated into obscurity — hot-air balloon epics are not uncommon, from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days to Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love — and that’s before we get on to Babar and Curious George’s high-basket adventures.
However, with Carroll as pilot we are taken on an original, thrilling journey with a wonderful view of early aeronautics. Jackson’s idea was to focus on the Montgolfier hot-air balloon, unveiled before King Louis XVI at Versailles in 1783; a wonder, the pride of the nation. The first passengers were a duck, a rooster and a sheep — the first aeronauts. It’s a lovely scenario and Carroll, an unstoppable, natural storyteller, lets her imagination take off.
What if an orphan girl called Magpie had been staying at the Montgolfiers’ house and helped to perfect the prototype by noticing what happened to the silk bloomers on the washing line when hot air rose beneath them? What if she had risked her life on an experimental test flight in which she hung on to the ropes until her hands practically fell off? What if a bunch of English scamps tried to steal the French inventors’ secrets?
This allows for the creation of an intrepid child duo — the brave, flight-loving Magpie and Pierre, the inventor’s gentle son — to fight the baddies and restore French pride. As for those animals, well, Magpie’s rooster and the lamb, Lancelot (which she eventually gives to the queen, Marie Antoinette, to save him from the cook’s pan), become rising stars.
thebigideacompetition.co.uk
Sky Chasers (7+) by Emma Carroll, Chicken House, 280pp, £6.99
