Children's Books: Maggie O'Farrell's ‘The Boy Who Lost His Spark'

Wall Street Journal

04-04-2025

There comes a delicate point in the life of a young person, usually around puberty, when the enchantment of childhood becomes harder to conjure. The Hundred Acre Wood, Neverland, Narnia and even Hogwarts can no longer easily be entered, and the change can leave an imaginative child feeling bereft. The novelist Maggie O'Farrell ('Hamnet') touches on this painful phase in her third book for children, 'The Boy Who Lost His Spark,' a lovely read-aloud for children ages 5-9. Young Jem has had to move with his mother and little sister from the city to a rural village for reasons unspecified. Homesick and unhappy, the boy is irritated by his sister's new belief in mischievous magical creatures called noukas. Poor Jem is on that delicate developmental cusp: Young enough to think that the bark of a tree resembles 'the overlapping scales of a sea monster' yet old enough to scoff at the fancies of little girls. But it's hard to remain scornful when strange and wondrous things begin to happen, as Jem discovers in this beautifully written tale illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini.
An old rat and a young owl return in a second story of unlikely friendship in 'Orris and Timble: Lost and Found,' by Kate DiCamillo. Luminous soft-edged illustrations by Carmen Mok set off this careful story of mixed signals, hurt feelings and tender reconciliation for children ages 5-8 (for younger ones too, if an adult reads it out loud). Every night, Timble visits Orris in the barn where he lives, and every night the well-read rat tells the owl a story. One evening, moved by a particular tale of devotion, Timble promises that he will always return to his friend. In the same conversation, he wonders whether it's possible to fly to the moon or stars. When Timble fails to turn up the next night and the next, Orris is so stung by the betrayal that he decides to turn his back on his friend, in this second volume of a planned easy-reader trilogy.
In drawings of dazzling intricacy, the illustrator Henry Cole traces the flourishing of a single tree in 'Mighty: The Story of an Oak Tree Ecosystem' a picture book for children ages 4-8. You might think there is nothing more boring than watching a tree grow—unless maybe it's watching paint dry—but Mr. Cole finds tiny elements of visual drama that, combined with his well-chosen text, will carry young readers through the tree's long progress from acorn to seedling to sapling and beyond. In the artwork, children will see how small accidents of fate allow new life to take root—and to take flight, for the mighty oak hosts all sorts of other creatures: insects that eat its blossoms, squirrels that eat its acorns and humans who sit in its shade.