The Elemental Detectives: the first book in a cracking adventure series

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It explores themes of social injustice, such as slavery and poverty, with a clear eye, while the character twists and turns will keep the reader hooked. Patrice Lawrence is the multi-award-winning author of Orangeboy, which won the 2017 Waterstone’s Book Prize, the 2017 YA Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2017 Costa Book Awards and the Carnegie Award.

The themes of race and class also weave through the novel providing stimulating points for discussion as the action unfolds from the perspective of the two young protagonists. When he helps Marisee escape some attacking sleepers, he discovers a world of Elemental spirits, serpents in the Serpentine and ghosts in Hyde Park. This novel would be a fantastic choice for the upper primary or lower secondary classroom to ensure that books are reflecting the lives of their readers – female and male protagonists of colour, different family structures (Marisee lives with her grandmother, Robert has been taken away from his family), friendship, making difficult choices, etc. The different layers of history uncovered in this book are expertly handled and encourage the reader to think about what may have happened in an alternative universe or sphere if describing different causes for well-known historical events (such as the Great Fire of London). The characters were a compelling duo to carry the book – Marisee as the optimist and Robert as the jaded one.

This review was written by Kelly Ashley With over 20 years of education experience in both the US and the UK, Kelly Ashley currently works as an independent consultant, providing training and support for primary schools across the UK. Iconic monuments take on unexpected shape: Hyde Park gives up ghosts; the Serpentine really snaaaaaakes.

a genuinely creepy villain in the form of a rusty-round the-edges Bo Peep (steel yourself for her lullaby earworm); Turnbell-of-Turnbill-Brook performed by a woman in breeches and waistcoat. Marisee and her Grandma are the only ones who really know about the Elementals, and she acts as a “chosen one” bridge between the two worlds. Our young protagonists, Marisee and Robert, set off on a dangerous, magical mission to save London from a grim fate. As with her other books, Lawrence has created caring, sensitive and self-aware protagonists of colour in the Elemental Detectives.

Indigo Donut was shortlisted for the Bookseller YA Prize and the Carnegie Award, was Book of the Week in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer, and was one of The Times’ top children’s books in 2017. Welcome to eighteenth-century London, where there are four Elemental spirits that most humans know nothing about: the fiery Dragons, airy Fumis, earthbound Magogs and the watery Chads. Additionally, historical events could be explored with alternative narratives, challenging children to explain the cause of the events by using the Elemental spirits as the catalyst of disaster – Dragons (fire), Fumis (air), Chads (water), Magogs (earth).

Marisee and Robert are the Elemental Detectives chasing the clues to avoid catastrophe: they must face the ghosts of Hyde Park, the monstrous coiled snake of the Serpentine, and a whole host of other fantastical creatures in their mission to stop the Shepherdess and prevent London slumbering for all eternity… Big, bold, future classic storytelling for a new generation. Robert and Marisee were great main characters, and their journey trying to wake London from a Sleeping Beauty-esque curse by finding her missing Grandma was compelling. I didn't think I'd ever relive the first read experience of series like Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, atmospheric, creepy, wonderful, and this book took me to a place I didn't think was possible as an adult reader.This one is a bit baffling: there are two names used in this book that are the names of real historical characters, but they aren't those characters. Instead, it just seems to be the real Georgian London… only with a bunch of spirits lurking around corners. As the reader is drawn into the sights and smells of this otherworldly London with Lawrence’s superb world-building craft, we soon learn that a fog of yellow sickness has taken hold across the city, sending all who fall foul into a deep sleep. Unfortunately, this book barely examined the idea of how this world is different from our own based on these elemental spirits.