The Nest

LoveReading4Kids Says

One of our Books of the Year 2016 | Longlisted for the UKLA 2017 Book Award | March 2016 Book of the Month A truly exceptional, uniquely unsettling work in which the stinging clarity and poignancy of Oppel’s writing is exquisitely echoed by Jon Klassen’s haunting illustrations.

Steve's baby brother, Theo, is sick and doctors are struggling to diagnose exactly what's wrong with him. Even if he becomes strong enough to undergo heart surgery, and even if the procedure is successful, he still won’t be completely well. While his parents are preoccupied with Theo, and while Steve struggles with his own anxieties, he dreams of an otherworldly being and her fluttering, glittering companions. ‘We've come because of the baby,’ she says. ‘We've come to help’, and Steve wonders if she might be an angel. While she turns out to be something entirely different, she offers Steve the chance to fix the fact that his brother’s ill. All he has to do is say yes, which he does. But when these dreams contort into nightmares and the line between Steve’s internal world and reality becomes horribly blurred, he wants out of what he agreed to, but is told 'once you say yes, you can't say no'. And then there’s the menacing wasps’ nest swelling in the roof of the family home, and the sinister phone calls from Mr Nobody… As his world implodes, Steve feels ‘all in pieces’, but must find the strength to save his brother.

While comparisons to A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay) and Coraline (Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean) come to mind, this is a remarkably original creation, at once an astute allegorical portrait of childhood anxieties, and a thrilling, ticking time bomb of a tale that creeps under your skin and pierces your heart. ~ Joanne Owen

LoveReading4Kids

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