Perceptive children’s writing demands a counter-intuitive rigour: created to serve the freeform juvenile imagination, text and illustrations have to be crafted to tease sparks into lucent flames, metaphors into new and enticing forms. As eclectic and untamed as the embryonic thought process, the oeuvre, in the form of market forces, responds with according vigour: fulfilling the urge for a flatulent belly-laugh (David Walliams), or to be scared witless (Roald Dahl), every synaptic recess is prepared for the grown-up world of the absurd, the surreal and the downright dangerous.

And if a child’s age is one arbiter of the writer’s aim, another is direction of approach: seeking to strike a harmonious balance between securing and maintaining attention, and overlaying any narrative with a patina of collective goodwill, the authors will often eschew complexity of plot in favour of subtextual messaging, to yield a moral tale in short story form.

As a former nursery teacher, Sarah Jane Elliott is well-placed to position herself in a rapidly growing field. Her new book, one of a series of ‘Little Wizards’ Adventures’, introduces her young readers to Winston, ‘the smallest wizard of Number One Forest Lane’, whose youthful incaution and innocence, and determination to exercise his magical skills, lead him into danger. His older sisters, Whisper, Winnie and Willow, all preoccupied with their own magical powers, decline to join Winston in a game of hide-and-seek, precipitating his adventure beyond the bounds of Forest Lane and into the dark woods.

Elliott’s skill at realisation yields a tableau that is both fabular and enchanting in the glittering arc of a wand: possessing wizardly powers that are synaesthesic – Winston creates beautiful musical notes as he sweeps his wand through the air – his sisters are drawn into the forest to find him, and in doing so, enact a game of hide-and-seek in despite. The subliminal suggestion, if suggestion there is, points to the value of kindness and inclusivity when others stray from the pathway into danger.

Armed with a refulgent and bewitching series of illustrations that precisely describe the mood she intends to convey, and text that is expressive whilst remaining profoundly easy to follow, Elliott has created a formula that will appeal to the sharpened senses of all young children.



Hide and Seek: A Little Wizards Adventure is published by Little Wizards Press. Click here for more information.