Pamela Rushby, The Mud Puddlers, Walker Books, April 2023, 217 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760655808
Pamela Rushby, author of over 200 books for children, brings assurance and skill to her sweetly engaging tale of a time-travelling twelve year old girl, Nina. The novel is set in London in the present day, on a houseboat in the Thames. Nina has been sent to live with her aunt for a year while her parents pursue their science careers in Antarctica. She is not at all happy about this.
Gradually, though, she discovers that her tidal-archaeologist aunt and some of the others living nearby in boats can show her many curious objects entombed in the mud and shale of the river. And most surprising to Tina is the discovery that, through these surviving objects she has a gift for slipping back into the past. She visits Tudor England, early twentieth century suffragette protests, a ‘Frost fair’ on an iced-over Thames in 1814, and then becomes trapped in wartime London during the Blitz of 1940.
If there is a book that could fire children’s interests in history, this is it. And the message of this book might be that if we can bring our imaginations to bear on history we will find there much to fascinate, impress and horrify us. Nina is a wonderfully observant and smart character. You feel that she is on the verge of becoming someone special in the years ahead.
It is an uplifting story, but one that doesn’t shy from the many limitations we experience as children, and as adults. Highly recommended for readers from nine or ten onwards.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
