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Choose Your Own Adventure Retrospective: The Curse of Batterslea Hall by Richard Brightfield

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The Curse of Batterslea Hall  was always my favourite CYOA book – it was also, for reasons I'll get into, one of the more unusual ones. It sparked my later love of adventure games and inspired some of my sketchy early attempts at creative writing (including a thinly veiled recreation on 90s 'edutainment' program Storybook Weaver ). It also deepened my devastation when I returned home one fateful school night to discover my mum had donated my extensive CYOA collection – precious gems tremblingly unearthed from the dusty Mills and Boon-straining shelves of my local Scope – back to charity. Around twenty years later, and I took the obvious next step for a mildly lockdown-crazed 90s kid squinting down the barrel of their thirties: sourced a copy inflated by just four times the original cover price through eBay. But was it worth it, and does it still hold up? Dust off your bootcut jeans and fire up your Walkman – it's adventurin' time, 90s* style... The premise Battersl
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The Raven's Children by Yulia Yakovleva Book Review: Breaking the Silence around a Dark Period of History

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The Raven's ChildrenThe Raven's Children by Yulia Yakovleva and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (translator), £6.99 (Puffin Books, 9780241330777)
Publication date: 5 July 2018
My rating: ★★★★☆

A bestseller in its native Russia and translated into English for the first time, The Raven’s Children was written to ‘break the silence’ surrounding a dark and largely hidden period of history. However, despite its setting of Stalin-era Russia, a time of terror, paranoia and the Secret Police, Yakovleva delivers an accessible, engaging and resolutely hopeful story.

This is achieved through the courageous protagonist, seven-year-old Shura, whose innocent world is shattered after his family—Mama, Papa and baby brother Bobka—vanish overnight, spirited away by a mysterious figure called The Raven. Nevertheless, Shura determines to find them himself, navigating a hostile, unpredictable city where birds talk, the walls have eyes and few can be trusted.


As Shura discovers the truth about the Stalinist regime, fact and fantasy are increasingly interwoven to occasionally disorienting effect, encouraging the reader to question everything, much like Shura. With vivid, symbolism-rich imagery and page-turning tension, there is enough depth and intrigue here to appeal to older as well as younger readers.

Overall, Yakovleva has succeeded in a penning a powerful story that engages and informs while raising important questions about complicity, challenging the status quo and the importance of freedom—issues that are just as relevant today.

Note: I received a free proof copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review was originally posted in the NYALitFest newsletter.

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