I'm a sucker for a story with animals in it. Silver is a snow leopard - the ghost of the mountain. And weirdly also the subject of Hannah Gold's next book. The author quotes at the beginning of this book would make me want to read it! They're certainly authors who know how to write childrens books and animal based ones too!
In the author note at the end Abi Elphinstone explains she spent time in the Altai Miuntains of Mongolia with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters, riding, eating and camping with them. (I could not do this - veggie doesn't ft their lifestyle!). Here she learnt what wild really was (she thought Scotland was pretty wild). She tells how our awful ways and how they leave up to 450 snow leopards a year dead. A book about animals producing an empathy towrds them that children can't have experience of they have to imagine from the words in a nonfiction or a story like this or from film on wildlife programmes.
Her story features a little girl, Emmy, whose Mum and Dad have won a competition to stay in a ger (tent) in Mongolia. At the age of just 10 Emmy is a pessimist - or so she declares. She used to look for magic everywhere then something happened in her family - a baby lost before birth and she decided she couldn't ever hope again.
On the day they arrive, Emmy goes to collect firewood - Chono says it is safe but not to go to far and to watch for clouds as she must go straight back if she sees any.
But Emmy goes further than planned, then she drops her Teddy - Half-Price - into a waterfall. She goes down to get him. But she doesn't recognise anywhere then it begins to snow.
She is totally lost and takes shelter in a cave. In a cave where she hears growls...then sees a snow leopard cub, a small one. It comes to her, she only has apples or chocolate so he has to eat apple. It's mother is nowhere to be seen, whats happened to her? She calls him Silver. When her torch dies Emmy expects to be in the dark but inside the cave are the butterflies her mother wrote about, mourning cloak butterflies, - but they are actually glowing she had no idea they could do that.
The next morning Emmy watches the snow from the entrance - Silver joins her - but he bites at her coat. He pulls her back into the cave. Just as they are tucked inside a wolf pack goes past. Did Silver know? He saved her from them.
Emmy and Silver have to leave - they need to find her parents and Chono and get him help. But Silver wants to go another way. Emmy doesn't want to follow but then she hears him yelp...he's caught in a hunters trap...she can't get him out. She just believes that it's all happening like before that there is nothing she can do. Help arrives though. A boy on a horse, Tuli, he is definitely an optimist - a poet. And he is astounded that she has wandered so far, survived a blizzard, stayed in a cave and found a snow leopard! This is all very magic as far as he is concerned. He releases Silver and takes Emmy and Silver to someone who he knows can help find his mother.
Batba is Tuli grandmother, she isn't that happy to see him. But it doesn't take her long to ask what is in Emmy's coat. She says his mother is probably dead because she wouldn't leave him. But she agrees to help them...especially when they hear shouting and horses hooves - the hunters. Tuli and Emmy leave quickly but they see the hunters so they know the hunters must have seen them, how long can Batba hold them off? Batba has given Emmy a piece of silk she said it would help them but they don't know how... until it reveals itself.
A magical world, Whisperfell, where Batba took the Snow leopard she helped all those years before appears on the silk but can they get there before the hunters catch them. Can two children do this on their own?
Beuatifully written story of hope in a world that often seems to have none, A hope that our children will help the wild creatures of our world, that they will protect them where we have failed.
Loved it. It will be worth buying just for Olivia's stunning cover but the story is stunning!
Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the early read.