Benjamin Tooth is a budding botanist and scientist. He is only 11 years old but he is already nursing baby birds, mounting butterflies that he has caught and claiming that one day he will be remembered as the greatest scientist the world has ever known!
Benjamin lives with his foul mother and his ancient great grandfather, who has some strange traits – he reads the newspaper by sniffing it. Hard to imagine, but the quirky illustration of him doing so gives you an early insight into the weirdness inside this book. There are some horrid descriptions of his meals at the end of each day’s diary entry and the author adds humour along the way to balance out the foulness.
One day, when Ben is at the nearby Winchvale Moor, he meets a curious man named Farley Cupstart. What does the mysteriously suspicious Cupstart want, something that lurks on the moor?
I found this book extremely interesting as it is set in the 1700s and Mackenzie Crook cleverly uses a little 18th century language along with some childlike terms, to set the tone. It makes the book a little more tricky to read, but I learnt a lot in the process.
The main protagonist makes some dodgy choices towards the end of the book and I did not altogether enjoy the ending, but Crook also illustrates the book and these illustrations are fantastic. The drawings of Farley Cupstart are really quite frightening and others are rather heartwarming with great attention to detail; they certainly lend a journal feel to the book.
I had not read the companion book to which this is the prequel, the Windvale Sprites, before reading this and it is not necessary to have done so beforehand but I will now check it out. Overall I would recommend this book to children over nine.
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Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop.
