Just who is telling the story is a little unclear. An omniscient adult narrator sometimes, disconcertingly, interrupts the flow of subjective third-person teen-speak and steps outside the frame of the story:

They had met … after they’d had a punch-up during a game of touch footy. Jimmy still reckons he scored the match-winning try, but Alex is just as positive he touched the back of Jimmy’s shirt with a flying dive …

Alex has his own problems with voice. He invents a female persona and enters an Internet chat room to make virtual contact with Becky (‘the hottest girl in Year 8’), which compounds his difficulties when the relationship gets more intimate. The skateboard sequences and the sweet–sad romance will appeal to a pre-teen readership, but unlike his skating protagonist, first-time novelist Flynn just skims the surface.

The opening chapter of How the Finnegans Saved the Ship is a textbook study of how to do it. In only seven pages, Jackie French throws out a hook, sets the scene, differentiates the eight members of the Finnegan family with subtle characterisation, establishes her viewpoint character, thirteen-year-old Mary, and engagingly provides the who, what, when, where and why of her story.

Mrs Finnegan and her brood depart from Ireland on the Anna Maria, a one-class cargo steamer, bound for Sydney where Mr Finnegan and a house ‘with twenty-one windows and an inside bathroom’ await. It is 1913 and the fate of the Titanic is on everyone’s minds, especially Mrs Finnegan’s. Convinced that only her vigilance will keep the ship afloat, she’s a source of some embarrassment to poor Mary who is constantly sent off to inform the captain of perceived leaks or potential icebergs. When an accident really does befall the ship, Mary and her brother Edmond prove, in an exciting climax, that they are true fighting Finnegans.

This would make a wonderful read-aloud class novel, particularly for any teacher with a convincing Irish brogue. The dialogue breezes along, supplemented by some fine descriptive writing which never steps outside the parameters of voice and story: ‘The world looked like a pudding basin upside down, all grey on top and blue below.’ The splendid illustrations by Margaret Power lend their own considerable charm. I’m less sure about the forty or so pages of author’s notes, which range from a potted history of Ireland and the IRA to information on clothing, luggage and recipes for colcannon and Mrs Finnegan’s potato cakes. This is the stuff publishers commonly supply gratis to schools in the form of Book Notes. In general, I’d rather see a good novel stand alone without lessons at the end, even when they are engagingly written by the author. Refer readers to relevant sources and leave it at that, I say.

From Irish migrants to Tibetan refugees: in Not Raining Today, Wendy Catran tells a gripping story of oppression and escape from occupied Lhasa from the viewpoint of a young nun, Lhamo. When friends are dragged off to jail after a street protest, she and her fellow nun Dolma steal out at night in a brave attempt to display a poster of the Dalai Lama. Recognised and pursued by the Chinese police or ‘Uniforms’, they must rely on strangers to smuggle them out of the country and across the mountains to Kathmandu. Only one makes it to freedom.

This is a classic escape story told sparsely and with rising tension. The fact that it is based on truth adds to its poignancy. What I missed was any vivid sense of place. Catran comes to fiction after writing television scripts; perhaps this is the reason why backgrounds are either ignored or described so perfunctorily. The Potala Palace is ‘huge … all terracotta and cream and many windows’; the escapees’ taxi ‘rattled its way into a changing landscape’; the refugees finally reach ‘a heavily sheltered area’. This may not worry young readers, who tend to eschew descriptive passages, but the bland title and an unappealing cover (the feared ‘Uniforms’ look like potato-faced Keystone Cops or a Gilbertian chorus of Constable Plods) are unlikely to arouse their interest.

The cover of Morris Gleitzman’s Adults Only is dominated by the sad and resentful face of the young protagonist while, in the background, a pair of adults romp on the beach making sandcastles. It’s a perfect representation of not only the story but Gleitzman’s characteristic blend of fun and pathos. Like Angus in Bumface, Jake is a dependable and conscientious child burdened by adult responsibilities and saddled by well-meaning but obtuse parents who keep urging him to grow up. Unlike Angus, Jake’s problems arise from a lack of siblings, or indeed any playmates at all. His parents run an adults-only island holiday resort, which necessitates denying the presence of Jake to their guests and confining him to his room when representatives from an up-market travel magazine arrive. Convinced he is unloved and unwanted, poor Jake has only his alter-ego teddy bear, Crusher, for company until one day he discovers that he may not be the only child on the island after all.

Apart from his admirable knack of mixing serious issues with laugh-aloud humour, Gleitzman’s strengths as a writer are his sure command of voice and his exploitation of restricted child viewpoint. Everything is filtered through Jake’s eleven-year-old consciousness: if Gleitzman wants to make a point about adult relationships, he puts Jake under the bed or behind the door. The narrating voice is so far in the background it all but vanishes.