The Way to Sattin Shore

'But surely you had to know someone before you could forget them ...' Kate comes to know and to grow with the book. The Way to Sattin Shore is quite beautiful, totally absorbing, and intriguing. The opening chapter leads you to believe that this is a story about a young child, for young children but as Kate grows in knowledge of her family the story grows in strength. It is a tender story of the aches that hold a family together and tear it apart. Kate dreads but accepts the silent rule of her grandmother in the family house just as she accepts that she was born on the day that her father died. She accepts until the tombstone in the churchyard disappears and questions must be asked. No-one will answer Kate's questions. Every ear is deaf and in her loneliness she takes herself to Sattin Shore, on an interminable bike ride, to find the truth. I am frequently haunted by Tom and Hattie's skating journey to Ely, in Tom's Midnight Garden. I am sure that I will remember as clearly the lonely ride to Sattin and equally the triumphant day when Kate learns to toboggan on her grandmother's big black tray. Such intense cameos serve to highlight the depth of feeling throughout the book. Kate finds her father and her paternal grandmother. She comes to understand the loneliness of both her grandparents in their separate existences and how she, just a little, can make them happier. A most moving book, with memories to be treasured forever by readers of eleven and over.