Age 8-12

There are all too few black-and-white illustrations in children’s novels nowadays. But Snow has produced a 500-page story with a detailed drawing, or several, on every spread. The tale is about things he likes to depict: gadgets and maps, bizarre creatures and eccentric characters. Beneath the industrial town of Ratbridge there is a world of toothy trolls in cardboard boxes, erstwhile lost girls who dress as rabbits and folk with cabbages tied to their heads. In this town, cheeses have legs and are illegally hunted; retired pirates run a shipboard laundry on a canal; rats and crows are smart, talkative and helpful. Out of such wild elements, Snow has constructed a narrative of good guys against bad, as an underworld boy called Arthur (aided by assorted “underlings”, his grandfather, a retired QC and a man in iron socks) takes on the sinister members of the Cheese Guild, led by the evil, grasping Archibald Snatcher. Snow’s drawings suggest a Dickensian town, and his caricatures with their gormless faces and his lovingly rendered machinery make this book (now a website and film) as much fun to look at as it is to read.

(OUP £12.99)

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• If you only buy one book this Christmas make sure it's...
• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Gifts
• 10 Books Not To Read Before You Die