When the Storm Comes

LoveReading4Kids Says

July 2025 Book of the Month

Conjuring an un-put-down-able brew of climate-change impact and unlikely friendship bonds, Polly Ho-Yen’s When the Storm Comes comes especially recommended for 9+-year-olds who love school-centred stories and adventures that inspire them to imagine “what if that actually happened?”

Mali is a small girl who encounters big problems when she starts a new school, beginning with having her real name (Amaryllis) mocked by Petey, a bully with “piggy eyes”. After bonding with a boy called Shiyoon, his move to America leaves Mali adrift again, until she decides to continue creating the comic she and Shiyoon had started, and joins the school book club.

Then, after weeks of unusual rain, a storm sees the book clubbers trapped in the library, with all means of communication cut off, and the road outside transformed into an unpassable river that was “getting deeper and deeper, silently surrounding the school, like a cobra coiling around its prey”. At the same time, Mali observes that Petey felt the same to her, “dangerous and building”, like the rising water. Such is the way Ho-Yen shares her themes, with characters’ emotional states evoked in visceral, relatable ways that reflect the novel’s broader-stroke picture — as the weather becomes wilder, so the characters’ emotional state becomes yet more turbulent.

Utterly gripping as the group strive to survive flooding, lack of food, and a very unexpected drama that sees them work together through understanding each other better, When the Storm Comes amounts to a story that’s suffused in empathy, kindness and courage as it imparts valuable insights into environmental topics — while there’s no Planet B, we can, to quote Mali, “rise together, unafraid, unapologetic, undaunted to stand up for change”. Stirring stuff!

Joanne Owen

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