Chris Mould's War of the Worlds

LoveReading4Kids Says

It is 1894. Leon is a clerk working for the city who escapes the drudgery of his work by reading books and sketching the world around him. He spend all his spare time with Anya, a scientist who investigates diseases and infection. Their lives, and the lives of everyone on the planet Earth, are suddenly upended by strange missiles which seem to have originated on Mars - missiles which unfold themselves into terrifying gigantic tripods which seem determined to extinguish human life and make the Earth their own.

Leon endures a series of terrible encounters, all of which he memorialises and illustrates in his notebooks. Eventually he make his way back to Anya, who uses his observations of the tripods and her own research to discover a potential weakness in the invaders which might save humanity.

Chris Mould’s retelling of the classic tale by HG Wells is fast-paced and exciting. It combines Mould’s illustrations with his own text, and the entire package is a thing of beauty which any child would cherish. The illustrations steal the show, as one might expect from a Carnegie-shortlisted artist like Mould - they portray a fully-realised world and are stunning to look at.

The story that Mould adapts from Wells is of course terrifying for the most part, so the book is recommended for brave readers who perhaps have a preference for comics and graphic novels but who love thrilling adventures.

Louise Johns-Shepherd

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