Looking for a proper adventure story for your children? Try this

Telegraph

30-04-2025

Lui Sit's debut novel, Land of the Last Wildcat, is described by its publishers as an adventure story with ' environmental messaging ' – a prospect which might not make your heart sing. Saving the planet has become the central subject of children's publishing, and young readers brought up on titles such as Let's Save Earth and Recycling is Crab-ulous! might feel they have received enough messaging already. But this engrossing story turns out to be considerably more fun than its sales pitch.
Our heroine is 10-year-old Puffin, a girl whose father has died, and whose scientist mother is frequently away on field trips – leaving her in the care of a family friend, who has become her surrogate grandfather: 'For as long as Puffin could remember, Mum had always been busy with work… After Dad died, it was often Grandad Moe who attended Puffin's school assemblies or parent days in Mum's place.'
When the story begins, Puffin's mother is away on a remote island, pursuing her quest to find 'the kuri' – an elusive wildcat, believed to have unique powers of healing. ('Humans claim that there are seven natural wonders in the world… Maybe the kuri is the eighth.') Puffin has always taken an interest in her mother's work, and cannot understand why, on this occasion, her mother is being so secretive about her research. When Puffin and her friend Lance start to investigate, they find something far more exciting than they had bargained for – and far more challenging. It's up to them to outwit the sinister figure of Mr Smoult, and ensure that the precious wildcat imprisoned in his laboratory is not sacrificed for his avaricious ends.
Sit is a highly suspenseful storyteller, who unravels a dense plot in less than 300 pages, and plunges her heroine into the sort of white-knuckle capers reminiscent of the lost worlds of Biggles and Boy's Own. 'She smashed through the doors, sprinting down the museum corridor… Lance was fast following, but close on his heels was Smoult, his face contorted with fury…' goes one typical passage. But amidst the action, Sit allows her characters time to reveal themselves, and one of the most satisfying aspects of the novel lies in the bond that the lonely heroine forms with the lost wildcat: 'She didn't know why, but the kuri felt a part of her. Gazing into the kuri's glimmering pupils, her feelings were affirmed by seeing her own blurry face mirrored.'
Sit explains in an author's note that she spent much of her childhood playing in the urban Australian bushland, which instilled her lifelong love of wildlife, and led her 'to become a wilderness campaigner'. She does not hide those environmental concerns: 'Mum says nature heals only if we look after it,' Puffin observes slightly priggishly. But Sit is too good a writer to let the messages spoil the plot – and at its heart this is not so much a book about saving the planet, as a time-old story about the transformative bond between an animal and a child.