This is a lovely story, full of fascinating and accurate period detail, social injustice and moral quandaries, that revels in a child's determination to play the unfair system to his advantage. Young fans of Updale's Montmorency series will find this equally entertaining -- Sally Morris Daily Mail Like the best children's books, it's about children, not simplified or toned down for them -- Michael Morpurgo The Times The Silver Sword, Goodnight Mr Tom, The Butterfly Lion, The Railway Children and Kim all belong to a genre in which there is no magic, but a tremendous sense of what real children in adversity might achieve with courage, cleverness and luck. Eleanor Updale's Johnny Swanson belongs to this category, and it deserves the highest praise -- Amanda Craig The Times Updale writes with such obvious relish that fun exudes from the ink on every page. This is real entertainment. Johnny Swanson is just the kind of book for which the term joyous romp was invented -- Philip Ardagh Guardian Johnny Swanson is another historical novel from Eleanor Updale, the creator of the wonderful Montmorency books, and this is an ingeniously constructed whodunit set in northern England in 1929, during a TB epidemic. There's lots of blood and gore, and it explores some unusal adult themes - being broke for example -- Toby Clements Daily Telegraph
