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Valley of Secrets
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or McCaughrean’s The Stones are Hatching.
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In her novel, Hussey 
invents a secluded, enchanted place in a rural Cornish valley. Well shielded from the public 
eye, it has become the safe haven for a variety of exotic flora and fauna from the Amazon. 
The contrast between the present situation of the animals and plants in the valley and the 
situation of the native Indians in Brazil in the past could not be more extreme. Whereas the 
valley has become a paradisiacal refuge for the rescued animals in the present, flashbacks into 
the past denounce terrible human offences towards the natives in Brazil. Old diaries reveal 
atrocities by degrees, reporting the abrupt destruction of the former idyll of the South-
American jungle by the arrival of “civilised” white people and their criminal machinations. In 
the wake of the slave trade, expulsion, flight, capture and mass murder befall the natives, 
destroying their home. Since these conditions are disclosed gradually in the diaries – extracts 
of which are embedded within the story - their impact is cushioned by some temporal as well 
as geographical distance. Through this reduced immediacy of violence the main focus shifts 
from the emotionality of the eye witness report towards a more rational, distanced and 
objective view. Whereas the modern practices of the production of Brazilian corned beef and 
the ensuing destruction of the primeval forest are denounced,
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the focus lies on the past 
atrocities in connection with the slave trade. The previous harmony contrasts sharply with the 
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Pratchett, Terry. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. London: Corgi, 2002 [2001].
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Ibd., p. 154.
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Ibd., p. 218.
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Charmian Hussey. The Valley of Secrets. London: Hodder Children’s Books, 2005. [2003] 
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Geraldine McCaughrean. The Stones are Hatching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Cf. Hussey, Valley of Secrets, p. 284.

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death and destruction
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brought to the natives via the hypocritical missionaries. Not only are 
they shown to force their belief on to the Indians,
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but, apparently men of God, they also play 
unscrupulously into the traders’ hands.
Whereas Hussey’s publication is ecocritical,
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McCaughrean’s episodic novel The 
Stones are Hatching
 
cannot be placed easily. Loosely strung together around its main thread 
of the search for and
elimination of an ancient dragon, this quest radiates a sense of 
strangeness. Embedded in a sombre general tenor and dream-like structures, the plot of 
McCaughrean’s The Stones are Hatching unhinges the traditional concepts of straightness, 
logical consequences and inferences in British fantasy literature for children and shows what 
is possible outside of them. Explanations are withheld, expectations run into empty space and 
acts either don’t entail immediate consequences or, if they do, not necessarily logical ones. 
Within this postmodern framework, McCaughrean’s concept of violence blends in with the 
surreal events. In the novel, therefore, violence does not necessarily correlate
with actions or 
aggressive behaviour. On the contrary, it can occur out of its own accord; seemingly for no 
apparent reason. Alien in an even more alien world, violence in McCaughrean’s novel 
elucidates its perverseness and innate hollowness. On account of its incoherence, aloof 
violence in her novel can strike in a much more direct way than if it was integrated in a more 
structured story based on a principle of unambiguous cause and effect.
On a similar level with the novels mentioned above range Kerr’s novels about The