New World

by Chris Priestley

New World is a wonderfully atmospheric and exciting historical adventure about an Elizabethan voyage of discovery to the New World. The story revolves around a fourteen-year-old orphan, Kit, who, attempting to escape his life of petty crime on the streets of London, boards a ship bound for Virginia and, together with other colonists, helps establish a colony at Roanoke.

As winter sets in and the colonists struggle to survive, Kit’s past comes back to haunt him when an enemy suddenly reveals himself.

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2007

About the author

His father was in the army and so he moved around a lot as a child and lived in Wales. He was an avid reader of American comics as a child, and when he was eight or nine, and living in Gibraltar, he won a prize in a newspaper story-writing competition. He decided then “that my ambition was to write and illustrate my own book”.
He spent his teens in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before moving to Manchester, London and then Norfolk. He now lives in Cambridge with his wife and son where he writes, draws, paints, dreams and doodles (not necessarily in that order). Chris worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for twenty years, working mainly for magazines & newspapers (these include The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal) before becoming a writer. He currently has a weekly strip cartoon called 'Payne's Grey' in the New Statesman.

Chris has been a published author since 2000. He has written several books for children & young-adults, both fiction and non-fiction, and
has been nominated for many awards including the Edgar Awards, the UKLA Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. In recent years he has predominantly been writing horror.
Ever since he was a teenager Chris has loved unsettling and creepy stories, with fond memories of buying comics like 'Strange Tales' and 'House of Mystery', watching classic BBC TV adaptations of M R James ghost stories every Christmas and reading assorted weirdness by everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Ray Bradbury. He hopes Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror will haunt his readers in the way those writers have haunted him.

Reviews

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the late 17th century and Kit is just a homeless lad living on the streets with his friend Hugo. He's been leaving on the streets since shortly after he became an orphan. Kit and Hugo are thieves. They steal to keep alive. Streaming is a dangerous business, but it is much easier with an accomplice, a friend you can trust.
It is a dangerous time in the world. If you weren't a loyal protestant who worshipped Queen Elizabeth 1st, anything could happen to you...
One day, Hugo has a surprise. He has a job: he has joined an acting troop and will be touring around London. Kit must now go solo.
Not for long though! Kit finds out that going solo is a lot more difficult than he ever imagined and soon he is caught by some military types. If it weren't for what happened next, Kit would probably be dead. Just as they are in the act of punishment, an old man known as John White approaches them. 'Now now men,' he said. 'He is just a boy.' But will they listen? No!
As the men are distracted by White, Kit punches the man in the stomach and runs off hurriedly. As he escapes, he thinks to himself, should he really have left that man to be slaughtered by those soldiers.The? No! He rushes back and saves his new friend.
John White thanks him and hires him as a sort of assistant. John White is an artist and manager who does lots of work for the Queen and her subjects. Kit does stuff such as mix pigments and just help when necessary.
Soon he finds himself aboard the tiger, a ship sailing in the fleet to the new world. However, bigger questions come to the mind of Kit. Was his father really a Catholic involved in the plot to kill the Queen? And will they ever return to England to tell the tail...
I thought this book was quite good and the mystery elements were utterly fascinating. My favourite character was Kit because he was a young boy who wanted to do good and he was an overall likeable person.