Hide It! is an anthology of writing targeted for young readers, but as you’ll find when you venture inside, this is a collection more adult than you might imagine. Oscar Wilde once said that ‘to define is to limit’, but this collection might just finally negate the power of that phrase. There is something mischievous in all of us when it comes to the kind of creative material we seek out for entertainment. The days of Agatha Christie or P G Wodehouse providing any one reader with all that they would be likely to need in a lifetime’s reading was only ever a colonial dream.
Today the global village of pleasure has beaten away all borders and barriers, and although having 700 channels to choose from might have you turning off your television, the choice of reading material promises a cornucopia of delights. And so it is with ‘Hide It!’ In seeking out the young imagination, each of the writers in this collection has appealed to the child in us all, and what you have before you is a feast for wild thoughts and dreams. Stories to surprise, sadden, amuse and to scare. It shouldn’t be long before you understand the ironic title of the collection. Like all great stories and guilty secrets… Hide It! will eventually make you want to do anything but.
Belinda Hunt