Over-realistic earthquake

Press, 13 April 1985, Page 20

Over-realistic earthquake

Earthquake Town. By Beverly Dunlop. Hodder and Stoughton, 1884. 109 pp. $15.95. To claim that “Earthquake Town” is, according to the jacket blurb, a “vivid and dramatic adventure story for 8 to 12-year-olds” is akin to saying that adult equivalents of similar ilk, like “Airport” and “Towering Inferno,” are just good clean fun. This book tells what happens when an earthquake erupts one summer morning in a peaceful New Zealand town, when the children at the centre of the story are at school. Some of their fellow pupils are killed when the building collapses on them. Other people lose their lives trying to help neighbours and friends. Hardly good, adventurous fun all round, but this book has at times the gripping quality of a nightmare with descents into the macabre. “Earthquake Town,” is not a book I would give to any child I wanted to sleep well. It joins the growing number of children’s books that go beyond the child’s realm of adventure into the unpleasant realm of horror. It may be fair enough not overly to shield children from the realities of life. To thrust it at them prematurely is something else again. — Agnes-Mary Brooke.