IS there any limit to the fantasy that children are willing and able to accept in fiction? Probably not. In the years before the orthodoxy of adolescence, childish imagination is wonderfully flexible.
In The Silver Chalice (Wolfhound, £3.99), Shelagh Jones, a London born drama teacher, is likely to test her readers credulity to the utmost. Her publisher hopes this wild farrago of Irish time travel back and forth between now and the 9th century will prove "suitable for boys and girls of age 8+". The story is certainly never boringly predictable.
Eleven year old Paul Sheean lives in a small town whose museum's prize exhibit is the 6th century silver Kilcarrigan Chalice which his grandfather, a professor of archaeology, discovered not far from the ruins of a local abbey.
When the boy visits the museum for a school history lesson, he sees someone that none of his classmates can see - a monk who lost the chalice in 836 AD and is compelled to haunt the place until he achieves redemption. Pacifus, the good ghost, snatches the chalice and runs, and Paul follows. It becomes his brain spinning mission to help Pacifus defeat the bad ghost, a Viking marauder by the name of Ulfberht Longarm.
In the course of a hazardous and confusing campaign, Paul encounters a gang of bullies on motorcycles who call themselves the "Viking Raiders", a modern sibyl with a fancy line in pronouncements on the nature of time, a simple minded pig-keeper who share his grandmother's disapproval of archaeological prying, and a medieval pirate and crew, all women, who seized a Viking longboat at a time, they say, when our husbands were out on one of their silly little wars".
Paul suffers several sudden chronological shocks. On one such occasion, unsurprisingly, "For a moment he was uncertain whether he was in the `Here and Now,' or `There' and `In the Past.' He shook his head to clear it and in so doing dislodged a splat of mud which had landed on his glasses."
Unable to achieve clarity that simply, he consults the witch, who asks: "What would you say if I told you what you call `The Past,' `The Present,' and `The Future' all went the same way?... Just round and round, like tracks on a toy railway? You changed tracks, that's all. No harm in that. It's been done before. Occasionally, it's beneficial."
The pig keeper chidingly says, "Dig up the Past, and you dig up trouble," me Gran always says. Later, however, he gives Paul vague encouragement. Quoting the old woman again, he promises: "When stones sing, the Times wilt come together."
Children 8 plus will be able to follow the science fiction twists and turns, but Shelagh Jones may force them to resort to the dictionary to decipher phrases such as "myriad reflections," "extraordinary cacophony" a "a fractious child". Maybe they'll thank her one day for enlarging their vocabularies.
Up The Red Belly, by Margot Bosonnet (Wolfhound, £3.99), is more easily comprehensible, recounting the entertaining story of the impact of a Dublin publican's son on a relatively innocent gang of children whose biggest excitement hitherto has been climbing trees.
Ignatius McCarthy believes his mother has taken him away from the city centre because she thought he was getting "too bloody streetwise". He teaches the bumpkins how to smoke cigarette butts, prompting a, librarian to deliver a sermon against tobacoo. He calls a companion "You fizzin' eejit!"
He is a good kid at heart, however, as are all the others. After minor brushes with the Gardai, they get together to stage a play of their own composition, "Blood and Guts on Treasure Island". This production helps raise money for a good cause and seems likely to end the parental rift that was the actual reason for the flight from the pub.
More Than A Match, by Mark O'Sullivan (Wolfhound, £3.99), is for teenage readers who can empathise with their contemporaries' rivalries and domestic problems.
Lida Handel is the 14 year old daughter of Germans who were displaced from Czechoslovakia by Nazis, lost their 12 acre Moravian farm to Communist expropriation, and settled in Tipperary without being readily assimilated.
The girl cares most of all about winning a junior tennis championship, but her miserly father won't buy her a new racket, although using her old one is "like trying to play tennis with a fishing net". There" is a more distressing conflict between the father and Lida's older brother. The father wants him to go to university to become an engineer; the son wants to plays swing in a big band in Dublin (the year is 1948).
Mark O'Sullivan is an excellent writer, who displays humane understanding of we established characters in a story that engages genuine sentimental concern. Though fantasy can be great fun, sometimes there's a lot to be said for conventional realism.