Blue Peter Book Club: The Train of Dark Wonders accessible version
Read a suitable for screen readers sample of The Train of Dark Wonders by Alex Bell and illustrated by Beatriz Castro.
Sample of The Train of Dark Wonders
Chapter 1.
Bess Harper gritted her teeth, determined not to cry as she walked up the steps to the front doors of Harper’s Odditorium. Even the whispering flowers adorning the walls of the building were shedding their dark petals as if in mourning and murmuring sadly to themselves. Bess loved Grandfather Henry and his peculiar museum, and now it seemed she would lose both in the space of a single week. She couldn’t bear the thought that she would never again curl up beside Pops on the battered sofa in his study, listening to tales of his travels and adventures.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Bess’s dad and her Uncle Norman were sure to inherit the Odditorium and they intended to sell off the exhibits and close its doors forever. For some reason, Uncle Norman really seemed to hate the place. And her dad was a quiet man with no interest in strange museums and no desire to quarrel with his older brother.
“It’s just a pile of old junk,” Uncle Norman had said when he’d come to dinner the night before. “It ought to have been scrapped years ago.”
“What about Blizzard?” Bess asked. “The Odditorium is his home!”
“We’ll find another home for him.”
“But you’re always saying he’s a horrible beast that no one in their right mind would want!” Bess protested. “What if he goes to someone who doesn’t treat him properly? Someone who doesn’t understand him?”
“Bess, please. You’re giving me a headache.” Uncle Norman let out a weary sigh. “You can rest assured that we’ll find a home for him in a zoo somewhere. That’s where he ought to have been all along. My father had no business keeping a creature like that in the Odditorium.”
Bess later overheard Uncle Norman telling her parents that he’d tried calling a couple of zoos, but they were both full. So he had phoned the local glue factory instead and now poor old Blizzard was due to be shipped off and turned into glue sticks. That was her uncle’s plan at any rate, but it wasn’t Bess’s plan. The grown-ups were visiting the Odditorium today to meet her grandfather’s lawyer and hear the reading of the will. They had agreed Bess could tag along, so that morning she’d thrown on her favourite Bigfoot T-shirt (for luck), tied her frizzy brown hair into two plaits (for convenience) and given herself an encouraging smile in the bathroom mirror (for courage).
Certainly no one else was going to encourage her with what she had in mind. Her rescue plan was dangerous, desperate and really not at all sensible, but it was also her only chance. When Bess smiled, it made her freckles more pronounced against her white skin. This reminded her of her grandfather and strengthened her determination. She took a deep breath and nodded at her reflection. She could do this. She had to. For Blizzard – and all the other exhibits.
By the time she got to the Odditorium, Uncle Norman and the lawyer were already there. Bess knew she wouldn’t have long. She left her parents in the study with the other two and darted down the dusty corridor. When it was originally built, some fifty years ago, the museum had been a grand mansion. Henry Harper had designed it himself, which was why it had a pleasing number of secret passages and spiral staircases hidden behind sliding bookshelves and paintings. Bess made her way to one of these secret passages now, grateful for the short cut it provided to the other side of the museum.