In case you hadn't noticed, people are paying a lot of attention to children's fantasy today, and to some extent we can thank the Harry Potter series for that. It's often said that the Potter novels are just as enjoyable for adults as they are for children, and the publishers have picked up on this, producing versions with nice, grown-up covers which adults wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with on the bus.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for leaving children's things to children - not because there's necessarily anything wrong with grown-ups enjoying stories written for children, but because there's always a risk that the adults will snatch the kid's toys away from them. I once stumbled across an epic rant online (the URL to which I have since lost) in which a grown-up woman bitterly complained about losing a Harry Potter costume competition organised by a local bookshop to someone's child: not only did she feel that the judges were biased towards children, but she felt a deeply personal animosity towards the child in question, feeling that the kid had stolen her prize - even though the girl who won is much closer to the supposed target demographic for Harry Potter than the angry woman was.

It's not just the publishers putting out dark moody covers for the novels, or random kooks flying off the handle at children, though. An army of writers exists online, devoted solely to the purpose of churning out adult fanfic. (There's also kid-friendly fanfic, of course, but let's face it - there is a terrifying amount of Potter porn out there.) What is this, if not an attempt to say "Harry's universe is for grown-ups too!"? And most concerningly, there is J.K. Rowling herself. I can't help but entertain suspicions that she's been trying to appeal to both her adult audience as well as the kids in the most recent books, to their detriment. (Then again, it should be remembered that the kids who were eleven when The Philosopher's Stone was published are 21 today: Rowling may feel an understandable obligation to those original readers, as well as the Johnny-come-latelys.) These disquieting concessions to the grown-up interlopers isn't restricted to the Harry Potter series: Pullman's The Amber Spyglass is, at the end of the day, more about Pullman being bitter about religion to anyone who'll listen than actually telling a coherent story to the children the book was supposedly written for.

This is why I am so glad to read a children's fantasy novel which is resolutely for children. This is not to say that Frances Hardinge's Verdigris Deep holds no interest for adults - I greedily devoured it over the course of two nights - but it is a book that speaks mainly to children, about children's concerns, through the point of view of children, whilst perhaps trying to impart a little wisdom about growing up on the side - and as Dan pointed out to me when we were discussing the book the other day, all the best children's stories are about growing up.

At the beginning of his novel, Ryan and his two friends are stuck in a village and need to get the bus fare home. Josh, the popular slightly-out-of-control one, comes up with the smart plan of breaking into a poorly-maintained wishing well and stealing some coins. By doing so, however, they take on responsibility for discharging the wishes the coins represent. Before long, they are subject to frightening mental and physical changes and are threatened in visions and dreams by the well witch, the forgotten spirit of the well.

As far as horror-fantasy goes, the well witch is an incredible creation. Her interventions in the real world become more brutal and harrowing as the book proceeds. The powers that the children gain torment them just as much as they empower them. The visions of the well witch take on the sort of strange dream logic which is fabulous when it works but is very difficult to pull off (and Hardinge does pull it off) - the apparently random and initially whimsical shopping trolleys that appear early on soon become an integral feature of the well witch's mythology, for example, and take on a terrifying significance. The wishes themselves begin with the (apparently) banal and innocuous and proceed to the distasteful, the self-destructive, the murderous - because, as Ryan himself says towards the end, wishes tend to be distasteful, unworthy things, and tend to be appeals to higher powers for freebies, cheap revenge, and cop-outs. The prose of the story is finely-crafted, and again engages in a slow downward spiral from whimsical to scary to outright terrifying. The book as a whole reminded me of Alan Garner at his best.

The themes that come through during the book never eclipse the story, but do enhance it, and are often far more insightful than "growing up is hard" and "be careful what you wish for" and "aren't adults strange?". You get life lessons like "sometimes, your best friends will prove to be unworthy, and you've just got to help them as much as you can without letting them drag you down with them", and "people genuinely don't know what they want most of the time", and "adults actually do have your best interests at heart most of the time, but a few of them are just plain broken". Verdigris Deep is a brilliant example of the sort of balance children's fantasy authors need to strike: it talks to children without talking down to children, and tells them a few secrets about growing up without pandering to the grown-ups in the audience. I found my copy in the 8-12 section in Borders', and I'd recommend it to everyone of that age and upwards.

The chapters are also reasonably short, so it's good to read on the bus.