Review: The Mud Puddlers

To throw the reader immediately into the action is a writing pre-requisite we authors often hear or try to adhere to. Doing so creates an immediacy that snags attention in the snap of just a few lines. Accomplished children’s writer of historical fiction, Pamela Rushby, achieves all this and more in each and every one of her novels. The Mud Puddlers is no exception. Oozing with atmosphere, animated characters and a fascinating glimpse into London’s not so distant history, this middle grade fiction beckons kids to believe in the possibility of time slipping.

Twelve-year-old Nina is relegated to spend a year in London while her parents head to Antarctica on a research mission. Although she and Aunt Bee are close, Nina succumbs to a state of insubordinate gloom. Nothing Aunt Bee does or says can shake Nina out of her blue funk resentment at being left behind. Not even the adventure of living on her aunt’s converted barge on the river Thames is enough to enthuse. Nor the fact that her aunt is a bona fide intertidal archaeologist, a modern-day term for, mudlarker; someone who combs the river tidal mud flats for long-forgotten treasurers. Until The Mud Puddlers, I never knew mud-combing as it were was even a thing but it’s exactly these obscure, little known, intriguing slices of the past, that Rushby takes, twists and tantalises with so very well.

Bitter cold and banal boredom bare down on Nina who refuses to engage with Bee or reply to her parents’ emails. Stubbornness is her chosen weapon of retaliation until she meets, Molly a co-barge inhabitant. Molly’s dilapidated home is full of leaks and mysterious dark corners full of things as ancient as Molly. There’s even a resident ghost. It’s Molly’s enigmatic energy and Bee’s urging that eventually convinces Nina to accompany them on an evening mudlarking tour. During the tour, Bee feels the pull of the river, a strange calling, an understanding. Molly tells her it’s because she is ‘one of us’, someone with a past of scavenging and finding things and passing them on.

After Nina finds a thimble buried in the mud and experiences a vision from the Tudor period, Molly is quick to warn her of the perils of time slipping using found objects as portals to the past. Nina acknowledges the dangers but chooses curiosity over caution. Her time travels take her to the Frost Fair of 1814 and the Suffragette era, each experience becoming more and more treacherous, each return to the present more precarious, until a WWII gasmask transports her to war torn London. Rounded up and schlepped off to the countryside as an evacuee, Nina loses the gasmask, her transport home and has to enlist the friendship and trust of fellow evacuee, Tom and the boatwomen of Britian if she has any chance of returning to the world she left behind.

The mudflats of the Thames, upriver from Bermondsey 

The banks of the River Thames looking down river 

Seat-of-your-pants adventure is steeped with arresting moments in history all encrusted in a fascinating storyline that literally lies hidden from view for most of us most of the time. I was in London shortly before reading this novel. It was Christmas time. Snow made a rare visit to the country’s capital. The biting cold and watered-down colours of a city in the grips of winter instantly reasserted themselves as I read The Mud Puddlers because of Rushby’s ability to relay words and characters as palpable reality. I photographed the muddy banks of the Thames at low tide, not far up river from Bermondsey where Nina’s story takes place, where barges still lie upon the mud. I wondered about those banks but had no idea of the wonders they held and still conceal to this day.

The Mud Puddlers is an extraordinary and highly recommended read. One where you feel both relaxed with the telling, absorbed by the detail and thrilled by the outcomes. Esoteric moments, historic forays and staunch relationships make this an unforgettable experience.

Title:  The Mud Puddlers
Author:  Pamela Rushby
Publisher:  Walker Books Australia, $16.99
Publication Date:  5 April 2023
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781760655808
For ages:  9 – 12
Type:  Middle Grade Fiction

Buy the Book:  Walker Books, Boomerang Books