A rope falls, a cask drops, a sailor stumbles on the rigging. Imke looks alarmed; she is superstitious even for a peasant. ‘Close your mouth.’

She glances at her nursemaid. Imke is rapt. Imke believes all sorts of pap. Eels are made from wet horsehair. Blowing your nose vigorously can kill you. Statues and carvings can occasionally come alive. Because an object crafted with love can’t help but live. Inspired by real events (the sinking of a Dutch merchant ship, The Batavia off the coast of Australia in 1628), the story unfolded slowly … knowingly … teasingly … deliciously. "Someone polish my barnacles!" I shouted. "This has five stars written all over it!" Beautifully written, with child characters who stole my heart, centered around a historic event that I knew nothing about - things that made for an appealing read to me . It’s a dual story line with time frames, three hundred and sixty years apart, yet there are touching connections between the two children portrayed here and stunning connections between the the humanity and inhumanity in both times.Q: You created such a varied cast of characters. Was there one character who was your favorite to write about? If so, why? The Night Ship is the story of two nine-year-old children – Mayken, a passenger on board the Batavia, and Gil, a boy sent to live with his crotchety fisherman grandfather on a remote island after his mother’s death in the late 1980s. There is something of a legend of a child’s ghost on the island, but this is not a ghost story. Instead Kidd leans into the deep resonances between two very different stories connected by place. No. I’ll still need to be Mayken. And there are no hidden gems.” Pelgrom feels along the hem of her dress, then stops, raises an eyebrow, and bites at the stitching. Mayken grabs at the dress but Gil feels himself calm. 'There's no such thing as ghosts.' He moves forward, touches the ribbons, straightens a fallen toy at the foot of the bush. I think it might have been a case of "it's not you, it's me".... because it is an engaging story and it's well written. I seem to be in a bit of that dreaded reading slump and finding it almost impossible to concentrate. I think I've just read too many novels in a row and I need some nonfiction.

Mayken must not say a word about the baby because it shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. She has practiced with her nursemaid.

Lying brings bad karma. Even a small lie can make something really bad happen and the karma will grow to match it.” I was particularly interested in reading this because I recently read The Islands by Australian author Emily Brugman, a historical fiction novel about the Finnish immigrants who came to the Abrolhos to fish for crayfish, so I was aware of this area already. year-old Mayken, a dutch girl from an affluent family, boards the Batavia for a months-long journey to her new home in the Dutch East Indies. What she finds aboard is a world of wonder, not only begging for exploration but also a world that puts her life in danger. The story is told across two timelines: In 1628, Mayken, a nonconformist girl, finds herself on a ship where dark folklore and omens gather like clouds. In 1989, Gil, a nonconformist youngster, finds himself on a haunted fishermen's island off the coast of Australia.

There is the expected crossover in certain events, experiences and objects that dual timeline stories tend to have. But Kidd goes further than that and very cleverly weaves the stories together in such a way that they meet and move away time and time again. It reminded me very much of the beautiful dance seen in a murmuration of starlings.You are aft-the-mast,” he tells them, pointing to the vast mainmast. “You can never go forward of that.” I listened to the audio of Jess Kidd’s “The Night Ship”. Fleur de Wit and Adam Fitzgerald narrate this story told in two different time periods: 1629 and 1989. Pelgrom, it seems, has a particular gift: the gift of knowing exactly what you need and then giving it to you. Mayken closes her eyes and listens, to the billow of canvas and the rasp of rope and the plash of water on the hull. The ship creaks, heeling as her massive sails fill with wind. And beyond this, the ship’s own song in the accent of the forest she is made from – a whole forest of trees! In the ship’s song is the memory of branches and leaves tasting the wind. The heartbeat of the slow-growing oak, the rushing pine.

The other half of the book belongs to Gil, an Australian boy, also nine, sent in 1989 to live with his late mother’s father, a cray fisherman, on one of the small islands off the coast of Western Australia. He doesn’t know who his father is, and he’s unhappy with his gruff grandfather. Mayken applies her ear to the hole in a corner of the ceiling. This hole is for eavesdropping on conversation from the neighboring cabin. Mayken listens hard. Nothing is happening. The creativity is remarkable, the writing is beautifully descriptive and yet, I was a bit confused at times, and found myself rereading sections to fully understand the inferences within the story line. This felt like an intensely concentrated story and I didn't want to miss even the smallest detail of its uniqueness or the diversity of the characterizations. Believe me, there is no shortage of characters in this story and it is the author's keen writing ability that keeps them all weirdly different and distinguishable. In 1628 the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s grand flagship, set out on her maiden voyage from Holland to her namesake: the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The ship foundered off the coast of western Australia, and the 300 surviving passengers and crew, including women and children, were stranded on the Houtman Abrolhos islands. What followed was a nightmare: merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz fomented a mutiny against the Batavia’s commander Francisco Pelsaert and he and his followers murdered nearly half of all who remained on the islands, enslaving the rest. By the time rescue came, only 122 passengers survived.

Table of Contents

Yes, the two protagonists in the story, Mayken and Gil, are connected despite being three centuries apart. Sometimes Gil imagines he hears the voice of the dead Dutch girl in the wind. He knows such things as ghosts don't exist. Not if their bones are treated with respect! Kidd introduces magical realism with all the many links between these two children who are both facing their own monsters, named according to their own country's folklore, Mayken's Bullebak and Gil's Bunyip. This reading group guide for The Night Ship includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Jess Kidd. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book .