Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars – Catherine Norton

Harper Collins Australia

July 2024

ISBN: 9781460763179
ISBN 10: 1460763173
Imprint: HarperCollins AU
RRP: $22.99

Don’t think it’s taken me all this time to read this one because it didn’t at all. After The Fortune Maker this was high up in the reading order. It’s just a sad fact that it’s taken me this long to get to writing the review. But it is another great read for those kiddos who enjoy historical fiction with a basis in fact.

Catherine Norton has taken various threads and snippets of history from the 19th century, and woven these into an exciting and quite plausible adventure with a strong feminist vibe.

Hester Hitchens, her older brother and sister along with the twin baby siblings, are ostensibly orphans. Their sea-faring father has been lost at sea ‘presumed dead’ and their mother died giving birth to the twins shortly after receiving this calamitous news. Their fate was either the workhouse or their bachelor Uncle Henry.

It is patently clear that their Uncle has only taken the childen on to utilise them as unpaid workforce. Joyce is to keep house, Horace is now their uncle’s apprentice in the rope-making trade, and Hester is set to making cat-o-nine-tail whips ad nauseum, day in day out. Only the babies are exempt from work – at this stage.

Hester is extremely bright, in fact, quite gifted in mathematics especially. She also remains hopeful that ‘presumed dead’ might mean ‘actually survived’ in regards to her father. She is determined to learn to navigate, as her father had begun to teach her, in order to go look for him.

When she poses as a boy, sits a rigorous exam and is offered a full scholarship at Addington’s Nautical Navigation Academy she is elated. Her sister connives to send her without their uncle’s knowledge but that is only one obstacle to overcome. The academy is only for boys and Hester is not at all welcome.

There appears to be no-one effectively running the academy due to the Addington’s grief over their son’s death and the supposed teacher is a complete fraud. Lord Addington is obsessed with his project to build the world’s biggest telescope, Lady Addington is obsessed with not letting her musically talented daughter out of her sight as well as trying to contact the spirit world, and Hester is caught up not only in that but also in the prejudices of the times.

With fellow student, and outsider, Nelson, Hester is finally on track to achieve something when there is a complete implosion of events. It is Hester’s quick thinking and her friend Nelson’s ingenuity that is able to save the day.

Hester’s acuity with academics and her own generous and level-headed nature are engaging and admirable. She’s far from perfect and, like us all, makes mistakes but this is never something to dwell on for this determined girl. She has great resilience and refuses to give up even when everything appears to be against her. In other words, this is another fabulous empowering read for our middle-grade girls especially. I give it a unqualified 5 🔭🔭🔭🔭🌃rating.

Tile: Better Reading

Catherine’s notes give readers a diving-board into depths of further reading investigating the historical facts that shaped her novel. Some useful links are:

The fruitful earth: A brief tale of the talented Janet Taylor