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The Iron WomanTed Hughes
The Iron Woman
by Ted Hughes
A giant woman rises out of the marsh, black with filth, and gives Lucy the power to make everyone hear what the poisoned water hears.
A story about children and magical creatures, epic and thoughtful in tone. We would put it with children of 9–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.
Worth knowing before you buy
- Frightening scenes
None of this makes it a bad book — often the opposite. It is here so you can decide whether it is right for your child now or in a year or two.
Our take on this book
A giant woman made of metal rises from the polluted marshes, formed from the earth's fury at what has been done to the rivers and the creatures in them, and with the help of two children and the returning Iron Man she sets out to make humanity hear the cry of the poisoned world. Ted Hughes's sequel to The Iron Man is angrier and stranger than the first, a poet's fable about pollution and our treatment of nature, written in the same spare, thunderous, mythic language that reads so powerfully aloud. There is mild peril and some genuinely eerie, apocalyptic imagery, in service of its environmental warning. For a seven- to ten-year-old it is a short but weighty read, more overtly a message than the first book yet never preachy in Hughes's hands — a strange, striking, memorable story. Best met after The Iron Man, it rewards a child who responds to big images and isn't put off by a darker, stranger tone.
If they like this, try these
Chosen by matching age, reading age, tone and subject — not by what is selling.
The Iron ManTed Hughes
The Girl Who Drank the MoonKelly Barnhill
The Jungle BookRudyard Kipling
The Weirdstone of BrisingamenAlan Garner
Asha and the Spirit BirdJasbinder Bilan
Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
Tell us the age, the reading age and what they like, and we will suggest a handful.