Riverskin

Think The Little Mermaid but with discarded shopping trolleys and techno. It’s a brilliant contemporary twist and hats off to Mike Edwards for dressing his heroine in a Tesco carrier bag . . . Riverskin is a bold debut and its atmosphere lingers long after the last page — much like the smell of scum on anyone who dares a dip in a British river. * The Times Book of the Week *
Shaped by Teesside dialect and filled with punchy, poetic coinages, this atmospheric 9+ debut brings local legend into the everyday. * The Guardian *
Tess lives in the “turns”, a network of tunnels under the River Tees with her Aunt Peg, a slippery, “toad-green”, webbed-fingered creature inspired by Peg Powler, a water witch from northern English folklore who was said to snatch naughty children from the banks of the Tees. Here, ambiguous Aunt Peg is also the jailer of Unkle Darkwater, an angry, menacing presence, who is kept chained up in one of the pits. The prisoner is “slime-slick with river filth, scarred, skin rotty and scab-hard. His breath is heavy, sour-seethy.” Aunt Peg getting “muddled and mind-slippy”. Which one should Tess trust? Riverskin is a bold, evocative debut — The Little Mermaid meets Skellig but with discarded shopping trolleys and techno. Mike Edwards’s prose has the energy you might expect from a spoken-word performer, and hats off to him for dressing his heroine in a Tesco carrier bag. * The Times Best Children's Books of 2025 so far *
Stunning. * The Courier *
Mike Edwards’ novel is an original adventure with a plot that sweeps readers along like the fast currents of the Tees. Tess is a distinctive and memorable character but it’s the language that sets this apart, the near poetic descriptions of the moods of the river, her and Peg’s newly moulded words, mood-swirly, gibbly, updown inout. Ambitious and atmospheric with a strong sense of the North-East, it's an impressive debut. * LoveReading4Kids *