The Uprising - The Mapmakers in Cruxcia by Eirlys Hunter

Crikeyomikey this is another good book!

Please begin by reading my post about the first episode where we meet the Mapmakers. Nearly everything I said in that post applies to this second book.

By the end of the first book Sal, Joe, Francie and Humprey have been reunited with their mother. Now the race is on to find their father. He has been taken to a prison in Cruxcia. The new ruler - Governor Mundle - has been arresting everyone in the town - for the most trivial of crimes. On their first day the children and their mother buy drinks from a street stall. Ma and Humphrey sample a different drink and quickly become quite ill.  The children are once again on their own. They find some precious things belonging to Pa and make friends with some children from the town. Pa had been making an important map as a way to show ownership of the land. Now it is up to Vivi, their new friend, to gather all the evidence in time for the arrival of the Land Court Judge. Adding to the tension the children discover the prisoners are about to be moved. Everyone in the community needs to work together to set the adults free but the biggest question of all is what exactly is Govenor Mundle up to? Why is he using his henchmen (called Custodians) to enforce his laws. Why are these men trying to catch Ma? What exactly is the GTC (the Grania Trading Company)? And finally is it possible that all of these children - the Santanders - Sal, Joe, Francie and Humphrey could be related to their new friends - Vivi, Hessa, Tash, and Lysander.

You can read the first chapter of The Uprising here. Here is the trailer.  You can read more plot details here. 

In this follow-up to the internationally successful The Mapmakers' Race, the Santander children are drawn into a community’s rebellion against a despot and use their mapping skills to avert an environmental scam. Sal, Joe, Francie and Humphrey Santander are mapmakers looking for their father, a famous explorer who disappeared on his last expedition. Their search takes them to Cruxcia, where the people are fighting to protect their land from the all-powerful Grania Trading Company. The Santanders’ mapping skills may be the missing piece in the Cruxcian race to save the ancient valley—and the key to reuniting their family. Part detective story and part adventure. Resonant contemporary themes: revolution, environment, indigenous land ownership. Walker Books 

There are utterly brilliant words in this book such as crikeyomikey; there are steampunk references such as the drigible that the children ride in to travel to Cruxcia and the the hotel lift which is called a cyclic ascender.

"The ascender beside the staircase consisted of a string of small open-sided cabins that moved continuously, going up on the left and down on the right."

Once again you are sure to also enjoy the delicious food in this book and the way Eirlys provides the children with glorious opportunities to take a shower and put on clean clothes. In Cruxia they have worked out how to bring hot water into their homes - this is such a luxury to our Santander children.

"Francie was keen. She liked the feel and smell of clean clothes and their clothes were truly filthy. But Joe hated laundry days: pumping and lugging buckets of water, sweating over a fire and then trying to wring water out of sodden clothes too heavy to lift."

"Hessa clipped the drum shut and hung a weight on a chain that ran up to the ceiling through a series of pulleys, and down again to a spindle. The weight dropped slowly, turning the spindle which turned the drum. Joe knew that wherever he lived in the future, he wanted water from a pipe, and a machine to wash clothes."

"She'd never felt so clean. Her hair and skin smelled of Lysander's mother's soap and they had clean clothes after yesterday's laundering."

The foods all have glorious invented names - pikers (hot cakes) eaten with butter and wild berry jam; cocol (a warm drink); chimlacanda (a delicious hot savoury pie) and Sunderstrum (honey and almond cakes). 

I will mention again that I first discovered Eirlys Hunter via her book The Astonishing Madam Majolica, illustrated by Kelvin Hawley (Scholastic, 1996). I have this on my 'to find' list. Sadly the staff in my previous school library threw this book away.  It might be languishing in a classroom somewhere - I sometimes think about sending the staff the offer of a reward for finding this book and 'selling' it to me.

In 2020 The Mapmakers Race was nominated by New Zealand as their IBBY honour book.