December and Happiness are best friends, the kind of best friends who will do anything and everything for each other. Known as Ember and Ness, the two live next door to each other, and always walk to school together. It is strange, therefore, when one morning Ember goes to collect Ness, and there is no one there. It only becomes clear at school assembly that a tragedy has happened: Ness has fallen from a swing and died from her head injuries. Ember doesn’t cry; she can’t believe that Ness could possibly be dead. Harry, her single-parent father (her mother had died when Ember was a baby) is very supportive, but there is little he can do to help. One day her Uncle Graham collects her from school, and takes her back to tea at his house While there a mysterious phone call begins an adventure into a different world, drained of colour, a world like her own, but a place where the dead come soon after they have died, a grey world where the dead turn into puffs of smoke when their time there is over. This has been entered through Uncle Graham’s desperate need for his dog, Betty, who has died; his contact with this other world, a strange woman who is able to exchange one death for another, has promised Graham his dog in exchange for Ember. Ember wanders through the grey streets and finds Ness sitting on her own doorstep. She like everything else in this place is grey and colourless and without much personality. From then on, Ember is determined to take Ness back to the land of the living, and there are several tries, with the strange woman trying to convince Ember that she will let her back in on her own, but without her friend. Ember persists, but the story gets darker and darker with Ember meeting her own mother in the grey world and finding her love all-enveloping. But Mum is not willing to let Ember go back to Harry and her own world: Love turned to an anchor, turned to seaweed, turned to bindweed.’ It is only Ember’s need to get back to her world that can save her and it does. She realises that Ness is where she should be and that her mother is as well. Harry and his girlfriend Penny, whom Ember loves, are set for a happy ending. The illustrations are outstanding as one would expect from Gravett, and there are lots of them, some of which are two page spreads. The text is beautifully written, as befits a poet, and text and illustration are superbly matched. This is not an easy read, but it is a wholly satisfying one and will appeal to children who are good readers who expect the best. It may, however, be a difficult read for children who have just lost a friend or a mother. Read before deciding to use. Some bereaved children will get a great support from it; others may find the concept too difficult.