The Royal Woods follows the adventures of a young brother and sister who run away from their Toronto home to spend the summer with relatives on a farm in Manitoba. To their dismay, Turk and Sydney find that the farm has been transformed into a bland, treeless subdivision oddly named The Royal Woods. Here – between the new world of subdivision, mall, and golf course, and the natural world of the bush and river on its outskirts – they must find a means of living.

The novel hovers between realism and fantasy, and this is its charm. In many respects it reads like a children’s fantasy of running away from home; a surprise twist at the end identifying the story’s narrator confirms this feeling. Some of the adventures urged by the fearless, hot-tempered Sydney, such as riding the rails, or getting really clean by going through a car wash without a car, turn out to be less than fun, but her quiet, homesick eight-year-old brother remains ever loyal. Partway into the novel, we are given their reason for running away; until the ending, however, the focus is strictly on the adventures, rather than the problem that led to it.

The children are befriended by outsiders – an eccentric whistling vagrant in a canary-yellow tuxedo jacket with a pony-riding chicken named Janet, and the kindly, highly articulate Kumar, who is working illegally at many jobs to support his children in India. The residents of the subdivision, on the other hand, are caricatured mercilessly.

Matt Duggan, a Toronto teacher and screenwriter, grew up on the Prairies he evokes here. Exuberant, witty, and warmhearted, this first novel for children is a fine start.