Lost World in the City   Bill Nagelkerke

 

Lost World in the City (2025)
Bill Nagelkerke, 
Copy Press (Nelson), 
Novel, 175 pages Paperback
ISBN 978-0-47375-569-0 

Lost World in the City (2025) is the third volume in a series which Bill Nagelkerke began with The Ghosts on the Hill (2020) and continued in The Roar of the Lion (2025). Each novel stands alone but some of the characters reappear as time passes. The saga which began in 1884 has now reached 1914, with war imminent.

 

The narrator is Nell aged eleven. She reads widely and is irritated that all the adventure stories feature men with beards who have all the fun. ‘It’s not fair on girls,’ complains Nell to her brother Sandy, ‘Because there’s never a place for us in their expeditions. We have to wait around at home.’ These two young readers of Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, live in Christchurch’s eastern suburb of Aranui, near Wainoni Park. Their father travels by tram each day to work in the city library. Meanwhile their mother is concerned that war is about to break out in Europe; she was deeply disturbed by the death of her brother Hugh in the South African War a decade earlier.

Nell and Sandy are sympathetic and ask their father what they can do.

‘We just have to keep on reminding her that she still has us, as well as the new baby on the way, and that it’s possible to be happy at the same time as being sad,’ Papa replies.

‘That’s hard,’ Sandy says.

 

Nell is inspired by attending a public lecture given at the library by a successful adventure story author, Jack Lytle (whose career began in The Roar of the Lion). She persuades her brother to come with her into Wainoni Park in search of a moa. The amusement park has been closed to the public since its owner Professor Alexander Bickerton returned to England but Nell is sure she has heard strange sounds from there.

What they find is much more interesting and puzzling. Can a moa eat a small boy? How can Nell and Sandy have met and talked to Professor Bickerton when he is still overseas? Has Nell possibly found a way of fulfilling her dream of flying over Christchurch?

Nell is beginning to believe her Mama’s warning ‘that we get so lost in stories that one day Sandy and I won’t be able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.’  What is certain, however, is that the baby is arriving just as war is declared.  Their harried father sends them out to play in the street. (In those days, we are reminded, babies were usually born at home, and streets were slightly less dangerous places.)

 Of course, Nell and Sandy head straight for Wainoni Park again. What they find there, this time, is truly remarkable.

 

Bill Nagelkerke has written a charming and readable story that recreates the final days of the Wonderland amusement Park created by the talented Professor Bickerton. There is a real sense of wonder as past and present blend. Henry, from The Roar of the Lion, makes a surprising and uplifting appearance. Will he achieve his dream of zoo-keeping, or will he join the army? The differing views towards warfare held during the opening days of the Great War are well conveyed, offering plenty of scope for a sequel.

A Historical Note includes research advice for young readers who want to experience some of the magic of Bickerton’s Wainoni.

 

Trevor Agnew 

Jan 2026 [Review 3813]

 

 

The Roar of the Lion  Bill Nagelkerke

                    

The Roar of the Lion
Bill Nagelkerke
Novel 126 pages (2025)
Paperback
ISBN 978 0 473 75359 7

 

 Bill Nagelkerke has a flair for capturing a tiny moment in our history and bringing it to vibrant life by re-examining it from a young person’s viewpoint. The Roar of the Lion (2025) is the second volume in a series which began with The Ghosts on the Hill (2020) and continues in Lost World in the City (2025). Each novel stands alone but some of the characters reappear. The city of Christchurch is, of course, the main character. As the garden city prepares for its first International Exhibition, from 1906 to 1907, wooden towers rise on Hagley Park and two young boys are fascinated by the chance of seeing some exotic animals. 

 The class differences of Edwardian Canterbury are subtly sketched in. Henry Lytle lives with his father, Jack, in a humble boarding house in Cranmer Square and goes to Christchurch East School. Leo Church’s family own a large property in Papanui Road and he attends Christ’s College as well as being a cathedral chorister. Leo has a season pass to the exhibition, of course, but Henry has to find a less costly way in. Excited by rumours of lions being on display, Henry is surprised when he learns from his reporter father that it is actually a group of captured sea-lions which will be on display. 

 Many news items were published about events at the exhibition and some fascinating extracts are included in the text, all of them, naturally, attributed to Jack. ‘A most pronounced odour of the sea pervading portions of the Acclimatisation Gardens, proclaims the temporary abiding place of the oddities of fur and feather brought up by Captain Bollons.’ Young readers will be amused by the pompous style but Henry is a sterner critic. ‘You managed to fit in a lot of ‘ps’ in the first sentence,’ he warns his father. 

Jack is more interested in writing novels than journalism, but will he succeed? Jack’s friendship with William, the Acclimatisation Society’s animal keeper, means that Henry gets a part-time position as assistant caretaker of the wildlife enclosure at Victoria Lake. (William, whose sister Elsie appears in The Ghosts on the Hill, is also able to give Henry a Southern Māori view of the famous pā created for the exhibition.) Henry hopes for a career as a zoo-keeper but he finds life caring for the fish-eating captives is not easy. The names which some of the sea-lions are given - Bumper, Bully and Sneak – hint at their behaviour. 

Henry’s most alarming moment comes when the largest of them, Jumbo, manages to break out of the enclosure. Can Leo and Henry find a way to get him back? Equally daunting are Henry’s visits to his grandmother, who is constantly railing against the decline in modern manners. Bill Nagelkerke has a lovely writing style with a nice touch of humour. Henry finds his chair at Grandma’s New Brighton home very uncomfortable: ‘It was hard and unyielding, much like Grandma herself.’ Henry later takes delight in naming one of his sealion charges Nelly, after her. Jack is horrified, ‘Grandmother must never, ever find out.’ 

 There are also many interesting minor characters including Mr Strong the librarian who dreams of a children’s section, Mr Purfleet the actor who names Leo’s dog Macbeth (because he murders sleep) and Professor Bickerton who is the moving spirit behind the sequel to this volume, Lost World in the City. The Roar of the Lion is an enjoyable historical novel. The author’s Historical Note provides young readers with plenty of ways they can find out more about their own local history. It may even inspire them to write their own stories of the past. 

 Trevor Agnew 

 Jan 2026 [ Review 3814]

The Ghosts on the Hill  Bill Nagelkerke  

The Ghosts on the Hill
Bill Nagelkerke
Ill. Theo McDonald
Cuba Press (2020)
Novel, 81 pages, paperback
ISBN 978 0 995 12336 6

 

‘You can’t really blame the hills for what happened to Davie and Archie.’
,Yes, I can,, says Elsie.
This novel, like one of the writer’s earlier novels Old Bones (2006), is a gentle story of the supernatural. Elsie (12) an imaginative and observant young girl, living in the Canterbury port of Lyttelton in 1884, is fishing off the wharf. She misses the two boys, Davie and Archie, who once fished from the same wharf but later perished of exposure on the Port Hills. Her fishing friend, Mr James, tells how memorials are to be unveiled where the boys died. His wife, Mrs Annie James, was the last to see Davie and Archie alive and she feels guilt about not stopping them going over the hills when bad weather was threatening.
Elsie’s mother has gathered a bag of baby clothes for her sister, Elsie’s Aunt Priscilla who has just had a baby in Heathcoate. Despite her misgivings about the Port Hills, Elsie offers to walk over the Bridle Path to deliver the clothes.
‘I don’t want to keep on feeling scared.’
The landscape of the Port Hills, as seen by Elsie, is beautifully described.
‘A light wind ripples the tawny tussock grasses.’
Elsie has a nap on the way and dreams of the boys walking over the hills. When she awakens, it is late afternoon and clouds of mist have descended. Elsie is confused and panics. She thinks she hears the music of the patupaiarehe, the fairy folk her Maori father, Henare of Rapaki, has told her about. Then, voices from the fog calm her. Elsie recognises the voices of Archie and Davie.
‘Are you ghosts?’
‘I suppose we must be’.
They tell her that, just as Elsie had helped them, they seem to have stayed long enough to help her. They guide Elsie to safety. Later Elsie and Mrs James go to the unveiling of the memorials and find comfort in what they hear and see there.

This is a very readable junior novel, rich in detail, thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable.
Extracts from contemporary newspapers are included, and an Author’s Note identifies the historic characters in the story.
The simple line illustrations in the text are by Theo Macdonald.

Note: Characters from this novel also appear in other novels by Bill Nagelkerke: The Roar of the Lion (2025) and Lost World in the City (2025).