Lost in Nightmare Valley by Jane De Suza

Written by Jane De Suza
Illustrated by Riya Nagendra

Reviewed by Priya Naik & Jennifer Thomas

A fantastical journey through children’s fears, loneliness and the things they struggle to say aloud.

Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-93-7307-800-7 Page Count: 178 Publisher: Harpercollins Children’s Books Review Posted Online: October 2026  QBR Reviews Issue: Q3 2026  Categories: Abandonment| Jealousy | Loneliness | Realistic Fiction

Lost in Nightmare Valley is a story that begins with ten year old Roo, who is travelling home with his parents during a storm. After he is accidentally left behind, his journey takes him through a series of encounters involving his friends, each of whom are also fearful. Roo’s story takes him towards a forest and the mysterious Nightmare Valley. Along the way, the book connects different fears with feelings of loneliness, jealousy, abandonment and being misunderstood. The story operates at two levels for the reader, showing us that children’s overt exaggerated fears, referred to as nightmares in this story, may be emerging from deeper felt insecurities and instabilities in their lived reality. 

The cover image was not immediately clear to us or the children in terms of what the story might be about. It seemed to be set in a jungle, with monsters and many eyes looking at a boy in the water. When we showed the cover to children, they had their own questions. They thought the boy might be lost in a jungle, that an octopus was trying to catch him, and that the eyeballs were watching him. There was nothing that immediately evoked a sense of the nightmare implied in the story title and this was confusing for our readers. 

The book introduces one character after the other in quick succession. While a few children found this interesting, some felt it was confusing. The beginning is also overly dramatic, where Roo lands in a ditch by the side of the road during a storm.  He runs after the car that leaves him behind shouting, but his parents drive on not realising he is missing. Instead of immediately trying to return home, Roo feels hurt that his parents do not notice he is gone stemming from another insecurity, and chooses instead to visit his friend Sixer.

Sixer, has his own fear on the outside connected to stories his aunt told him as a child about a man with a sack who would take him away if he did not eat. Yamini, another friend, is terrified of animals and believes that all cats scratch. Jacob, who is being bullied, on the other hand believes that there is a monster under his bed. These fears are presented through familiar childhood experiences, such as warnings from adults and stories children hear or imagine. However, the book sometimes simplifies the way children develop and experience fear and as readers we would have loved more back stories that would have developed the characters further. The children we read the book with were curious about these situations, but they felt they themselves are different, because they often doubt and ask questions of adults. The characters in the story seemed to accept things without any questions. 

There is a tendency in the writing to balance fear with humour. One example is Yamini’s encounter with a cat, which is described almost like a sporting event, with her climbing, running and jumping until she reaches Jacob’s window. Her extreme reaction to something ordinary makes the scene funny while also showing how large a child’s fear can become. The humour gives the reader a moment of relief within the scarier parts of the story.  One library child pointed out that Roo yelled a lot of things out in anger, but ‘not once did he say sorry.’ This response made us look again at Roo’s anger and the way his behaviour is presented. It also reminded us that children do not simply follow the emotional cues a story gives them, they form their own judgements about a character’s actions and weigh it against what they understand about human behaviours.

Roo’s story also includes the aspect of sibling jealousy and a sense of fragility in the family as a new baby arrives when he is ten years old.  Roo’s feelings of jealousy and neglect are understandable, particularly when he feels that the attention and care he once received are no longer available to him in the same way. The description of Roo as a ‘difficult son’ risks reducing his behaviour to a problem rather than helping us understand what may lie beneath it. His anger, jealousy and need for attention could have been explored further through his interactions with his parents, allowing readers to see how a child might struggle to express feelings of being displaced without necessarily being seen as difficult. However this allowed us as readers to understand his nightmare. 

The book does not clearly establish boundaries between the real and the imagined in its narration. For us, the difficulty was less with the fantastical elements and more with whether the plot and the characters’ everyday actions held together.

The illustrations by Riya Nagendra had the potential to deepen the atmosphere of the story but in the way it unfolds, it sometimes adds to the confusion in how the story is narrated. The use of typography, layout and changes in fonts throughout the book seemed more decorative than meaningful. 

Overall, Lost in Nightmare Valley is an attempt in addressing children’s fears. Its strongest idea is that children’s real fears can hide behind imaginary ones. The book is at its best when the imaginary nightmare and the emotional reality come together.

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1. A Pair of Twins by Kavitha Mandana, Karadi Tales, 2014
2. An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo, HarperCollins, 2010
3. A Wild Elephant at Camp by Anupama Moharkar, Tara Books, 2007
4. Elephants Never Forget by Anushka Ravishankar, Tara Books, 2007
5. Magnificent Makhna by Aravind Krish Bala, Tulika Books, 2012
6. Mahagiri by Hemalata, Children’s Book Trust, 1965
7. Speaking To An Elephant And Other Tales From The Kadars by Madhuri Ramesh and Manish Chandi, Tara Books, 2017-18
8. That Summer at Kalaghar by Ranjit Lal, Tulika Books, 2001
9. The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, Candlewick Press, 2009