Issue No. 165 - July 2007
Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration by David Roberts is from Julia Donaldson’s Tyrannosaurus Drip (see also ‘Windows into Illustration’). Thanks to Macmillan Children’s Books for their help with this July cover.
Articles In This Issue
Readers of Books for Keeps do not need me to blow a trumpet on behalf of the importance of reading to children, whether it’s a bedtime story or a story read to a class or library group. Apart from the pleasure of the story itself, listening to stories sets the groundwork for strong listening and memory skills as well as creating that all important interest in the written word. It is also well known that parental involvement in reading has more of an influence on a child’s achievement than any other factor.
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The winner of the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Gold Award for Mouse Noses on Toast , illustrator David Roberts used a combination of techniques to create the artwork for Julia Donaldson’s Tyrannosaurus Drip . Here David Roberts explains the thinking and techniques behind his illustration.
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‘I enjoy biting into a good read now and then…’
Once children have mastered the mechanics of reading and can read independently what comes next? In this new series on reading in the middle years, specialists in the field explore the critical and reflective reading that is so important to young readers at this age in relation to the reading of novels, poetry, non-fiction and visual texts. The problems of reluctant and inexperienced readers will also be addressed as will the impact of the new technologies. In the first article of the series Alison Kelly explores ways to ensure that enthusiasm and interest in reading is maintained.
What picture of the Israeli-Palestinian question do children gain from reading contemporary children’s books? In part 1 of this article, Professor Fouad Moughrabi focused on Lynne Reid Banks’ Broken Bridge . In part 2 he continues the discussion with a consideration of Deborah Ellis’s, Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak and Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground .
MORE »As one of the judges for this year’s Book Trust Early Years Book Awards, Clive Barnes has been made very aware as the Award submissions keep arriving, of the number of picture books published each year. Books for Keeps asked him to take time off to assess seven recently published picture books. Clive Barnes discusses.
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Lian Hearn interviewed by Julia Eccleshare
MORE »OBITUARY
Margaret Clark
1926 - 2007
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In this series ‘Teaching’ Poems for Children, Robert Hull selects an individual poem that is not often presented to young readers and suggests ways it might be used with them. Here he presents an excerpt from The Odyssey.
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Hal is now six and a half and enjoying writing is more important than correct spelling. His father, psychodynamic counsellorRoger Mills, explains.
MORE »Teaching about slavery
www.cre.gov.uk/teachingslavery.co.uk
Teaching about slavery is an on-line resource created by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) for all secondary and primary school teachers. The web pages pull together a range of materials to assist teachers when covering issues relating to the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST). The website will assist in the teaching of the TST and wider black history issues. The pages have been created as part of the first stage of a wider CRE initiative to develop cross-curricula teaching resources on the TST for teachers, which will be available later this year. The pages also include links to other events to mark the Bicentenary during 2007, as well as websites on wider black history issues. Teachers are also invited to add to the site further resources they have found of use on these themes.
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Jeanne Willis on a picture book with a violent twist guaranteed to upset the grown-ups…
MORE »Chosen by 10-12 year-old pupils from St Stithians Girls’ Preparatory School, Randburg, South Africa.
Thanks to Marilynn Berrington, School Librarian
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Wyllyam Caxton meets Brian Wildsmith somewhere amongst Aesop’s Fables
Fairy tales,
subject of our previous backpage endeavour, may well be among the most ancient forms of discourse. But we know nothing of what they originally had to say or how they said it and the great canonic tales of the West came very late in their transmission to print.
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A short-title list of some editions of Aesop's Fables - more or less intended for child readers, chronologically arranged
In his Classics in Short No. 64, Brian Alderson discusses the history of Aesop’s Fables. Given the necessary brevity imposed upon ‘Classics in Short’ articles with their back page location in the print magazine, it was clear that additional space was needed as Brian had much more to tell the readers of BfK about, as he put it, ‘Fables and their gigantick history’. We are delighted that the BfK website allows us to present those of you interested in the history of children’s books with the very special treat below: Brian Alderson’s fascinating annotated list of important and curious editions of Aesop from 1483 onwards. Ed.
The list is designed to body out the backpage article in BfK 165 by supplying an overview of the progress of fable-publishing for children. Almost all editions listed draw upon the Aesopic tradition and co-temporary versions coming from such authors as John Gay or Jean de La Fontaine are excluded – likewise most works first published in Europe or North America. All editions are published in London except where otherwise specified. Comments to BfK on the list would be welcome.
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
Why this Andersen tale has to be ‘retold’ when a good translation would suffice is a mystery.
Abandoned by his parents when he catches the Creep virus, 15-year-old Johnny has been living rough for two year when the beautiful Kestrella, who is also Creep positive, tracks him down.
This lively, down to earth picture book shows a young child enjoying the many activities that make up his day.
Megan is spending half term with her best friend Alice in Dublin. Looking forward to lots of fun, she finds Alice distraught at the evidence of a boyfriend in her newly-divorced mum’s life.
It’s been at our local cinema, but, not being a cine’aste, I didn’t see it.
The opening sentences of this novel draw the reader into a colourful and imaginative tale that twists and turns to throw up surprises of all kinds from beginning to end.
Freya is either mentally unstable or in touch with angels. Up till now the former has been assumed. The reader joins her during the early stages of her integration back into normal teenage life.
15-year-old Chas and his mate Devil are pretty well bringing themselves up on an estate gone feral.
Capturing the flux of political discontent and unease, Blood Red Snow White is a powerful composite novel set amidst the Russian revolution that intertwines the stories of the Czars
To my shame, my seriously limited knowledge of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s hardly extended beyond boyhood memories of terrorism in ‘one of our colonies’.
Occasionally charities produce booklets aimed at children with specific needs. These are two good ones.
With its spectacular plotting and strong cast of characters, this book – the seventh in the CHERUB series – is sure to find a wide readership.
This book has shot right to the top of my all-time favourite First Words books!
Many readers, young and old, are likely to be shocked by the prospect of a novel dealing with the theme of incestuous abuse, particularly, perhaps, where the victim of that abuse is 12 years of age.
It is 1791 and orphan Cat, dresser at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, loses her home and family when the theatre closes.
The geographical desert in question is in New Mexico, but there are other crossings to be made here.
Readers who enjoyed Wilkinson’s earlier novel, Dragonkeeper , will no doubt be happy to return to the familiar setting, characters and themes of her sequel.
What might a moonchild look like?
Set in 2067, the world envisaged in this novel is one that is structured by hierarchy and as a result, savagely split.
There’s nothing cloying about these short novels set in and around fairy school, and aimed at girl readers.
There’s nothing cloying about these short novels set in and around fairy school, and aimed at girl readers.
This book is a psychological thriller. It is very readable, mostly on account of its emotional poignancy, which grabs the reader’s attention.
First seen in A Dog Called Grk , where this lovable crossbred Jack Russell turns up at the Malts’ doorstep, Grk is a successful modern Snowy to Tim Malt’s Tintin.
On lifting the arresting cover of this book I was a little startled to find myself plunged straight into one of the sections which has three pop-up bodies springing from the page.
A crazed lupine muzzle, blood-slavering fangs, yellow eyes flaming within the black depths of the dust-jacket; with a villain called Slaughter and a hero named Gerontius, you might think you were in f
Almost beyond memory, in a desperate effort to remove the world’s great badness, all known technology was banned and an illusory state of Kate Greenaway’ish, ‘happy days gone by’ was institute
Will Jimmy Coates ever escape the influence of NJ7? Is it credible that the British Secret Services should have such a department? If they are truly ‘inside his head’, why can’t they find him?
Elvin Bishop (first introduced inSlot Machine ) is a teenage creature of habit.
‘Rip into another Pop-up of Prehistoric Proportions!’ urges the cover of this colourful new addition to the hugely successful Encyclopedia Prehistorica series.
This novel deals with the great divide in present-day society, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and how it impacts on the lives of young people in a multicultural society.
Neither the title nor the lurid black and red cover of this novel give a true impression of this first book in a proposed trilogy about an invented world called the Half Continent.
Following on from the hugely popular My Mum and My Dad , here is Anthony Browne lauding brotherly love!
The lengthy quotation on the cover of My So-Called Life makes it clear that the protagonist is an upper middle-class teenager from a wealthy suburb who would like to dip her toe int
Occasionally charities produce booklets aimed at children with specific needs. These are two good ones.
This is a beautifully produced book about Pakistan that gives factual but brief details about the country as it is at the present time.
Peter and the Starcatchers is a prequel to Peter Pan .
Being a princess is exhausting, but actually running around after a princess, enabling her every desire, is even more exhausting.
Here are two books, each as welcome as the wet weekend on which their review was first attempted.
Here are two books, each as welcome as the wet weekend on which their review was first attempted.
It used to be fashionable to invite school students to predict the direction a novel might take on the evidence of the first page – or even the first sentence.
The threat of the Darkwing to destroy the sun hangs heavy in Gibbons’ finale to the ‘Lost Souls Stories’ bringing an oppressive sense of urgency to Cusha and Vishta, the Holy Children, who must
11-year-old Stanley Buggles inherits the estate of Candlestick Hall on Crampton Rock, following the death of his ancestor, Admiral Bartholomew Swift.
Marcia Lane’s School of Drama and Dance pupils are auditioning for roles in Mary Poppins and Sara is hoping that this is her big chance.
1969-70s Flower Power and politics are explored here with liberal doses of hippy philosophy and thought.
This gentle fantasy spans almost a century and explores love, loss and belonging through the medium of two disappearances from The Brick, an Iowa farmhouse: Oscar Martin in 1914 and Lucy’s father ne
Following My Brother’s Ghost , this is ‘the second in a sequence of stories in which Allan Ahlberg explores his own childhood’. It is part story, part autobiography.
Coming so soon after Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time , it takes considerable nerve to write another novel about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, esp
The world – what’s left of it – is literally upside down, destroyed by the folly of ‘the Users’ (that’s Us or our immediate descendants – as aficionados of dystopias for young readers kn
Pretend play gets the pop-up treatment as two children use a box and a blanket to create stories of adventure and exploration.
Pretend play gets the pop-up treatment as two children use a box and a blanket to create stories of adventure and exploration.
A quirky and thought-provoking book, an unexpected pleasure to find it is written by Jan Mark, inspired author of such classics as Thunder and Lightnings , and the last she wrote befo
Like the rungs of the ladder, this book keeps the reader gripping onto each next step in its complex plot. The story begins as a plain tale of city kid with problems, thrown into rural life.
The Trouble with Owls builds on a misunderstanding that provides plenty of comic situations and, ultimately, role reversal.
Kai Meyer is a prolific fantasist. Not yet turned 40, he has already written 45 books, most of which demonstrate his self-professed ‘talent for fast-paced action writing’.
Pip, an orphan boy in the Wickit Monastery, finds himself involved in rescuing a fictitious king of England from a plot to kill him, helped by a gargoyle that has come alive.
It is, of course, the Great Barrier Reef, and Moss and Kennaway have provided a most engaging descriptive celebration of this eco-icon.
Imagine being called Pablo by your Art crazed, culturally aloof and snobbish parents.
This is another in the series set in future time, featuring a teenage forensic detective and his brilliant, hovering computer helpmate, Malc.
Having been ignominiously defeated by a goat in his native Norway, Mr Troll decides to uproot his family to England.
Having been ignominiously defeated by a goat in his native Norway, Mr Troll decides to uproot his family to England.
The Trouble with Owls builds on a misunderstanding that provides plenty of comic situations and, ultimately, role reversal.
Hannah and the Lip Gloss Girls, and their rivals the Hell Cats, are Worse Than Boys in their violence, their petty nastiness and their gang mentality. But they’re proud of it.
Bright and engaging pictures work well in this modern fable. Good use is made of different sizes of font, with important phrases set in bold. A great kerfuffle kicks up in the jungle.