Issue No. 166 - September 2007
Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration by Kev Walker is from William Nicholson’s Noman. William Nicholson is interviewed by Clive Barnes. Thanks to Egmont for their help with this September cover.
Articles In This Issue
With the much heralded publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows an astounding publishing phenomenon has finally come to an end. The history of Harry Potter is well known – how, after eight rejections, a first novel written in coffee shops by single mother Joanne Rowling was finally accepted by Bloomsbury and published in 1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was to become the first of seven titles, one volume for each of Harry’s years at Hogwarts. The books’ instant popularity with adult as well as child readers then led to the simultaneous publication of each new title in two editions – one aimed at adults and one at children.
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In 1807 Parliament abolished the British slave trade. In this bicentenary year a number of books for children have been published with slavery as their theme. How accurately do they depict historical events? Will they engage young readers? Brycchan Carey discusses.
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How has the reading world available to Middle age range readers in the 21st century changed? What is the role for them of visual texts in books and on screen? Is there a new type of literacy? Prue Goodwin explores.
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The CLPE Poetry Award, for a book of poetry for children, was launched by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education in 2003. What do the titles submitted for this year’s award tell us about the state of poetry publishing for young people? Award judge Fiona Waters explains.
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The poet Michael Rosen has been appointed the fifth Children’s Laureate and his term of office will run until the summer of 2009. What are his priorities? Morag Styles reports.
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William Nicholson was a phenomenally successful writer before he began writing fantasy for children and young people about ten years ago. His screenplays for Shadowlands and Gladiator are but the most visible peaks of a career which began with the coveted position of BBC trainee after a double first from Cambridge, and has included documentary film work, play writing, film directing and, more recently, novels for adults. Yet he has said that Noman, the book which completes ‘The Noble Warriors’ trilogy, is probably the most important work he has ever done. It tackles a big subject: ‘Who is God? What is it that lies behind this entire existence of ours?’ And, as he tells me when we meet, ‘The Noble Warriors’ contains ‘the most important thoughts I am capable of having’.
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Dear Editor
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A father’s favourite book from childhood may not equally delight his son. Psychodynamic counsellor Roger Mills explains what happened when he read Stig of the Dump to his six-year-old son Hal.
MORE »Chosen by Class 8 (14-year-olds) from York Steiner School. Thanks to Teachers Jonathan Tapp and Annabel Gibb.
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Lang Scots miles and a baubeejoe in an alley: the adventures of David Balfour in Kidnapped and Catriona…
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
A storyteller, a shadow puppeteer, and an expert in folk tales from around the world with many picture book versions of the same to her credit, Jessica Souhami’s latest title offers a Chinese variant of the tale we know as Puss-in-Boots. In this version, it is a wily fox rather than a cat who employs cunning stratagems to present the handsome but penniless young man (Li Ming) to the Emperor as a rich aristocrat, thus gaining him the hand of the Emperor’s beautiful daughter.
Having a dad who is a ‘bearded, batty fraud, a liar, a cheat and full of nonsense’ lands the long suffering Oswald in all kinds of difficult situations. After being chased off the island of Greater Fury, the pair are to be found treading water while dad, optimistic as always, awaits the appearance of Mother Fortune to rescue them. Meanwhile Oswald is not sure that drowning would not be better than another day with dad. When Elizabeth and her daughter Bella appear in their small boat and take them to the island of Idlegreen, Oswald discovers that his arrival – or at any rate the arrival of someone with the initials ‘O.O.’ – has been foretold and that, mysteriously, he is being counted on by the exploited islanders to change their lot.
Middle is the middle monster in a family of three ‘children’. He can’t seem to do anything right; everyone else has a purpose. Biggest is strong and tall and good at games, and Smallest is cuddly and lovable.
This is a short book, considering the cultural and emotional journeys that are made in its pages. There are three voices here: one is the narrator, the others belong to two girls, Rosa and Abela, both with Tanzanian fathers but, as the story opens, living on different continents in very different circumstances.
Amelia is independently minded, somewhat of a loner with a huge imagination and suspicious turn of mind, living in a world of her own making. She’s also super intelligent and able to think laterally – a skill she puts to full use in her all-absorbing passion of being a detective. In these three short stories, we see her at work thwarting a succession of criminal masterminds intent on taking over the world through strange and comical methods.
I think this novel is a masterpiece. It stands head and shoulders above most current writing for children, and merits all the prizes for which it may be eligible. Dedicated ‘to the heroes of the Apache nation who inspired it’, it is a story of their calamitous destruction in the 19th century by the Mexicans and invasive whites who stole their land and ruined their culture. The genocide committed against the Native American by colonizing Europeans equals the Holocaust in the record of human shame, and this book is an act of remarkable empathy with the Apache mind as it happened. This is what it must have felt like.
‘Are you a dung beetle that’s down in the dumps? Or a bird that’s feeling blue? My friendly advice is only a letter away.’
This is a wonderfully original book which imparts information playfully using the device of Dr K Fisher, agony uncle to the animal world. To appreciate the ideas and facts here, children need to know something already about life cycles, habitats, camouflage, food chains and predators. Their knowledge will be refined and developed as they read; for example, Dr Fisher reassures the worried dung beetle that his role as one of ‘nature’s rubbish recyclers’ is an important one. Information is given with wit and humour, but it is never miscellaneous and there are helpful generalisations to promote concept development. For example we have, in the section on ‘Dr Fisher’s Guide to Feeding’, a double spread showing animals that all have very long body parts to cope with the particular food they catch and eat. So children learn that an animal’s structure is related to its functions.
A celebration of the huge variety of insects, spiders and other creepy-crawlies that make up the arthropod family. These were the first animals to walk on land 400 million years ago, and they remain the most essential creatures on our planet, pollinating flowers, enabling crops to grow and recycling waste.
The treasure map on the inside covers is a fun start to the book – Wag Island has features such as Bone Dry Desert and Sharp Teeth Mountains and other dog referenced places. Boldly executed illustrations and a text that you just want to read out loud make this is a super book on a popular theme. A treasure map is in Captain Wag’s possession and he sets off with two shipmates to find ‘Treasure fit to gladden the heart of any dog!’ But Pirate Ginger Tom hears about the map and captures Captain Wag and his crew after a fierce battle on the high seas. The cat pirates force Captain Wag to lead them to Wag Island and show them where the treasure is hidden – but they are in for a surprise!
With the in and out of care, abandoned at birth life that Nicky Nelson has had it is little wonder that he is a damaged loner with a record of violence. A letter which he receives after the death of his last social worker starts him on a path that leads him to some resolution in his life, but not before he has suffered and transgressed further and drawn the late social worker’s daughter into his troubled world.
This is a record of the first children’s literature conference at the University of Hertfordshire, which took place in April 2006. The conference was a mix of academic papers and presentations by writers, including Beverley Naidoo, Conor Kostick and Rhiannon Lassiter.
The omens were not favourable: yet another ‘new dark fantasy trilogy’; verses from Shakespeare and Milton (again) set as epigraphs; recommendations from two members of the author’s writing group (‘funny, dark and sexy’); a heroine called Clary from a writer called Clare. And the author’s enthusiasm in the publicity prompted further jaundiced anxieties: ‘I wanted to write… an epic battle between good and evil, terrible monsters, brave heroes, enchanted swords – and recast it through a modern, urban lens.’ The occult, the fantastical and the simply weird – there’s too much of it about.
These are two informative American picture books providing gently neutral introductions to the cultures of these two countries. In each, we count – a spread at a time – from one to ten, learning how to write and pronounce the numbers and finding facts selected to amplify them.
These are two informative American picture books providing gently neutral introductions to the cultures of these two countries. In each, we count – a spread at a time – from one to ten, learning how to write and pronounce the numbers and finding facts selected to amplify them.
Exaggerated characters are used to comic effect in this medieval romp of a story. Tom has secretly bought himself a pet, a baby dragon called Sparky, which he has hidden in the stables. Now he needs his parents’ permission to keep it, but his mum, Lady Eleanor, will have none of it.
Its no coincidence that, as radical political movements claim the mantle of Islam and Jihad, and George Bush resorts to the language of good and evil to justify United States policy in the Middle East, the Crusades once more emerge as a subject of films and novels.
Damian Drooth has met up with his gang who are also members of his Detective School, but he is alarmed that Lavender is in tears. She explains that old Mr Swan is no longer friendly – instead he is grumpy and unkind.
This is a collection of 18 stories about wizards and wizardry, between them taking the traditional magician into many new, ingenious and exotic forms. Although published (originally in America) for young readers, it has also been reviewed as a book for adults which ‘no fantasy fan will want to miss’, and although its contributors include some distinguished writers for children, including Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer and Tanith Lee, others have previously published in the main for adults. All, however, are writers of exceptional talent, and this is an admirable collection for teenage readers whose days and years with Harry Potter have set them up for something more sophisticated and challenging. The stories vary in length from five comic pages of Eoin Colfer (‘A Fowl Tale’) to Orson Scott Card’s meticulously paced novella, ‘Stonefather’, which takes up nearly a quarter of the book.
Illustrated in full colour on every page and with a large typeface, the ‘Chameleons’ series is aimed at bridging the gap between picture books and chapter books.
In Mouldylocks and the Three Clares, Mouldylocks the Giant goes in search of a wife. He finds Great Big Clare first of all, but she does not suit him. Then he finds Tiny Wee Clare, but she does not suit either. Finally he finds Medium-sized Clare, who is Just Right. However, unlike traditional fairy tales where that would be the happy ending, Medium Clare has the last laugh on the Giant. Children (and certainly their teachers) will appreciate the twist in this story that has otherwise got all the hallmarks of a traditional tale.
Ring! Ring! Dr Miaow is such a busy cat with so many patients to look after at the Kiss-it-Better Hospital! Woof drives Dr Miaow in the ambulance through Whoops-a-Daisy town to attend Tom Cat who has fallen out of a tree whilst chasing a bird.
The fairy tale has been fortunate in recent years in attracting serious attention from major thinkers who have unpacked the manifold meanings of the genre in studies with a broad cultural and intellectual sweep. Prominent among these are Marina Warner and Jack Zipes. Zipes, Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, has produced a string of thought-provoking books, from Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (first published in 1983 and now thoroughly revised for a 2nd edition) to his most recent, Why Fairy Tales Stick.
This story covers some of the same ground as Jacqueline Wilson’s The Illustrated Mum and will appeal to a similar age group. At the beginning of the story, Pearl is living with a kind and understanding foster mother and has a caring social worker who is looking for a ‘forever family’ to adopt her and give her a stable and loving home.
In the nine fascinating stories gathered here, folk tale enthusiasts will recognise many familiar figures in new settings. The giant with the three golden hairs is Ghaddar the Ghoul and Ahmad is the humble giant killer who defeats him by helping lesser ghouls with their problems.
Two diminutive beings, Sweet Pea and Boogaloo are taking a woodland walk ‘under the trees, under the sun and the green leaves’, when Sweet Pea spies ‘Giants’. As their journey continues she questions her companion about these creatures, whom Boogaloo claims to know all about. He responds by painting gruesome pictures of how horrible they are. Sweet Pea though, is sceptical and Maland also shows us just how wrong Boogaloo’s preconceptions are for, this particular ‘giant’ (a child-sized human) is overseeing their progress and helping them on their way.
This is the latest in the enormously popular ‘Girl, 15’ series and it is very much the mixture as before with its bubbly heroine, Jess, veering wildly between ecstasy and despair as she negotiates the perils of teenage life. In this title, she has to contend with an invasion of French exchange students. Most of the girls are hosting their female counterparts, but Jess has rashly volunteered to have a boy. Her head is full of Gallic stereotypes and at first her only problem appears to be coming up with a sufficiently glamorous photograph to send Edouard. Her best mate, the endearingly quirky Fred, comes up with a digital solution. The stage looks set fair for romance when Jess receives Edouard’s own photo, which is every bit as adorable as she’d hoped.
This is a valuable addition to a series on ‘21st Century Debates’. There are a few introductory examples of personal debt, but the main subject is the origin of the international debt of poor countries and the inhuman consequences for their inhabitants.
With so much silly chick lit around it is a relief to come across a novel intent on honesty rather than shallow escapism. And honest this novel definitely is, with its warning – or should it be guarantee? – of ‘explicit content’ on the cover certainly justified.
These little books are made of heavy card and so a child from about two years old could handle the pages and lift the strong flaps easily. They have colourful double spreads with a rhyme on one page and a large flap set in a picture on the other. The books are built round the playful principle of ‘Peepo’ games but go beyond simple recognition of the creatures. In fact the books are delightfully interactive and encourage young children’s concentration and participation. They can listen to the short poems, look at the footprints and other visual clues and shout out the animal’s name when they lift the flap.
Anyone who observes young children for any length of time will soon discover how completely they become absorbed in the detail of the here and now – what Margaret Donaldson calls the point mode. Many of the 60-odd poems selected here capture and reflect this intensity and delighted absorption in simple direct experiences such as making a mud cake, getting dry after a bath, watching a bee, eating an ice-cream or stargazing. The poets chosen are from both sides of the Atlantic and include Gareth Owen, Wendy Cope, Tony Mitton, Michael Rosen, Norma Farber, Aileen Fisher and Langston Hughes. All use a child’s voice or speak directly to the child. The compilers, who have also included examples of their own work, have structured their selections to allow readers to journey through a child’s day taking in some significant people along the way.
It would need a Thesaurus to do full justice to the sheer awfulness of this book. Obnoxious, offensive, objectionable, odious – and that’s just the entries beginning with ‘o’. Reading it is like sharing a railway carriage with some unsupervised, tipsy, spoilt, desperately attention-seeking public school girls coming back from a spree.
This is the kind of book kids will read in one sitting and feel all the better for it. All the girls want to get to know the narrator Dorian, but he just doesn’t get it. As he geekily studies dinosaurs and high-mindedly pokes about in his excavations in his back garden his contemporaries are hurling themselves into the mating game. To add to his insecurities his younger sister, The Microbe, ceaselessly reminds him of his failings as a member of the human race.
This one starts off on the wrong foot when it defines immigration as ‘the movement of people from their own country to settle permanently in another’. While (as O.E.D. agrees) this is technically correct, the word is almost always much more subjectively used to describe movement into the user’s own country. But, of course, emotive titles sell better. This book is about migration.
Nanocam is an imaginary camera, bristling with lenses, lasers and other gadgets, yet small enough to be swallowed and sent on a journey around the body. It will send back amazing pictures! Don’t expect a traditional guide to the systems of the body – such information is relegated to a brief reference section at the end of the book – but be prepared for an extraordinary rollercoaster ride through the blood vessels, organs and nerves of the body.
Dual language books are an invaluable resource as wars, the EC and migration bring more and more children whose first language is not English to our schools. Interactive technologies like the ‘TalkingPen’ are very useful aids to language learning but most important are books and stories that engage and hold the learners’ attention.
In this brief telling narrated in the present tense, Little Red Riding Hood, hotly pursued by a huge grey wolf, sets off for her grandmother’s. As her journey takes her ‘…round the corner… over the bridge…into the dark, dark wood…’ various small creatures call out the warning exhortation till, on entering the cottage, Red Riding Hood comes face to face with the large leering lupine. Then it’s the wolf that needs to heed the warning.
This is a beautifully produced book – paperback cover with end-flaps enclosing cheerful endpapers, a lovely quality of matt paper printed in soft-edged muted colours, with an unusually nice smell. I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a book’s smell before, but it is one of the pleasures of books, especially new ones, that I remember from childhood and still relish – this one is top!
Illustrated in full colour on every page and with a large typeface, the ‘Chameleons’ series is aimed at bridging the gap between picture books and chapter books.
In Mouldylocks and the Three Clares, Mouldylocks the Giant goes in search of a wife. He finds Great Big Clare first of all, but she does not suit him. Then he finds Tiny Wee Clare, but she does not suit either. Finally he finds Medium-sized Clare, who is Just Right. However, unlike traditional fairy tales where that would be the happy ending, Medium Clare has the last laugh on the Giant. Children (and certainly their teachers) will appreciate the twist in this story that has otherwise got all the hallmarks of a traditional tale.
‘Adventure, treachery and deadly danger – one boy’s journey into the unknown…’ Thus the allurements of the blurb for New World, allurements which, while not, perhaps, offering the most original ingredients in children’s fiction, should succeed in capturing the attention of those young readers with a fondness for historical fiction and, even more especially, of those interested in Tudor seafaring times.
Stories set in Ancient Egypt are rare so this is very welcome as it is a fascinating period of history. The trick is to make it readable and reachable and to come alive, and this Gill Harvey has managed to do after a slow start.
Jeanne d’Arc Umubyeyi, known to her family and friends by her pet name, Dédé, was eight years old at the time of the Rwanda genocide. This is her story of that time, as told by her German adoptive mother.
Dottie Duck watches as animals play games with each other. Squirrels play acorn tennis, caterpillars chase each other across a leaf. Seeing everyone play makes Dottie lonely as there is no one to play with her.
At first this looks like the archetypal contemporary ‘girl book’ – pink flowery cover, punningly catchy title, horrible gritty glitter stuff all over the front – and in some ways it is. However, it proves to be an engaging story with some unexpected themes.
Three sisters, real princesses with people to serve them at every turn: what more could they wish for? They ‘must be the happiest children in the world’ thinks the queen. But not the youngest, Isabella, who longs to get dirty, make her own sandwiches and blow her own nose. To teach her a lesson, the king sends her to work, first in the kitchens, then in the pigsty. To his surprise – but not ours – she is blissfully happy, and at last he understands.
Two stories about a little girl called Poppy who lives in Honeypot Hill, a quaint rural setting where we find places such as Lavender Lake, Blossom Bakehouse and other local features with suitably flowery names.
Two stories about a little girl called Poppy who lives in Honeypot Hill, a quaint rural setting where we find places such as Lavender Lake, Blossom Bakehouse and other local features with suitably flowery names.
Following a brief term of imprisonment in the attic suffered at the hand of the very non-maternal Aunt Candy, Sam Khaan’s life takes a dramatic turn due to revelations outlined in a Witch Doctor’s notebook she discovers.
Derek Landy is a young Irish writer who possesses in spades the literary equivalent of the gift of the gab. His present novel is about a spirited 12-year-old girl who teams up with a crusading, living skeleton in order to save the world from an evil sorcerer.
An excellent resource for studying the history of the slave trade in the year that marks the passage of 200 years since the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. The book concentrates on the traffic between West Africa and the Americas, some 24 million Africans being taken from their homes by force over the course of 300 years.
In this small format novelty board book we see Mr Croc drawing different objects. Children learn to relate colours to objects by seeing them through Mr Croc’s eyes. Cleverly, only one object of each colour is present in each double page spread.
This is a gorgeous romp of a book. Within pages, it flings its reader headfirst into a battle with a pirate ship and seldom lets up pace. Barkbelly introduced children to a wooden boy owing nothing to Pinocchio and everything to Cat Weatherill’s exuberant imagination. Its sequel, Snowbone, takes up the tale of the Ashenpeakers, a race of wooden people who hatch from eggs and can regrow limbs when injured. They are vulnerable to fire, but little else. However their very strength, together with the pouch of healing sap each possesses, make them attractive to the greedy race of men.
Spy Dog is plain, good formulaic fun. And thank goodness it is because the formula works and children love them. In this new title Lara the Spy Dog tackles the evil Mr Big in his pursuit of the Millennium Diamond, becoming herself the victim of mistaken identity along the way.
Squeak Street stories are a set of tales, each about one of the mice who live in the street. A poem at the front of each book about all the mice is a useful aid to identifying the characters who crop up in the books. Each story is short enough to be read at one sitting, and has a happy and comfortable ending; the books are ideal for an adult to share with a child.
Squeak Street stories are a set of tales, each about one of the mice who live in the street. A poem at the front of each book about all the mice is a useful aid to identifying the characters who crop up in the books. Each story is short enough to be read at one sitting, and has a happy and comfortable ending; the books are ideal for an adult to share with a child.
These little books are made of heavy card and so a child from about two years old could handle the pages and lift the strong flaps easily. They have colourful double spreads with a rhyme on one page and a large flap set in a picture on the other. The books are built round the playful principle of ‘Peepo’ games but go beyond simple recognition of the creatures. In fact the books are delightfully interactive and encourage young children’s concentration and participation. They can listen to the short poems, look at the footprints and other visual clues and shout out the animal’s name when they lift the flap.
This dazzling historical novel is set within the medieval Mongol Army at its peak of conquest, responsible among other things for slaughtering 100,000 Indian men, women and children prisoners in one ghastly operation.
Like her first book, Does My Head Look Big in This? this is the story of the coming-of-age of an Australian-Muslim teenager. However, unlike the spiritually committed protagonist of her first novel, the central character Jamilah is ashamed of her Lebanese-Muslim identity and does everything she can to hide it. At school she calls herself Jamie, dyes her hair blonde, wears coloured contact lenses, flirts with boys she doesn’t actually like, and makes endless excuses to her friends about why she can’t go out with them at the weekend. In the face of the negative stereotyping where people assume that she ‘drives planes into buildings as a hobby’ and the real life Australian context of recent serious crimes, tensions and gang fights between the Lebanese and ‘Anglo’ communities, Jamie just wants to be anonymous. On the other hand, she loves many things about being from a Lebanese family and feels most herself at the after-school madrasa, the Arabic school where she is learning to play the darabuka. And whilst keeping a low profile seems to be the best solution, it does, of course, raise as many problems as it solves.
These two titles are part of the abbreviated Greek tales series. Deary has reinvigorated a selection of fables and legends for younger readers. Each title signals his own witty take on a well-known tale. In the first story, the ‘tortoise’ is not animal at all, but a brash young Greek, Cypselis, who has bet his twin sister against a goat in a race against the school bully. In a twist within a twist it looks as if Ellie will win the day. She is a faster runner and decides to take Cypselis’ place, but she has reckoned without Olympic rules… However, Deary has another surprise up his sleeve, which keeps faith with the spirit of the original fable and makes a satisfying conclusion.
These two titles are part of the abbreviated Greek tales series. Deary has reinvigorated a selection of fables and legends for younger readers. Each title signals his own witty take on a well-known tale. In the first story, the ‘tortoise’ is not animal at all, but a brash young Greek, Cypselis, who has bet his twin sister against a goat in a race against the school bully. In a twist within a twist it looks as if Ellie will win the day. She is a faster runner and decides to take Cypselis’ place, but she has reckoned without Olympic rules… However, Deary has another surprise up his sleeve, which keeps faith with the spirit of the original fable and makes a satisfying conclusion.
Towards the end of Rai’s novel the action shifts to a derelict Scottish farmhouse which Jit, the teenage narrator, describes as smelling ‘of grit and dirt and faeces’. It is a description which – not too disrespectfully, one hopes – might be applied to the novel itself, the ‘grit and dirt’ being a fair summary of its overall raw, sleazy atmosphere and the ‘faeces’ an allusion to its repeated fondness for the word’s more succinct, four-letter equivalent.
Ibby has gone to stay with her aunt and cousins, and although she likes them, she is still apprehensive. She is expecting a run-of-the-mill stay, but all that changes when she tries to find her cousin Francis, who appears to have vanished from his room.
Dale has taken the nursery favourite, ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, as her starting point for this jaunty picture book. A small boy drives a single-decker, old-fashioned style bus with built-in roof rack, around the countryside. He stops to take on various farm animals until the vehicle is crammed to capacity with baaing sheep, mooing cows, a neighing horse, clucking chickens and bleating goats and still the wheels on the bus – somewhat surprisingly – keep going round and round all day long!
Set in Warsaw during World War II, this picture book format story draws on accounts written by members of the Jewish Resistance. Two sisters, one much younger than the other, show great resourcefulness as they struggle to survive without their family amid the devastation brought about by conflict. They, with the help of others, devise an ingenious plan to bring food and other essentials to the people behind Warsaw’s Ghetto walls.
One of a series on ‘The Earth and Space’, this is a clear and accurate account in 20 spreads of the motion, history, surface appearance, structure and atmosphere of the Earth and Moon, explaining eclipses and moon phases.
‘The Elephant’s Child’ is Kipling’s explanatory myth from the Just So Stories of how the species acquired its trunk when an over-inquisitive calf got into a deadly tug of war with a crocodile to whom he’d addressed a silly question.
Dual language books are an invaluable resource as wars, the EC and migration bring more and more children whose first language is not English to our schools. Interactive technologies like the ‘TalkingPen’ are very useful aids to language learning but most important are books and stories that engage and hold the learners’ attention.
Set in Umbria in 1316, this story describes a series of baffling murders in and around Italian monastic life. With the main plot developing at a leisurely pace, and each chapter bearing its own mini-title (‘Red-handed’, ‘Poison in the air’) there is a distinct 19th-century air to this story, almost as if the ghost of Wilkie Collins had decided to join in as well.
Carol Ann Duffy is alone in winning both the most important prize for adult poetry (T S Eliot prize) and for children’s poetry (Signal Poetry prize).
Her latest collection of poems, The Hat, along with her other collections of poems for children, puts her firmly in the company of Rossetti, Blake, R L Stevenson and Carroll. Like her predecessors, she has the gift of being able to enter the hidden world of childhood where the senses are most acute and the landscape combines reality and the imagination.
Thompson has provided a sequel to the quietly intriguing and award-winning The New Policeman, a contemporary fantasy concerning a young Irish fiddler’s adventures in Tir na n’Og. In the latest book, JJ Liddy has grown up as feckless as ever, and is struggling to keep his family together on the proceeds of his musicianship while he awaits, year after year, a promised delivery of magical violin wood from fairyland.
The ‘Worst Boy’ of the title is Will, second of a crop of boys in a busy family: so busy that it’s hard for him to have anyone listen to his problems. However Grandpa, a lighthouse-keeper, proves a willing sounding board, always ready to top Will’s stories with one of his own as they polish the lamp. Soon Will realises that problems need to be kept in proportion and that his are not so big after all.
An introduction to Christianity, its history, beliefs and traditions, generously illustrated with maps, photographs and diagrams. Organised thematically, rather than in true encyclopedic format, there are chapters on Church worship and festivals, the Christian Church in different parts of the world, as well as a useful section on issues facing the Church today, such as medical debate and euthanasia, fundamentalism and Church unity.
The beautiful young Alessandra, daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, is to pose for a celebratory portrait by the young Arnaldo in preparation for her marriage to an almost senile old man. Arnaldo first arrives prepared to murder Lorenzo and avenge his father and family who were wiped out by the Medicis but over time he comes to both admire Lorenzo and love Alessandra.
From time to time a book crops up that needs several visits to realise its potential. This is an offbeat story, where a small boy discovers he is able to make decisions to affect his own daily life, to defeat his demons.
‘When a man’s youth has been kicked and starved out of him, it can’t be put back.’ It is with this reflection that we leave Yuri at the end of Fine’s superb novel, having followed him on a journey in which all innocence has had to be shed, even to the extent that now he wants ‘to get away from my new self.’ While no specific countries or historical epochs are named, parallels between the boy’s story and certain events of the 20th-century Soviet Union will strike some readers, but it is the wider, more allegorical, applications of that story that are really at the novel’s centre.
The awful murder of a girl mirrors similar murders in another part of Germany. We have the tight group of friends, Jenna, Caro and Merle, who become involved in subsequent events as these impinge on their world, Jenna’s successful crime-writer mother, the thoughtful detective and the murderer himself (not so much of a mystery given the book’s title).
A remarkable story of courage and resistance during WWII, when a group of young Jewish people in a village in Czechoslovakia created a secret newspaper. What began as a way of keeping in touch with friends with poems, photos and jokes became a powerful means of uniting a community.
Set in the hustle bustle of an Indian market, this story of a little girl who sets off with some pocket money to spend is told in rhyme with strongly coloured illustrations depicting her meandering through the closely packed stalls. She thinks of things she might buy: ‘A face-mask, odd and weird?/ A false moustache or beard?/ A ball? A pot? A basket? Or a bun?
The two friends are Rachel and Sam, the narrator, and the summer is their 17th. After the girls arrive in France to stay en famille, with the ostensible aim of improving their French, Sam discovers that this is going to be a summer of discovery, and one of change. And not all the discoveries and changes are to her taste. In fact, it is quite a shock when timid Rachel is allocated the much more sophisticated family with a glamorous daughter who has a very active social life. But the bigger shock comes when Sam’s avowed ambition of snogging some gorgeous French boys is not so easy to achieve, and it is Rachel who gets snogged – and rather more.
A warlike desert people, the Alds, have invaded the once-peaceful city, which used to be known as Ansul the Wise and Beautiful. The young heroine of the book, Memer, is the daughter of an Ansul woman and an Ald attacker. Although her mother is now dead, she has survived in the house of Galvamand, where her mother used to work for one of the city’s wise Waylords. Galvamand holds a secret: a hidden room, housing a precious library, including many volumes rescued during the siege. Only the Waylord and Memer can enter it and they act as keepers for the city’s history and hopes, securing books which the people continue to bring to them.
Readers of Rosoff’s previous books, How I Live Now and Just In Case, will know what a disturbing writer she is, and how disconcertingly she shifts the perspectives of time, place, reality and human relationships from those we are used to. What I Was maintains her remarkable gift for turning human life into an unfamiliar event. A disaffected 16-year-old boy, already expelled from two schools, is sent to a third, a minor public school on the Suffolk coast. One afternoon, on a cross-country run, he passes a dilapidated shack only yards from the sea, and at once becomes infatuated with its sole occupier, a boy his own age who has dropped out of society and lives a marginal existence by fishing and casual work. This is the story of their relationship in the following winter and its aftermath.
The experience of seeing a barn owl for the first time is narrated by a little girl whose grandfather has put a nest-box high in an old oak tree. When, after patient waiting, the owl landed just beside the hiding place she could have ‘reached out to touch its velvety softness’. There are some illuminating verbal images: when it raises its wings for flight the owl is ‘like an angel’ and its gleaming white face resembles ‘a pearly heart’. Atmospheric pictures show the barn owl in its night-time environment and there are telling vignettes of the little girl and her Grandpa as they sit on a tree trunk waiting for the owl to appear.
The fairy tale has been fortunate in recent years in attracting serious attention from major thinkers who have unpacked the manifold meanings of the genre in studies with a broad cultural and intellectual sweep. Prominent among these are Marina Warner and Jack Zipes. Zipes, Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, has produced a string of thought-provoking books, from Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (first published in 1983 and now thoroughly revised for a 2nd edition) to his most recent, Why Fairy Tales Stick.