Issue No. 167 - November 2007
Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration by Polly Dunbar is from David Almond’s My Dad’s a Birdman. David Almond writes about his new book. Thanks to Walker Books for their help with this November cover.
Articles In This Issue
The Commission for Racial Equality has said that Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo, first published in 1931, depicts ‘hideous racial prejudice’. The comment came after a member of the public who came across the strip cartoon book in a branch of Borders complained: ‘I was aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people as baboons or monkeys, bowing before a white teenager and speaking like retarded children.’
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David Almond on his new novel
The winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1998 for his novel Skellig, David Almond is well known for his intensely imagined magic realist novels for older readers. Now with My Dad’s a Birdman, a novel for younger readers, he has begun to write books that require collaboration with an illustrator. How did it come about? David Almond explains.
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Publisher of children’s fiction, picture books and poetry at OUP from 1979 to 2000, Ron Heapy is now retired. Here, he recalls and celebrates the people and the books that form the unique contribution to children’s literature made by Oxford University Press Children’s Books.
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‘I’m already thinking what’s going to happen in the new Harry Potter’: Novels in the Middle Years
Previously in this series, Alison Kelly and Prue Goodwin explored the range of reading material that children meet in the middle years. The focus of this article is on the importance of novels, read both privately and in school. Fiona Collins discusses.
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To celebrate Astrid Lindgren’s contribution to ‘furthering the right of children to have a rich inner life’, the Swedish government set up the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award which is presented to all who carry on this work ‘with imagination and empathy… and the highest artistic quality’. Julia Eccleshare discusses this year’s winner.
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Mini Grey interviewed by Joanna Carey
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Newly appointed the fifth Children’s Laureate, the poet Michael Rosen will be reporting on his experiences throughout his laureateship. Here is his first log.
MORE »Dear Editor,
Your reviewer, Brycchan Carey, evidently takes a dim view of my novel Rebel Cargo (BfK No. 166). Fair enough. What is unfair is his claim that I ‘set out to write a pirate book to capitalise on the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and then changed ... intentions halfway through to capitalise on the interest in slavery generated by the bicentenary commemorations’. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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When six-year-old Hal makes mistakes with his literacy homework he gets furious if he is corrected. His father, psychodynamic counsellor Roger Mills, wonders why.
MORE »Chosen by Year 5 (9–10 year-old) members of the Readers and Writers Club, Trafalgar Junior School, Twickenham, Middlesex.
Thanks to Richard Smith, Deputy Headmaster.
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Brian Alderson
Carols, Rhymes, and Christmas Bells for…
The Tailor of Gloucester
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
This square, small format picture book exudes energy and confidence and is full of pictorial jokes. At the same time, it is an understanding depiction, a self help manual almost, for small children who are scared to venture out into the world and make friends because they fear, like Scaredy Squirrel, that it is a frightening place where they could encounter someone dangerous – a piranha perhaps or Godzilla – who will bite them.
Narrated in the first person by 14-year-old Colin, this urban fantasy is set in multi-racial Hackney. Colin, who is 4’ 10” and sounds like a girl, has a hard time with his peers. Every trip to school has to be planned like a military operation – will his friend Polly be at the bus stop? Should he disappear into the newsagents and hide until it is safe? Clover is good at depicting the tension and territoriality with which a stretch of pavement can be imbued. Added to his other problems, Colin is psychic – he can see things before they happen, including the bomb that explodes in Clissold Park.
I am usually dubious about books that claim to tell the story of ‘real’ children’s lives around the world. It is too easy to get sucked into stereotyping or, worse, into adapting authentic voices so that they no longer ring true.
The Asian Peoples’ Disability Alliance is an organisation set up by Asian people with disabilities to provide health, education and social services to other Asian people and their families. This booklet introduces Raj who has asthma but who wants desperately to play cricket. An over-protective mum won’t allow it, so Raj spends hours daydreaming about his hero, Anish Patel. A school project involving letter writing to pen pals has Raj writing off to Patel and ultimately meeting him at a special assembly which Patel attends in answer to Raj’s letter. It seems he has asthma too and convinces Raj and his mum that Raj will be able to play cricket. It cannot be said this is a good book. Predictable and unimaginative, it will still do exactly what it intends – help young boys with asthma learn that they can participate in sport. And the bright comic-style illustrations will appeal to them. Information for parents is provided at the bottom of each page in English and three Asian languages.
From the first page of Hooper’s new novel, the reader is transported back to Elizabethan England. Lucy leaves home afraid of her drunken father and resolves to go to London and seek employment which she finds by chance when she rescues a child from the river. As a result of this rescue Lucy becomes nursemaid in the household of Dr John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court magician. John Dee dabbles in the occult and Lucy, desperate for money to give her mother who is about to be made homeless, agrees to impersonate the dead daughter of Lord Vaizey who is heartbroken over her death. When she appears, wraith-like in the churchyard, Lucy feels compelled to say more than she should and then dreams of a plot of kill Elizabeth I. Her ambition to become a lady in waiting is dashed by her lowly birth but the book ends with her becoming a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, leading neatly to a sequel or two.
From the author of the Hex trilogy comes a thriller/horror story for mid to late teen readers who like a bit of a shiver.
When Peter and Harriet marry, each brings two children to the marriage and expects them to bond into one family unit. The two argumentative daughters, both preferring to be called Cat, ensure that the bond will never stick.
One of a series on the ‘Energy Debate’. The various forms of biomass energy, means for their production and utilization, their costs, and the consequences for the environment are discussed in detail.
Three cheers for Franklin Watts for celebrating not just women but British women, as well as men of course, in this series of collected biographies, each title concentrating on a different area such as engineering, science, music or sport.
Like the other titles in this series on lifecycles, Cat is a traditional early information book. On the left hand side of each double spread we have simple text in clear print and on the right appropriate illustrations.
Beware the school trip to the zoo! Risk assessment these days may not consider that giant snake, huge reptile, twisty beast, the anaconda, ‘his smile as wide as a crocodile’. ‘They didn’t see that greedy eater, gulp down Gerty and Anita.’ A cautionary tale, it bounces along, begging to be read aloud.
This new series from Barrington Stoke is classified by them as ‘Non-fiction for 10-14s, reading age 8+’. Escape from Colditz is the best of the three by far. It tells of the escape of two Dutch Officers from the prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle in 1941. It is not clear why Dutch Officers were chosen as there were escapes by British personnel that might be more relevant to the prospective audience for these books, but it is a tale of courage and adventure. Their story is clearly told with short chapters with the trademark paper and font of Barrington Stoke books. The illustrations are very black and depict caricatures of Germans, monocles and all. There is a plan of the castle but no map to show the scale of the journey to freedom which faced the escapees.
This compact, funny and often moving novel is the story of an unlikely friendship. David, aged nine, is motherless. A freak accident killed his mother: she slipped and fell because someone broke a safety rule and failed to post a warning about wet floors. Trapped in a private world of bereavement, David now compulsively obeys all rules (with the exception of obedience to the loving grandmother who now cares for him) believing that if he sticks to enough rules for enough time his mother will one day come back. Primrose, who is 13, is also motherless in her way, being the daughter of a scatty fortune-teller from whom Primrose is so alienated that she has set up an independent household in an antiquated van. They meet first in a wood, where David, seeking refuge from an Easter egg hunt, finds Primrose under a pile of leaves pretending to be a corpse. When they meet again under scarcely less unorthodox circumstances, they strike up a tempestuous friendship which helps the emotional needs of each of them until, at the end, life re-starts properly for both.
An attractive publication that, in the words of the blurb, ‘… touches lightly on the themes of loss, adoption and integration’. A baby elephant is separated from his herd in the chaos of a sudden storm.
This is one of a series on ‘21st-century Science’. The main forms and sources of energy and their advantages and disadvantages are clearly and succinctly described in a series of usefully-illustrated spreads.
This new series from Barrington Stoke is classified by them as ‘Non-fiction for 10-14s, reading age 8+’. Escape from Colditz is the best of the three by far. It tells of the escape of two Dutch Officers from the prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle in 1941. It is not clear why Dutch Officers were chosen as there were escapes by British personnel that might be more relevant to the prospective audience for these books, but it is a tale of courage and adventure. Their story is clearly told with short chapters with the trademark paper and font of Barrington Stoke books. The illustrations are very black and depict caricatures of Germans, monocles and all. There is a plan of the castle but no map to show the scale of the journey to freedom which faced the escapees.
Check Fearless out on the web and you’ll find a talking head of Tim Lott speaking en passan of two of his favourite authors, Orwell and Wilde. So it is no surprise that denizens of the City which is the setting for this novel gaze at ‘vidscreens’ as they sip their ‘narcobevs’, or that statues weep and there is ‘the sound of a human heart breaking’. Such echoes – and maybe others of writers such as Atwood and Huxley – enrich this fable for our times. Fearless could be classed as yet another dystopia for the young, a genre which threatens to rival high fantasy in its headlong expansion. (If future critics share the French scholar Paul Hazard’s 1932 notion that a culture’s values can be discerned in its children’s books of the period, what will they make of the noughties?) However, such a categorisation is too limited, for Tim Lott’s first novel for young adult readers is also permeated by Fairy Tale – a heroine sets out on her quest three times, a bottle is filled by 12,703 tears precisely, nursery rhymes become evil incantations in the mouth of a witch-like villain. There is oblique political and social commentary upon our own times running alongside Truths about the Human Condition; at the climax of the tale, a mystical seer asserts, ‘We should worship one another. We should worship our sameness as well as our uniqueness. We should worship what makes us truly human. Compassion. Courage. And truth.’
Until its tremendous climax with the death of Dumbledore, much of the sixth book in the Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, seemed to be treading water: compulsive page-turner though it is, it does not advance the story in proportion to its length. That could never be said of this seventh and concluding volume, which brings the whole astonishing phenomenon of Harry Potter to a splendid close. The book is not in any sense free-standing; it depends on the reader’s prior knowledge of the entire series, and especially that flawed sixth book. But the quality of this final episode is extraordinary even by Rowling’s highest earlier standards. The pace, dexterity and ingenious showmanship of Rowling’s management of twists, turns, surprises, flashbacks, and mini-climax after mini-climax in this spellbinding story merit a job on the Hogwarts staff as Professor of Magical Yarnspinning.
On the eve of her 13th birthday, Hazel Mull-Dare is precocious and feisty, but her sheltered background in London as the daughter of a business man ‘in Sugar’, has left her ignorant of much of what is happening in the world, and in particular of the impact of the suffragette movement. Her innocence is shaken by the sight of a suffragette trampled by a horse at the races, a friendship with an older and much more worldly school companion, and the impact of her father’s failing business interests, all of which make her question what is happening around her. Her mother is Ivy, the protagonist of Hearn’s last novel, who has ‘married up’, but who is more concerned with her rescued dogs than with her daughter, and who, following a family crisis, sends Hazel off to her paternal grandparents on their sugar plantation in the Caribbean. Here Hazel is confronted with more matters she does not fully understand, but which she determines to unravel.
Hmmm, an odd mishmash, this book. Teddy whizzes about trying to get Grandma on the phone, but gets various wrong numbers, of animal friends who are too busy to talk. At last he finds out that they are all invited to Grandma’s birthday celebration, except for the crocodile who has other ideas for his tea…
Cadi is a black and white cat with very green eyes who lives at no 1, Abernant Lane, somewhere in Wales. Being a sociable sort, she likes to visit her neighbours each morning, and as she does so, we meet a diverse lot of interesting people.
All the ingredients of a Greek tragedy are in this very good historical novel set in fifteenth-century England where Anna, who is 14 and known as the Flower of Hollylaw, gives herself in marriage to Hawk Jankin to save her family’s castle and its inhabitants from more bloodshed. Her maid Thomasin is tasked to kill Hawk but fails and there follows a bloody massacre of the castle’s inhabitants in which Anna is presumed killed. Instead she is badly burned and saved by the nuns believing all the while that her beloved Thomasin is dead too. But Thomasin who thinks Anna is dead has been saved by Jankin’s henchman Falcon, and is taken in by a farming family. Jankin himself is so overcome by the thought of what he has done that he throws himself down High Crag Linn but survives badly hurt. The scene is set then for Jankin’s working towards the discovery of Anna’s survival, her discovery that Thomasin too has survived, and Jankin being forgiven at the end.
When it comes to the insightful selection of pictures likely to lead to observations and questions from the very young, few rival Lucy Micklethwait. This latest addition to the ‘I Spy’ series presents fourteen interesting paintings and invites children to find a particular coloured object in each one.
Our much-loved friend, the Little Princess, is back, enjoying her bedtime story but afraid of what might appear when the light goes out – cue customary view of her tonsils! Various members of the royal household try to reassure her, until the maid convinces her that ghosts must be very tiny and probably scared too. With this cheerful thought she is well-prepared to boo the inevitable apparition which, of course, is much more scared than she is.
Although Igraine is the daughter of great magicians, she would rather be sorting out the world through knightly endeavours, battling against gender stereotypes and the family tradition which her older brother, Albert, has followed.
A wide-ranging and exuberant book on chemistry, beginning with a brief history of the subject, from the Greeks to the twentieth-century discovery of atomic structure. The text is amply illustrated in DK style. Following the history there are spreads on the periodic table and the big-bang formation of elements, and then a main section on some common elements and their compounds, and on the constitution of animals, water, food, light sources and some toxic materials. A final section lists all the elements, group by group, with brief summaries of history, naming, properties and uses.
Six lovely, short, episodic stories about only child Jamie and his ‘best friend’ Angus, a cuddly woolly toy Highland Bull, This book is a marvellous follow-up to The Jamie and Angus Stories.
Paulo stands on the shore, playing his little wooden flute. He loves music, finding song in all he sees and listens to in the natural world. King Ocean hears his playing, and, curious, sends his dolphins to bring Paulo to him.
Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were small, eating in each other’s homes, playing childhood games of weddings and being together forever, creating a fantasy Glassworld where only they can go. But now they are older, and though Sylvie’s feelings for Carl are changing from childhood adoration to the beginnings of a more sexual kind of love, he seems to be moving away from her. For the first time, they are separated and Carl often talks about Tom, the sporting hero at his all-boys grammar school, whilst quiet, small Sylvie, almost 14, is surprised to find that the gorgeous Miranda wants to take her under her wing.
Little Grey, being a squirrel, is a ‘gatherer’, and when he asks the ultimate question of his grandmother, ‘What do you know of the Great Mystery from where we all come?’, Old Grey tells him that it is ‘a very large wondering’ and that he should go out and ‘gather some answers’.
Nine adults tell their stories of having cancer as children and surviving. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, rhabdomyosarcoma, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, chondrosarcoma, ganglioneuroblastoma, and malignant brain tumour are discussed in some detail.
Kipper is out collecting conkers when he discovers a cat stuck up a tree. Various means are employed to help the cat get down but it won’t budge. Then it decides to come down by itself. I turned the last page of this book expecting the story to continue.
Ponies, a strong-willed heroine, the Essex coast, clear-cut moral values and a rapid storyline: K M Peyton may have been here before (many times, indeed, over more than 60 years of publication and as many novels), but she remains thoroughly readable. Now she offers the first of a trilogy of ‘Roman Pony Adventures’.
I read a lot of funny books. I read ones that make my classes laugh. It is genuinely rare to read books that make me laugh out loud as I read, but Mr Gum has done it every time.
Stanton continues to take readers to a little Britain of bizarre characters, such as Alan Taylor, the gingerbread-man Headteacher and Friday O’Leary, the wise man who can be truly stupid.
You will remember that in David Almond’s Skellig, there was a man with wings who lived in the garage and ate insects: perhaps a tramp, perhaps an angel. In this story for younger readers, Dad believes he is a bird.
Australian storyteller Eric Maddern gives a spirited retelling of the classic trickster story in which a penniless vagrant offers to share soup made from a single rusty nail with his host, while at the same time artfully wheedling sufficient ingredients to turn a pot of iron gruel into a banquet. Maddern’s take on this has an eloquent, raffish traveller arriving at dusk on the doorstep of a lone and surly housewife, who gradually warms to the stranger’s mouth-watering patter, and ends up sharing the humble riches of her larder with him. This is, of course, a tale of seduction and deceit, and Maddern feels impelled to add a postscript arguing for the tale’s underlying humanity. Paul Hess’s full page, colourful and humorous illustrations convey this more effectively, filling the book with the cosy radiance of growing camaraderie and shared, succulent fantasy between rogue and hostess as the ingredients swell the pot.
Ninnyhammer is the local village simpleton, but young Peter Frost suspects there’s more to him than that. Peter is right: Ninnyhammer is a magician and the white stick that Peter fishes out of the stream is the magic wand which the magician has lost. Ninnyhammer is so grateful that he starts to help Peter and his family with their struggling farm, magically making the cows, hens and pigs more productive. In return Peter’s family see Ninnyhammer in a new light and from being shunned by the local community, this simple, kindly man is now welcomed to stay at the Frost’s farm, to live.
This story about good friends Takadu the aardvark and Noko the porcupine is set in Africa. Takadu plans a surprise birthday party for Noko and sends out invitations to the other animals – everyone, that is, apart from Greedy Hyena because he’s so bad-mannered.
Tilly and Lizzie are identical twins so far as appearance is concerned but, like many siblings, totally differ in character. Throughout the book, which is thoughtfully divided into chapters just the right length for beginning readers, we learn about the twins, how they do share certain things, and how they patch things up after a quarrel.
The author has used not so much a scalpel as a large shovel to write this book, continually heaping work-a-day language onto a fiery plot which keeps blazing away until the last page. The story describes how Paul, a gormless 17-year-old, gets mixed up with a mildly criminal protest group which accidentally becomes more than interesting to government forces out to keep state secrets.
Agatha Bilke, the world’s most awful child, is admitted to the Rottington Hospital where she engages in a series of situations as horrible as the girl herself – including ambulance stealing and a particularly gut-wrenching piece of surgery. She also falls in love.
From the moment that Ben opens his present and discovers Penguin, we can see how delighted he is with his new friend. Yet Penguin himself is unmoved. Ben tickles Penguin, he pulls faces, he sings songs and dances, but Penguin looks solemnly, never moving a muscle, never blinking an eye.
Nine-year-old free spirit, Pippi, who lives with a complete lack of adult supervision, was the creation of Swedish feminist, Astrid Lindgren. Lindgren was born in 1907 and died in 2002, having written the first four of the eleven Pippi books in the 1940s. Her books have been translated into 91 languages and sold 145 million copies worldwide. Pippi’s appeal to young children is her very unconventional and assertive personality. She is rich and extraordinarily strong, being able to lift her horse one-handed with ease. She frequently makes fun of and tricks the adults she does encounter, especially the most pompous and patronising ones.
Any bibliophile fortunate enough to live in this labyrinthine city will appreciate that there are at least as many stories as bricks in its two towns and modest spread of suburbs. This small book, dense with historical information, quotations from children’s fiction, photos, drawings and bold, simplified maps, does an excellent job of compressing at least a sample of these stories between its pages.
This title is one of a series on ‘Documenting the Past’, supported by extensive extracts from original documents. There are astronomers, chemists, physicists, geologists and biologists: 21 main characters, including Marie Curie, Darwin, Einstein, Faraday, Hawking, Hubble, Mendel and Pasteur.
Now out in paperback, this favourite book about the seaside is excellent value for money and deserves a place on the science shelf in the primary school library. It would also enrich a family outing to the sea. There is comprehensive coverage of the topic; the 15 sections include: Tides turning, Sea shells, Seabirds, Flotsam and jetsam, and Under the water. The folklore of the sea is covered in a section on Mermaids and pirates and there is good input on Seaside safety and on Pollution.
Juvenile secret agent Jack Stalwart, is on a personal globetrotting mission to find his missing older brother Max. Jack’s parents think Max is safe in a posh school in Switzerland. Little do they know that Max (also a secret agent) has disappeared and that Jack is trying to find him.
This is a super picture book to share with the very young – perfect for learning the names of farmyard animals and the sounds they make. It’s delightfully illustrated – I love the expressions on some of the animals’ faces – and the equally delightful storyline is simply told in a straightforward style.
Winter is coming and the first snowflakes are falling in the small rural American community where the action of this highly atmospheric novel occurs. Some 11 years after the kidnapping and killing of a small child called Clarence memories of the event still linger and are brought into particularly sharp focus with fears that the perpetrator of the crime and of similar more recent ones is once more on the loose.
Typically, modern developmental psychology focuses on experimental methods. Another, less well-used path, is to dive into case studies where a wealth of information can be gleaned simply through a mix of introspection and directed questioning.
This warm and light-hearted story draws the reader into a world that is anarchic and self-contained, and filled with eccentric characters. Keira is helping Aunt Emily run her pet shop during the summer holidays and becomes friends with an assortment of oddball pets who live together happily as an extended family. But everything changes when social climber Mrs Fysshe-Pye and her long-suffering son Ryan burst on the scene. Mrs Fysshe-Pye has just bought the castle overlooking the village and comes to the pet shop to pick out some showy animals to fill the gloomy and soulless rooms. Reluctantly Emily agrees to the sale of an enormously furry and brainy cat, an amiable parrot from the Amazonian rainforest and a faint-hearted scrap of a dog – thereby triggering a sequence of events that become ever more delightful, absurd and exciting. The story is endlessly quirky, and the ending just right and in keeping with the good-natured world that the author creates so effortlessly.
It doesn’t take long to realise that the title is ironic and that these are not boys’ own adventurers but a strange and numeric alliance of misfits, members of a radical new religion founded by the charismatic Jeremiah.
Ingenious paper engineering has breathed life into information books in the last decade or so. But the visual surprises that spring to life as children turn the pages have to be to some point. This exciting pop-up guide to how our bodies digest food scores well here; the three dimensional structures that come into being with pulls or tugs and the copious verbal and visual jokes are combined with the sort of information that encourages thinking.
The complicated background to the disputes between Scotland’s religious factions is the setting for this gripping and well told story of hatred and lack of forgiveness observed by one who knows what it is to suffer these emotions. William de Lacey of The Highwayman’s Footsteps, and his friend Bess discover a body and an injured boy after seeking refuge from the Redcoats who are pursuing them, and while trying to find the boy’s home become involved in a feud going back generations, fuelled by a grandmother’s undying hatred. The family eke out a living from the poor land of Galloway in the late eighteenth century, supplemented by smuggling, and threatened by Douglas Murdoch and his clan. Will and Bess become embroiled in this feud, Bess even more so by the mutual attraction between her and Calum.
Full of the sort of detail that children in Key Stage Two will really enjoy, The Ladybird Code chronicles the adventures and mishaps that befall Minnie Piper all along the way towards her eleventh birthday party.
This new series from Barrington Stoke is classified by them as ‘Non-fiction for 10-14s, reading age 8+’. Escape from Colditz is the best of the three by far. It tells of the escape of two Dutch Officers from the prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle in 1941. It is not clear why Dutch Officers were chosen as there were escapes by British personnel that might be more relevant to the prospective audience for these books, but it is a tale of courage and adventure. Their story is clearly told with short chapters with the trademark paper and font of Barrington Stoke books. The illustrations are very black and depict caricatures of Germans, monocles and all. There is a plan of the castle but no map to show the scale of the journey to freedom which faced the escapees.
Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark have been compiling anthologies for OUP for many years now. Their anthologies usually have a selection of good poetry – if a little safe at times – and are beautifully produced.
Lady Lamorna wants a new robe and sets off to obtain one by foul means, accompanied by a troll. At the same time a young girl sets off from her cruel, evil captor parents, in the company of a chatty bat. A scruffy prince also sets off on his quest. What follows is an intricate criss-crossing of pathways that could so easily have resulted in confusion, but French’s characters are so distinctive and their conversation so individualised that young readers will be guided through the conundrum, both understanding and enjoying the journey. The episodic pace and well defined characterisation reminded me of some of Philip Ridley’s helter skelter modern tales.
Despite an opening which tries to hook you with the promise of old-fashioned ‘orror, this novel is packed with invention and gives a thought-provoking view of genetic experimentation and Darwinian evolution in a future world gone badly wrong, with Jurassic Park -like raptors and human-evolved rodents as dominant species.
Children familiar with the Narnia tales, whether through print or film, will find much to recognise here: a Secret Country, Eidolon, reached through a mundane portal, talking animals, a family, some members of whom are royalty in the parallel world and so on. There is even a Narnian prophecy in rhyme, foretelling Eidolon’s rescue through the three Arnold children. Wickedness in this case is represented by the Dodman, a fearsome dog-headed man, and his grisly cohorts: goblins, giantess and ghost-dogs. Johnson has great fun with these characters and their exhibitions of cartoonish greed and stupidity.
‘“According to the lex Aelia Sentia, which was instituted in the reign of Augustus, freed slaves under the age of thirty become Junian Latins.”
“What is June Latins?” asked Nubia.
Landscape, legend and lore ground these additions to the ‘Wardstone Chronicles’ firmly in traditions that lend them weight and significance. Following the course of Thomas Ward’s apprenticeship in The Spook’s Secret, the reader is made aware of the conflicts that arise when personal motivations and opportunities are forfeited to follow the lonely, isolated vocation of a Spook. Disclosure of the Spook’s past emphasises his humanity and some of his failings, meaning Thomas begins to doubt and question some of his tutor’s guidance and advice. Concurrent to this is an urgent attempt to prevent malign forces from being raised from beneath the moors of Anglezarke.
Landscape, legend and lore ground these additions to the ‘Wardstone Chronicles’ firmly in traditions that lend them weight and significance. Following the course of Thomas Ward’s apprenticeship in The Spook’s Secret, the reader is made aware of the conflicts that arise when personal motivations and opportunities are forfeited to follow the lonely, isolated vocation of a Spook. Disclosure of the Spook’s past emphasises his humanity and some of his failings, meaning Thomas begins to doubt and question some of his tutor’s guidance and advice. Concurrent to this is an urgent attempt to prevent malign forces from being raised from beneath the moors of Anglezarke.
The Young GeeZers are switched on to what is being done to the planet but authority figures seem oblivious and bent on immediate self-gratification despite Earth’s imminent destruction. The often violent tensions between the two are played out through the lives of three main characters with so many others in the frame that a Dramatis Personae is required.
The Bear is an unwanted Christmas present. So he’s chucked face down into the skip, at the mercy of the rain and cold winds. Passive and long-suffering, he’s still there when two visitors come by – Seagull, who becomes his friend, and Ellie, who tries unsuccessfully to rescue him. Yet there’s worse in store for him when he’s thrown onto the tip where the bulldozers are busy at work. It is only now, with Seagull injured, that he realises that he must act fast to save himself and his friend.
Perhaps the best format for tales of horror is the short story. At least that was the form often chosen by some of the masters of the macabre. Here Malorie Blackman tries her hand. She gives us a dozen nightmares wrapped up in one enveloping immediate nightmare as the central character, Kyle, on a school trip, is the only one left conscious in a train crash.
Bees are incredibly hard workers and teamwork is the key to their successful gathering of honey. Not so in this tale. SLURP! SLURP! BURP! goes the Greedy Bee as he hogs all the best nectar sites. He grows fatter and fatter until he is unable to take flight.
Greek mythology is given a new twist in this fantasy, time-slip adventure. William Popidopolis is on the tiny Greek island of Spitflos with his mum Kate, meeting his dad for the first time. He’s in his father’s taverna when a huge, balding swan waddles up to him, introducing himself as Zeus, king of the gods.
This is a child’s introduction to early twentieth-century American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887; a time when women did not have the vote and female artists were unheard of. Her parents wanted her to be an art teacher but O’Keeffe had other ideas.
Octopus loves using his tentacles to tickle everyone. The little fish think it’s fun but some of the other creatures in the sea are less than enthusiastic. One day Octopus startles a snoozing oyster with ‘a teeny tiny tickle’ and as she jumps awake, she drops her pearl which is carried away by the current. Octopus assures poor oyster that he’ll get it back for her and sets off in hot pursuit.
You might feel some ambivalence about entering a story which, the writer confides before you’ve even got to the first page, ‘arose out of a time of personal difficulty and pain’. Hold on, Sherryl, we’ve only just met. It turns out, however, that this epic fantasy needs no special pleading.
Underneath St Sebastian’s High School lies a medieval plague pit teeming with restless ghosts. Their ringleader is the hideous ghoul Edith Codd, who does her utmost to get the school closed down. Pitted against her and her cronies are a trio of students: James, always on the lookout for ghosts; Alexander, the brainy joker and headmaster’s son; and Lenny, the strong and gentle animal-lover. Caught between the two factions is young William, also a ghost, who, in his efforts at friendship with the trio, does his best to scupper Edith’s destructive plans.
Underneath St Sebastian’s High School lies a medieval plague pit teeming with restless ghosts. Their ringleader is the hideous ghoul Edith Codd, who does her utmost to get the school closed down. Pitted against her and her cronies are a trio of students: James, always on the lookout for ghosts; Alexander, the brainy joker and headmaster’s son; and Lenny, the strong and gentle animal-lover. Caught between the two factions is young William, also a ghost, who, in his efforts at friendship with the trio, does his best to scupper Edith’s destructive plans.
Underneath St Sebastian’s High School lies a medieval plague pit teeming with restless ghosts. Their ringleader is the hideous ghoul Edith Codd, who does her utmost to get the school closed down. Pitted against her and her cronies are a trio of students: James, always on the lookout for ghosts; Alexander, the brainy joker and headmaster’s son; and Lenny, the strong and gentle animal-lover. Caught between the two factions is young William, also a ghost, who, in his efforts at friendship with the trio, does his best to scupper Edith’s destructive plans.
Underneath St Sebastian’s High School lies a medieval plague pit teeming with restless ghosts. Their ringleader is the hideous ghoul Edith Codd, who does her utmost to get the school closed down. Pitted against her and her cronies are a trio of students: James, always on the lookout for ghosts; Alexander, the brainy joker and headmaster’s son; and Lenny, the strong and gentle animal-lover. Caught between the two factions is young William, also a ghost, who, in his efforts at friendship with the trio, does his best to scupper Edith’s destructive plans.
Uncle Montague’s tales, told to his nephew Edgar, are strung together in an evening’s telling. Over the course of the evening these chillers include tales of hauntings, talismans and curses that are truly reminiscent of those old Hammer Horror portmanteau films. Like the portmanteau the stories lead to a realisation that the very act of narration is, itself, part of a horror story. Yet if they bear similarity to Hammer, they also resemble the older tradition of chiller found in Edgar Allan Poe and M R James. Blood and gore are kept at bay. These stories are the sort of winter night tales where the very ideas grab the reader.
This is an updated version of a 2002 ‘Toolkit for Life’ aimed at boys. Here are facts and sound advice about sex, relationships, health, substances and much more told in a direct and blokey style. It doesn’t go for sensation and it doesn’t preach. A word much used is respect: for yourself, for those you love including your parents and for those you want to get closer to including girls. It is very life affirming and not afraid to encourage boys to talk or think about the things boys tend to find it hard to express.
With its metallic embossed type and stark design, this menacing-looking volume drew gasps of admiration from a clutch of 10-year-old boys who gathered round to discuss its merits. The poster tucked inside the front cover was deemed to be ‘cool’ and the paper engineering declared an added bonus.
Wasim Ahmed is football mad. In fact, the whole school is football mad now that they are participating in Team 10,000 – a scheme in which children, nationally, are taught by a professional coach. The only thing that mars Wasim’s excitement is Robert Bailey, a bullying brute of a lad who makes his life a misery.
Wormell’s linocut technique seems to get better and better. This elegantly designed production sees the author’s deceptively simple images used to describe a range of well-known and less well-known dinosaurs, a subject well suited to this muscular medium.