Issue No. 168 - January 2008
Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration by Andy Bridge is from Sally Grindley’s Broken Glass. Sally Grindley is interviewed by Clive Barnes. Thanks to Bloomsbury for their help with this January cover.
Articles In This Issue
In a fascinating report * on research into children’s cognitive development carried out since 1967, the crucial role of pretend play in helping children understand cognition itself is emphasised. Researchers Usha Goswami of the University of Cambridge and Peter Bryant of the University of Oxford describe pretend play as the ‘earliest manifestation of a child’s developing ability to characterise their own cognitive relation to knowledge’.
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Children’s books are usually regarded with affection and the assumption is made that they are likely to do more good to the world than harm. There is a fondness for books that other children’s products, such as toys and clothing, will never quite emulate. But does their production contribute to harming the environment? And how ethical are children’s publishers? Caroline Horn investigates.
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Texts and choices: reading non-fiction in the middle years
The range of reading material that children meet in the middle years includes non-fiction texts. What is the role of non-fiction and what motivates young readers to choose it? Suzanne Maile discusses.
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Do primary teachers read for pleasure themselves? How much do they know about children’s fiction, poetry and picture books? And how do they introduce such books into their classrooms? Teresa Cremin, Eve Bearne, Prue Goodwin and Marilyn Mottram report on their research into these topics as members of the United Kingdom Literacy Association Children’s Literature Special Interest Group.
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The idea that there are seven basic plots that recur in every kind of storytelling from myth to soap opera has long been accepted and indeed it was argued in depth by Christopher Booker in his book The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories. But is plot really the essence of storytelling? Neil Philip challenges this premise and puts forward another way of thinking about the function of story.
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The Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, describes his hectic schedule and reports on progress with his Laureateship ideas.
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Sally Grindley interviewed by Clive Barnes
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New tactics were needed when six-year-old Hal became demoralised on encountering difficult words. His father, psychodynamic counsellor Roger Mills, describes how he changed his approach when listening to Hal read.
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‘That Brave Company of Shadows’ surrounding A Traveller in Time
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
Gallico’s The Snow Goose was first published in 1941 and culminates in the death of its hero, the ‘hunchback’ artist Philip Rhayader, at the evacuation of Dunkirk after many suc
Illustrated with his own line drawings, Milway’s The Mousehunter is a first novel of the most ambitious scope (and length). Incident is heaped upon incident as the plot becomes more and more convoluted and what seemed to make sense is once more undermined as events gallop off in a new and unexpected direction. Set in the town of Midina and on the piratical high seas, this unhistorical fantasy has a sort of 17th-century feel about it yet the people of Midina, embrace, in all seriousness, a mouse culture in which Mousekeepers are employed and the different species are collected by enthusiasts who all refer to ‘The Mousehunter’s Almanac’ written by collector Isiah Lovelock, the most powerful citizen of Midina.
Kate’s two dogs, brought home from the Rescue Centre, couldn’t be more different. Rosy is large, soft, patient and ‘comfortable to lie on as an old sofa’. Dave, on the other hand, is small and wild, always up to mischief. Puddles on the floor and holey tights are bad enough but when Dave jumps up on a guest’s lap and wolfs down her cupcake right off the plate, Dad decides it’s time for action and calls in the Brigadier from Pup Breakers. Sporting shades, moustache and cap, the Brigadier, with his loud voice and huge slip chain, seems to lick Dave into shape. However, in the end it is the irrepressible Dave and a quiet word from Kate that persuade the Brigadier to change his ways.
This is the eighth instalment in the adventures of Georgia Nicolson – leader of the Ace Gang, devotee of the Snogging Scale and trapped in the Cake Shop of Luuurve. Fans of the series will be delighted that all the tried and tested favourites are here – the idiosyncratic language, the central characters – but Rennison keeps the formula fresh by introducing inventive hilarities and romantic dilemmas in equal measure. New readers are given a sympathetic introduction by means of the helpful appendices – my favourite is the Beginners’ Guide to the Viking Bison Disco Inferno.
This book from the banks of the Teifi presents an affectionately informative rummage through Welsh farming practice, life and lore, past and present. As Stephens perambulates the farmyard we encounter celebrations in fact, fable, picture and poem of ploughing, poultry, cattle and dairy, markets and fairs, shepherding, droving, horses and harvest. Memories sit comfortably alongside contemporary information, proverbs and riddles.
The black fraction of the British population has a long and honourable history, as has this book, which started life in 1995, was updated 10 years later and now makes it into paperback.
It gives a whistle-stop trip through the last two millennia from Roman times to the mid ’60s. ‘Windrush’ doesn’t dock until the penultimate page. So, although the reader will find nothing specific about the last 40 years, the stops along the way are full of informative interest.
Accomplished storyteller Pirotta takes us to six continents: the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia in this cultural extravaganza of traditional tales. This ancient form is in essence a script for the storyteller and in these retellings he remains close to the oral tradition, retaining the immediacy of the spoken word for the most part. All kinds of characters are featured, both human and animal, and there is a variety of moods from funny and absurd to almost spiritual. I enjoyed discovering some tales new to me such as the pourquoi tale from Paraguay telling why the toad croaks and has a lumpy back and the somewhat bizarre Hungarian tale wherein the King, to prove a point, makes his guests dine on extravagant fare while keeping their feet in bowls of water. However there are plenty of familiar favourites there as well.
Born with astonishing brain power, Baby Brains invents a helpful robot to do all the things his exhausted parents are run ragged doing. But the robot overheats and, when it washes BB with the dishes and hangs him out to dry with the clothes, he realises that a real mum and dad are much more use. A second, smaller and more controllable Robomum is the answer.
This is the third of Sam Witchall’s adventures, following on from Powder Monkey and Prison Ship, and follows Sam through his voyage back to England from Australia having been pardoned, to the finale of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The voyage through the Spice Islands has some dangerous moments but it does feel as though the story is marking time until Sam rejoins the Navy, this time as a midshipman, thanks to his friend Robert Neville’s connections, and is posted to Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory.
Here are six papers given at the International Conference of the Beatrix Potter Society in 2006. They are the work of authoritative and enthusiastic scholars. The sources of Potter’s inspiration they examine include the Lake District landscape itself (John Cawood); the antecedents of her prose style (Peter Hollindale); and the value of her books as natural history (Katherine R Chandler).
Tessa is 16 years old and dying. In this her first novel, Downham tells the story of how a teenager faces a terminal diagnosis, making a list of things she is resolved to do before she dies. Her list includes losing her virginity, shoplifting, taking drugs and being famous. Tessa’s plans involve the people surrounding her, her mother and father, her younger brother, her best friend and her boyfriend.
The young giant Boobela and wise Worm continue their high-spirited adventures in this robust collection of stories in which they discover all sorts of information about themselves and the world. On a summer outing, Boobela learns about rock pools and fossils and Worm’s family tree.
Objective realism and compassion merge in this powerful story, an indictment of greyhound racing. Patrick rescues a litter of greyhound puppies from a cruel and deliberate drowning. He instantly falls in love with one of them, which he keeps and names Best Mate. Both boy and dog flourish until the day that Best Mate is kidnapped. The dog is removed to a racing kennels where he is trained to be a champion. Life here is merciless, and the trainer, Craig, treats him as an object of profit, nothing more. Best Mate makes friends with fellow greyhound Alfie, a supreme champion who makes the days more bearable, and Suzie, the trainer’s stepdaughter. She loathes Craig for his brutality, and suspects him of killing the dogs when their racing days are over. When her suspicions are confirmed, she runs away, taking Best Mate, renamed Brighteyes, with her. Though harrowing at times, the story is skilfully resolved through happy outcomes regarding the fate of the characters while ensuring a deep emotional response from the reader.
Here’s a meadow bright with golden flowers a-humming, and here’s Butterfly Girl musing that she could pick out that song. Blue bird agrees, and begins the hum. ‘That is our song,’ snaps a bumblebee.
The fourth in the Cat Royal sequence which has taken her through a series of Regency adventures from Drury Lane through to slavery, the French Revolution and now seafaring across to the Americas. The format is the trusty same and Cat’s indomitable mould-breaking character has to deal now with the tensions first of being the elegant lady at a Bath Ball, then the press-ganged cabin-boy on His Majesty’s ship Courageous, captained by the Ahab-like Captain Barton.
Shining jewels decorate the sumptuous cover of this fictionalised biography of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. The story is told through the eyes of her young handmaiden, 10-year-old Nefret, whose diary records events in the royal palace.
Pit-bull dogs are about to be banned because they are thought to be too dangerous when Mackenzie, who has very little going for him, is given a pit-bull puppy called Cash. With something to love and care for, Mackenzie’s life is changed until his father, after a row, takes Cash and dumps him.
Farm boys Ottar and Ketil join a Viking ship. As blood-brothers, they have sworn to protect each other, but life among the Vikings tests their friendship to the limit. If they cannot stand strong together, their bodies may be left on the battlefield to feast the wolves.
Christmas is fast approaching, and nothing is going to plan for Rose in this fifth and final book in the series about the Casson family. School is boring and home life lonely, with the house dark and empty at the end of the school day. Rose’s mum, down with flu and overwhelmed by deadlines, has decamped to the garden shed, reappearing only sporadically with armfuls of antibiotics and nasal sprays. Sister Caddy has long left home, and Saffy and Sarah, when present at all, are boringly single-minded in their efforts to turn Rose into a reader. And then there’s the hapless David, her brother’s friend, who arrives unbidden, dumping his drum kit into what little space the house has to offer. So when teacher Mr Spencer cancels Christmas in favour of SATS and Saffy forgets to buy the Christmas tree, it seems that things can’t get worse.
What happens when a seven-year-old gets teased about her freckles? She tries to remove them, of course. Freckleface Strawberry scrubs them, she applies lemon juice, she covers her face with felt tip pens, but nothing works.
The triplets are eagerly anticipating their forthcoming birthday but are worried about getting presents for each other, as they have no money. They earn it by tidying their room in their own particular way in the morning – and then Mum helps them tidy outdoors in her own particular way in the afternoon.
The seventh Winnie the Witch book finds Winnie celebrating her birthday (on Friday 13th, naturally) with a slap-up garden party. Fans will not be disappointed as Korky Paul works his magic on Valerie Thomas’s simple storyline that involves preparation for the party, a series of mishaps on the day, including the mysterious disappearance of all the guests, and the triumphant surprise cake which folds out to three pages tall.
A powerful and compelling reference book that records the events of the Holocaust and its terrible impact. Published in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which has collected nearly 52,000 video accounts from survivors, the book draws upon this bank to include a 30 minute DVD.
Arresting pictures of different animal mothers with their babies (lions, rabbits, deer, monkeys, otters etc) immediately draw the eye in this quite charming lullaby book for bedtime or talk time. Even the penguins on the cover portray warmth despite the feel of intense polar cold, and each turn of the page reveals a new setting and family.
To those of us on the other side of the Irish Sea, Irish writing and illustrating for young people in the last 20 years is associated with a well known group of practitioners and Colfer, Lynch, McBratney, Parkinson, Sharkey, Sweeney, Thompson and Waddell all have an essay devoted to them in this collection (what no Roddy Doyle?).
A rich cavalcade of influences echo through Donnelly’s assured and lively debut novel in which Jack Flint and his disaffected best friend Kerry scale the heights of the wall circling Cromwath Blackwood. Behind this wall lies a circle of standing stones, the gateway to a portal that transports them to the kingdom of Temair.
The world as we know it now has changed – reverted back to the feudalism and the vicious defence of territory and scavenged possessions. Cairo is no longer the city of sleeping gods and crumbling pyramids, but two very different communities – Kaï-ro and Dinium, divided by the Isis, defined respectively by power and subservience.
Leonardo wants desperately to be a truly terrible monster, able to ‘scare the tuna salad’ out of all and sundry. But in reality, he is ‘terrible’ in quite another way: he can’t scare anyone. He is a small cuddly wimp, not at all like the other monsters.
This simple but powerful story is set in Kenya during a ferocious drought when for weeks on end the heat makes it impossible for the villagers to tend their dying crops and thirsty cattle. As things become more and more desperate, Lila takes heart from her grandfather’s story about a man who persuaded the sky to weep, and sets off alone to see if she can do the same.
Mouse, aka Martin, is a rebel, whose bohemian streak regularly gets him into trouble. When he decides to brighten up a blank school wall with graffiti art, he finds himself back in his long-suffering social worker’s office. As he’s leaving, he encounters a strikingly pretty mixed-race girl, whose own nickname just happens to be ‘Cat’. Almost immediately their paths cross again over the rescue of a stray dog, which they name Lucky.
Over 50,000 copies of the author’s previous novel Elsewhere have now been sold, and this new novel should be equally popular. Set in the sort of American High School where money never seems to be anyone’s problem, it describes how 16-year-old Naomi loses all memory for the last four years of her life after cracking her head in a fall.
This is a visually striking picture book in comic format. Mungo is in bed enjoying reading a second-hand copy of a book called ‘Galacticus and Gizmo Save the Universe’, which his mum has bought in a jumble sale. The hero, Captain Galacticus, has been captured by the evil Dr Frankenstinker and things don’t look good. Mungo can’t wait to find out what happens next, but when he turns over, the last page is missing. Dr Frankenstinker’s evil, space spider plan needs to be foiled in order to save the universe. There is nothing for it, Mungo takes a deep breath and jumps into the story and his very own space odyssey. With a lot of courage and a little help from a Vroom-101 spaceship, Mungo saves the day (and the universe) and becomes the youngest ever member of Star Squadron.
This familiar looking non-fiction text from Franklin Watts has quite a lot going for it. Different aspects of eight-year-old Henna’s life are glimpsed on each double-page spread with clear visuals and typography.
This is a book about the importance of water on our planet. The crucial fact about water is that there is never any new water – just the same amount being recycled again and again. This oft-overlooked basic point is made eloquently in Strauss/Woods’ first spread and informs all that follows.
‘Do you understand what it means… to be outcast?’
Confronted by this question early on in Michelle Paver’s new novel (the fourth in her ‘Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’ sequence), its young teenage hero, Torak, is to discover – not without pain – some of the implications of the term which gives the book its title.
Patrick sits with his aunt and paints a picture of the field before them. The animals that he sees are all different colours. His aunt shows him how to mix new colours. The bold images are highly effective in conveying the key educational information.
Infant penguins skim, slip, squeak, slide, shriek, shout, waddle and whizz as they ski, slide and sledge in the wintry weather. Then after catching their own tasty lunch involving a lot of swirling, whirling, curling, twirling in the chilly water, they chance upon an ice floe upon which sits a sobbing seal pup who has lost her mother. Before long however, the antics of the penguins have cheered her up – just in time for Mama seal’s return.
This timeless classic tale of a brave, wilful and maverick boy who refuses to grow up, is given yet another outing. In this edition, the magic story is accompanied by the equally classic drawings of award winning, and much loved, illustrator Shirley Hughes.
A lively discussion ensues among Grace and her classmates, when their teacher tells them the school is to take part in a parade – two ‘princesses’ are to be chosen from their class. Not only do the boys get involved in the debate (why no princes?), but the girls also begin to question assumptions about what princesses wear. Grace loves stories about princesses but while trying to decide what sort of costume she wants Nana to make for her, she begins to wonder what princesses actually do because she’d rather be dressed as someone interesting not just pretty. So the class hear stories from around the world about real princesses who fought battles or were scientists, and story princesses in Cinderella stories from different countries. In the end, the parade needs to accommodate this diversity, so the whole class dress up as Japanese, African, Indian and Spanish princes and princesses. Grace wears a striking multicoloured robe made from Kente cloth that Nana had brought back from Gambia.
This is a gorgeous book and a perfect combination of good poems accompanied by a CD contained within a beautifully produced book printed on ‘ancient forest friendly paper’. Bloomsbury have made the book handbook size – easy to carry around and dip into the poems or to lie in bed following the poems whilst listening to them read by Jackie Kay. Her generosity as a performer and the warmth of her voice come through on the audio book, bringing an extra special quality to the experience of reading these lilting and memorable poems. There are unobtrusive and entertaining short explanations, comments and anecdotes on some of the poems and even a poem ‘The Moon at Knowle Hill’ set to music and sung by Hugh Nankivell. Rob Ryan’s simple silhouette style illustrations are integral to the format of the book and the feel of the poems.
To a large extent, this is a survey of the unpleasant things ‘people of faith’ have done to each other in the names of their religions.
After a couple of introductory chapters, the author adopts an historical structure. He begins with the Middle Ages: ‘Religious freedom was rarely practised.’ We are then taken on a hectic tour through the iniquities of the Inquisition followed by the turmoil, bloodshed and savagery resulting from the Reformation. Later, we are introduced to anti-Semitism (not only in Nazi Germany), the racism of colonialism and the current ‘backlash against Islam’.
Ostensibly, Ruby Red is about a young white English-speaking South African girl, Ruby, falling in love with an Afrikaans boy in the apartheid era. We are treated to descriptions of Ruby’s golden lifestyle compared with township life, to hackneyed descriptions of apartheid which give the impression of repeated hearsay, lacking the feel of authenticity.
My early youth was spattered with well-intentioned books from publishers like Newnes and Oldhams illustrating the production processes of familiar household objects. Page after monochrome page was filled with pictures of purposeful men in flat hats and waistcoats turning out scrubbing-brushes, boots, enamel buckets, worsted suits, tea-sets and other essentials. Our 1926 Children’s Encyclopaedia was very good at this, too.
Ata, a small boy, is determined to help lonely moon back into its rightful place in the sky instead of languishing atop a skyscraper. Captured sunbeams, torches and holes made in the dark to let the daylight in, prove inadequate to solve the problem and it’s Ata’s own tears of sadness, frozen and scattered in the firmament, that finally light the way for the moon’s ascent and supply a cure for his loneliness.
Sir Gadabout, the worst knight in the world, maintains his reputation in the latest tale of his misdeeds. Madcap slapstick coupled with hilarity and plentiful anachronisms successfully hold the reader’s interest throughout the book, which will not disappoint Gadabout fans.
Writers and publishers with young adults in mind have a liking for clichés; of situation (catastrophic parties), of character (Cinderella girl with no prince in prospect), of language (‘And I was like, you know – whatever’). Nick Hornby avoids them all. A story of a 16-year-old skateboarder whose girlfriend gets pregnant and has the baby, and how the three of them get on, might not promise enough to keep a reader turning its 304 pages. No drugs, no rock concerts – just some parental rows, some class snobbery, a couple of days when the plot takes an excursion to Hastings.
Small Knight loves life at the castle but is none too sure about having to prove what a brave knight he’s growing up to be by going out and fighting a fierce dragon. When he sets out in his first suit of armour with sword, shield and suitably adorned horse, he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. He meets people who recount their experience of fierce dragons and question his judgement in wanting to fight one but, as he explains to them, that is what brave knights do. He spends all day looking for a fierce dragon to fight and is on his way home when he hears someone crying behind a bush – a little creature which has been frightened out of its home by… a fierce dragon. So Small Knight takes his new friend, George, home but everyone goes running and screaming that there’s a dragon about. Where? asks Small Knight, at which point his new friend enlightens him: he’s the dragon. But he’s the small, friendly kind and he’s just as afraid of the fierce kind as everyone else. As it happens he turns out to be very helpful all round…
Written in a rather romantic, not-very-quantitative style, this book has spreads on shooting stars, the birth of a star, building the planets, Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites (two spreads), the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the death of a star, and a Glossary.
As with their previous collaboration, Atticus the Storyteller’s 100 Greek Myths, Coats and Lewis use the device of a traveller’s quest to create a series of adventures in which encounters with strangers in a variety of settings provide a traditional pretext for the sharing of tales.
Two teddies and a zebra pump up their rubber dinghy and paddle off across the sea. Ere long they spy a family of polar bears and a baby seal on a softly rocking bed of ice. Crack! The ice splits in two but the dinghy is too small for them all to travel to safety.
This is a charming, gentle bedtime book, Imai’s soft, sensitive pencil work nicely evoking those last moments before drifting into sleep. This particular child, Nimitz, is having trouble getting off however, due to the fact that she can’t get past number 108 in her sheep counting.
‘“You know,” said Flavia thoughtfully. “Almost everyone we’ve met on this trip was pretending to be someone they weren’t.”’
The well-worn theme of appearance versus reality dominates the latest – the fourteenth! – of Caroline Lawrence’s ‘Roman Mysteries’ series of ancient world adventure stories.
Golding’s ‘Companions Quartet’ has successfully married myth and modernity by establishing a scheme within which creatures from mythology are threatened, and thereby lured out of hiding, by humanity’s exploitation of the environment. In this concluding novel, a grand-plan is hatched by Kullervo to channel this friction and aggression in the hope of ending the human race forever. The protection club, however, have other ideas and set out to use their collective cunning, guile and intelligence – headed up by last surviving Universal, Connie – to avert this.
The final book in the ‘Printer’s Devil’ trilogy continues to draw on the adventure and thrills of its Victorian setting and what had seemed like an older style of story-telling. Now, it’s off to Calcutta, to the origin of the story and the twins’ birth in search of the marvellous but cursed diamond that has been owned by the twins’ family and might help to save them from the debt that threatens the wealth they seemed to have inherited.
Not too many novels for young readers begin with a quotation from the Book of Job; but then not too many novelists argue a case for Christianity as urgently as Michael Coleman in The Cure. Initially, we seem to be in yet another dystopian future. The Northlands have been laid waste by a nuclear explosion, engineered by religious extremists. In response, the Republic has suppressed all Faiths, while adopting the forms of religious practice around a deification of Science. A new calendar dates from the birth of ‘The Saviour’, Charles Darwin. The language of ‘The Writings’ is that of the King James’s version, but now Eve’s choice for knowledge is to be celebrated, not condemned. The offshore monastery on Parens Island, where the young protagonists are despatched, has been transformed into a psychological rehab centre. The inmates live out a monastic regime, attending the Gatherings of Lauds, Sext, Vespers and Compline. They may wear albs and cowls, but the staff will stop at nothing – even brain surgery – as they manipulate rebellious young minds into mindless conformity. Echoes of Brave New World and 1984 indeed.
The December Boys is a model of poetic eccentricity, whirling around a cast of unlikely yet utterly memorable characters who inhabit Captain’s Folly, a collection of temporary dwellings set up by those who were victims of the economic Depression which ravaged Australia in the 1930s. The eponymous protagonists are five orphans sent to this part of the coast for a summer holiday away from the depressing confines of St Roderick’s and the stricture of the nuns who have charge of them.
Written with force and fluidity, The Gallow Glass is a fast-paced feat of modern fiction that strikes a firm blow on the sides of privacy and personal freedom. Continuing on from The Hollow People, the novel follows the plight of Dante, who is now isolated from his friend and accomplice Bea.
The illustrations give the game away. Hrothgar and Beowulf, the Danes and the Geats, could be close kin to Noggin the Nog. Grendel has a crocodile grin, his mother a comic-book squint. And, at the rave in Heorot to celebrate Grendel’s defeat, is that really Wealtheow, the gracious cup-bearer, grooving the night away in a red mini-skirt? The text is somewhat at odds with the images, for often the reworking of the adventure is told with pace and energy. However, the back cover declares, ‘This is the original horror story… Read it if you dare’, and there’s a strain throughout the narrative which is closer to the Hammer House of Horror than to the bleak but courageous Anglo-Saxon epic of the brevity of life and the uncertainty of fame. So, if what you want is a story loosely based on the old poem, in which stepping on ‘squelchy’ eyeballs or warriors rolling about in excrement to put Grendel off the scent is seen as amusing in a schoolboy ‘Ugh’ sort of a way, in which Heorot is ‘redecorated in red’ after the night’s carnage and Grendel’s problems stem from a youthful experience when fearful humans wouldn’t play with him – well, if that is what you want, then this could be the version for you. The acknowledgements to prep and junior schools suggest the book has been classroom-tested, and The Geat might well amuse and even excite in its own terms.
Computer buff, Millie, is having an unsatisfactory summer as helper to her father in his temporary job of window cleaner, which involves weekly sessions at the Haverham lab. Just as she is concluding that life could not be any more boring, a van draws up at the back doors she is cleaning. A man engages her in uneasy conversation while shifting some mysterious crates. Millie is sure she can hear meowing and later her father admits that the lab is probably engaged in some animal testing. On their next visit, she unwittingly helps a cat to escape – a talking cat. It transpires that cats from Belgium, safely distant from the lab’s illegal trade, are being kidnapped and operated on so that they can talk, but who is behind this piece of animal cruelty? Millie’s search for answers leads her to friendship with a teenage animal rights protestor and his whiz kid 10-year-old brother, Ben. Just how the unlikely trio rescue Max’s fellow cats and expose Playmatic (the toy company seeking to market the cats) makes for a light, but very entertaining story.
The year is 1962 and the city is Liverpool. The Beatles are about to burst onto the music scene and tensions are riding high in Cuba – can a nuclear conflict be avoided? 14-year-old Laura is unexpectedly thrust centre stage when her military father gives her the key which controls a bomber and with which she could inadvertently trigger a global nuclear conflict.
What a simply splendid introduction to the key events in the life of a car. This large, bright picture book uses a succinct text in bold print to take us from the building of the car, delivering it on a huge lorry to the salesroom, buying and driving it and, finally, to the time when it has to be crushed after an accident.
By chance John McNeill was away from home when soldiers came to wipe out the inhabitants of Blackriggs, the village where he lived for all his life. But John (18) witnessed this terrible occurrence, and consequently has to run for his life to escape those who would silence him to stop him speaking about what he saw. Set in the near future in a newly independent Scotland, where the government’s Land Reform Act has created hardship and opposition, bringing into being the rebel NLA, The Witness is compulsively page turning. John is not alone as he crosses an often hostile landscape, trying to reach safety and his father who was also away on the day the soldiers came. His companion is Ninian, a small boy found by John near the burnt-out village; Ninian is not only young, and it soon become obvious that he has very special needs.
Grace Foster-Bryce is a rich Surrey girl with a priveleged existence: huge house with swimming pool, tennis court, pony, staff etc but then her life comes crashing down around her. Her father is in prison for art fraud and with her mother and her younger brother, she reluctantly moves to a run-down house on the wrong side of Notting Hill. There she meets JJ, a poor boy from a nearby, run-down council estate. JJ has exactly the right combination of personal qualities – tough enough to be respected on the estate, but artistic and sensitive too. Just the right kind of boy for a Cosmo/Piccadilly novel; just the kind of boy to fall in love with.
This is The Blackbird is John Mole’s third collection from Peterloo Poets, following Boo to a Goose, 1987, winner of that year’s Signal prize, and The Mad Parrot’s Countdown, 1990. The new book, tenderly and sharply illustrated by Mary Norman, as the first two were, reminds us that as a poet for children John Mole ranks with the finest of his contemporaries: poets such as Causley, Ted Hughes and Christopher Reid.
Pretentiously, this is described as ‘part novel in verse, part screenplay’. Certainly many of the dialogue sequences are set out like a play script and many sequences would lend themselves to filming. Quite where the poetry lies escapes me.
Thora, half mermaid/half human, her mermaid mother and someone irritatingly referred to as her Guardian Angle, have set sail for Tasmania (where the author lives part-time) in search of her pet peacock’s relations. But when they get there, not a peacock is to be seen. And just how do the mysterious crystal-lined baths work their miracle cures?
The Troll family live in suburbia, participating in local life whilst rather bemused by it. Never having been on ‘holidays’ and mistrustful of the ‘Trouble Agent’ who, curiously, expects them to pay for one, they gatecrash their neighbours’, the Priddles, caravan holiday. Confusion ensues as the trolls unwittingly frighten off other holidaymakers, who mistake them for the sheep-eating ‘beast’ rumoured to be roaming in the vicinity, until youngsters Ulrik Troll and Warren Priddle eventually solve the mystery of who is actually rustling the sheep.
This is a straightforward introduction to the problem of rubbish and how we can safely dispose of it without harming the environment. The author explores the three Rs of rubbish – reduce, reuse and recycle – with plentiful photographs and diagrams.
Wendel is an inventor. He tends to be a bit of a perfectionist. So, when the robot he has created to tidy his workshop proves to be endearingly shambolic, he quickly sends him down the rubbish chute, and makes another.
In this urban fantasy 21st-century American high school meets faerie world, and within the supernatural world there is hostility between the Winter Queen, Beira, and her son, the Summer King, Keenan. Attractive and gorgeous looking, Keenan has sought a queen for centuries, but the girls he has chosen have not been possessed of the right powers, and if they fail to materialise these they are doomed to become part of the faerie world, but outcast in it.
Sometimes you know that you are in the hands of a skilled writer from the first page and Wilderness is one of those books. Roddy Doyle is entering into more serious territory than in his previous, larky books for young readers but there are still plenty of references to dog poo for those who liked that kind of thing in his ‘Giggler’ story for younger readers.
Just as I thought there would be no further Worst Witch books, a new one arrived. I opened it with pleasurable anticipation. Was I satisfied? Absolutely so! Mildred has for once excelled herself at the start of the story and done well on a holiday project by creating a new working spell.