Issue No. 170 - May 2008
Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration is from Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Cosmic. Frank Cottrell Boyce is interviewed by George Hunt on page 12. Thanks to Macmillan Children’s Books for their help with this May cover.
Articles In This Issue
In 1979 the journal Signal published a pamphlet entitled Learning to Read with Picture Books by Jill Bennett (who has been a reviewer for Books for Keeps from Issue No. 1). This highly influential publication encouraged a generation of teachers to put aside mind numbingly tedious reading schemes in favour of helping children to learn to read using ‘real’ picture books.
In January this year riots erupted across Kenya following a presidential election which was widely seen as rigged. Beverley Naidoo, author of a children’s novel set in Kenya during the State of Emergency, reflects on the continuing historical impact of colonialism. She also describes how the recent tumultuous events have affected Kidslibs Trust Kenya – Libraries for Living, an organisation which sets up libraries in communities.
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Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen meets Jim Rose and Margaret Hodge amongst many others and wonders about the impact of the National Year of Reading (if any) on classrooms.
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In this, the last of the Reading in the Middle Years series of articles which has explored visual texts, fiction, non-fiction and poetry for 9-11 year-olds, the theme is inclusion. How do we ensure that all children have opportunities to access and enjoy this exciting range of reading texts? Kimberly Safford discusses.
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Neal Layton’s trademark scribbly line combines with collage, crayon and computer generated images to produce illustrations that create a distinctive world in a way that is both boldly witty and confidently dramatic. Here he explains the techniques and thinking behind two illustrations from his latest picture book, Emily Brown and the THING.
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Only a decade ago, first novels would be published to very little, if any, fanfare. It was assumed that writers needed to get several titles under their belt before they could be taken seriously. That all this has changed may be in large part due to the influence of the Branford Boase Award. Julia Eccleshare explains.
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Frank Cottrell Boyce interviewed by George Hunt
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Graham Marks on a huge novel that conveys the essence of cinema…
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Hal’s frustration when he encounters difficult words is sometimes matched by his dad’s frustration!
MORE »Dear Editor
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Brian Alderson
A long way after expansive Mr Dickens, we arrive at…
Funny stuff – history.
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
First published in Germany in 2002, this large format picture book is a powerful fable for our times.
Small children love a thoroughly bad character and Evil Weasel is a rich and powerful show-off, a bully and a sneak who plays mean tricks on everyone.
The historian as optimist – but not so much for his subject as for its recipients.
Traditional tales are always enjoyed by children and these two books will be no exception.
There is a problem on the road. A hole has appeared and this stops the traffic from moving freely.
This large and affecting picture book is based on the true story of a young hippopotamus that loses his mother during the dreadful tsunami of 2004 in Eastern Kenya.
In a marvellous opening chapter, Conor Broekhart is born and almost dies in a ballooning accident at the Paris World Fair in 1878.
Anna Hibiscus lives in modern West Africa with her mother, father, baby twin brothers (Double and Trouble), and an extended family.
The wise and wrinkled face of a Chimp looks out from the dramatic cover of this attractive picture-book guide to the great apes.
Bonnie the Maltese dog is living a happy life – until Harry and his mother discover grooming. From which follows the idea of getting Bonnie ready for a show...
This is a short, easy to read, big hearted story about a boy with profound learning difficulties and his younger brother Matthew who loves him very much.
Black Mail is that fairly unusual thing, a comedy thriller for teenagers.
First in a new series of short, accessibly written books aimed at teenagers, Blade: Playing Dead has so much feral street savvy that many adult readers will find it a bit discombobula
This author’s first two novels were marvels of literary concision, packing much into a spare narrative accompanied by just the right amount of dialogue.
In this picture book, originally published in Switzerland, two unappealing brothers, sharing a bed, spend their time talking up boys and rubbishing girls.
A crocodile appears in the centre of town – no one’s sure how it’s got there but it needs to be caught and returned to the river.
The influence family exerts over our lives, the twists and turns of allegiance and love are explored in Jacques Couvillon’s wonderfully warm debut novel Chicken Dance.
A teenage boy is walking through the remote dusty hills of his uncle’s ranch in Hell Creek, Dakota, hunting for fossils.
Horrid Henry is a familiar character to young children, with millions of books and audio titles sold worldwide and the spin-off cartoon series on television.
Princess Tashi, steeped in the formal and ritualistic culture of the Blue Crescent Isles, finds herself bethrothed to the wild and irresponsible Prince Ramil ac Burinholt of Gerfal: both are appalled
Taut and tense, the opening of Stephenie Meyer’s third novel in her ‘Twilight’ series balances the continuing rift between Bella and her werewolf best-friend Jacob Black against a backdrop of re
A gentle tale of a young elephant calf growing up with her family in the African savanna.
This fast-paced and ebullient science-fiction novel for teenagers is the fourth in a three-part series that already contains Uglies, Pretties and Specials
This is the second story set in Ancient Egypt to have come my way for review in the past year.
The advances of a homeless, fleabag of a mutt trying hard to befriend both other dogs and humans are met with ‘Fleabag!
Here’s an old-fashioned ‘improving’ tract that advocates a low-impact lifestyle in simple and simplistic terms.
Large, vibrantly coloured double spreads and an absorbing story help make this an imagination stretching picture book.
12-year-old Robbie is not happy. Due to his father’s work, Robbie has to spend the weekend at the Institute for Animal Research, where scientists are experimenting with the hox gene.
A great opening, literally, as Ananka, looking from her bedroom window in New York sees a girl climb out from a hole in the ground, give her a queenly wave and then disappear.
Lucy Goosey has been playing happily in the same pond all her short gosling life.
Another delightful title from this writer/illustrator team. There’s a very thin and hungry caveman and, on top of the mountain, a fat mammoth.
Surely set to become a favourite bedtime story, Wormell’s latest picture book is full of measured scariness. The illustrations throughout are monochromatic, in soft shades of blue.
There’s always a risk involved in churning out a series of titles, particularly ones that rely on a particularly unique sense of the bizarre. Will we end up with the same old thing?
Based on a true story, this tale of a young girl who somehow survived death after being publicly hanged on a trumped up charge of infanticide never lets up for a moment.
This is a wise and charming story that uses elements of fairytale to impart basic truths.
Rumblewick Spellwacker Mortimer B, a witch’s cat, has a very tricky problem.
Emma Woodhouse leads a life blessed with wealth and privilege and feels it is her duty to help those less fortunate than herself.
In some ways this is an old-fashioned novel, an historical romance and political adventure in direct descent from Geoffrey Trease’s celebrated Cue for Treason.
The aliens have landed: what to do now?
Travis McClure, now 16, has spent five years with his parents on the ‘harsh planet, desolate and arid’ known as Aletha Three.
This book is composed of sections on ‘What is space?’ ‘Exploring space’, ‘The solar system’, ‘Comets and meteors’, ‘Mysteries of space’, and ‘Space for everyone’, with a glossa
Ten animal friends set off together in a train and when it breaks down one animal stays behind to do the repairs.
Arnold is the weirdest, lowest Indian on the reservation totem.
These two titles in Wayland’s ‘British Heritage’ series are new editions of books which appeared first in 1997.
A book dealing with so complex a topic has a basic duty to children: to explain clearly the fundamental reason for the conflict, its historical course and the issues that make resolution today seem so
The term ‘visual literacy’ has been bandied about promiscuously in recent years with little consensus as to its meaning.
This attempt to explain bee-husbandry falls into two sections, both illustrated.
The Brothers Grimm tell the story of Maid Maleen, a resourceful girl who refuses to marry the bridegroom chosen by her father.
This is the latest in the Baker Street Boys detective books, based on Anthony Read’s ’80s television series.
These two titles in Wayland’s ‘British Heritage’ series are new editions of books which appeared first in 1997.
Subtitled ‘100 High Jinks & Escapades’ and with a self-consciously retro cover and production, this is a handbook ‘for boys who want real adventure’.
Kerven, author of more than 50 children's books, has set up an author-led publishing team to produce her own seven-part historical fiction series, ‘The Grim Gruesome Stories’.
Traditional tales are always enjoyed by children and these two books will be no exception.
The blurb on the back of my proof copy of Michael Ford’s first children’s novel prompts us to ‘think Young Bond in a short leather skirt; think Caroline Lawrence meets Gladiator!
This novel is fun, very exciting and just what you expect from Diana Wynne Jones, with human and fantasy worlds colliding and characters moving between human and godly creations.
Plate tectonics may not be up there with dinosaurs, mummies and the human body in the league table of most popular non-fiction subjects, but in Meredith Hooper’s skilful hands it is clearly explaine
When on a visit to her friend Augusta in the USA, Megan, aged 14, joined ‘the Kissing Club’; she ‘became a professional virgin and also gave up telling lies’, but she found the first part easi
Rabbits don’t have a big noise of their own, so Little Rabbit likes to MOO instead, much to the consternation of Calf.
Thirteen chairs in a painting. Eleven lie toppled on the ground.
When the moon disguises herself as a human and descends to explore Swampland, she is preyed on by bogles bearing will-o’-the-wisps, but manages with the last of her strength to rescue a human child
This lush historical story set in sixteenth-century France goes off like a rocket at around page 100, just at the moment when readers may have started to give up hope of anything very much happening a
Opening with a bang and a scene of sorcerous slaughter, this tale about the resurrection of a cursed medieval book into the life of a 12-year-old boarding school boy is unrelenting in its pace and liv
Doherty introduces this book by describing hearing – and being entranced by – Bible stories told on the beach when she was a child.
Deborah Ellis’s latest exploration of the lives of poor young people in the developing world takes her, for the first time, to the South American continent, and to Bolivia.
The reluctant dragon first became known to readers 70 years ago, and is now being given a second airing.
If you are granted three wishes, just be careful what you say!
The title of this splendid book says it all really. It is aimed at the parents of those between nought and seven and is divided into three main age sections: 0-2, 2-5 and 5-7.
Set in Wales and charting the positive effect of Panjabi dhol music on a girl who we are told hates music, this story clearly has good intentions.
When writing an adventure story with an historical setting it is necessary to have some feel for the period and its events. This book does not.
Intense and troubling yet strangely life affirming, this is the story of 11-year-old Sam who is dying of leukaemia.
From ticks to tapeworms, nits and fleas, there is a huge armada of parasites out there just waiting for a passing animal to provide it with a meal.