Issue No. 41 - November 1986
Cover Story
This issue's cover is from Rodney Peppe's The Mice and the Clockwork Bus
Rodney Peppe is interviewed by Stephanie Nettell.
Articles In This Issue
Christmas and Classics: two special features in this last BfK of 1986. This year the pile of Christmas books seems to be higher than ever and new titles are arriving even as I write. For our selection (page 4) we looked for books about the giving and getting of presents, books which feature Father Christmas and books which look a little deeper into the significance of gifts.
MORE »The giving and receiving of gifts is a part of Christmas which arouses conflicting feelings' in all of us whatever our age. Now and in memory there is anticipation and disappointment, unbearable excitement and awful anti-climax, joy, tears, envy, security, exhaustion, fulfilment.
MORE »To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the first appearance of A. A. Milne's famous bear, Chris Powling offers an essay
When did you last play pooh-sticks?
MORE »Noel Streatfeild is recalled by one of her editors, Susan Dickinson.
MORE »As a child, whether in Scotland on holiday or in the schoolroom in London, Beatrix Potter always had animals about her. Rabbits, bats, frogs, lizards, birds, mice, were kept as pets or observed in the wild. All were drawn and painted over and over again and written about. It was something she did not grow out of - for which we must all be grateful.
MORE »The children of Green Knowe
MORE »Rodney Peppé interviewed by Stephanie Nettell
MORE »In the May issue of Books for KeepsColin McNaughton explained why the panel of judges for the Mother Goose Award had decided not to nominate a 1985 winner.
MORE »It would be very easy to fill up our review pages with the latest books by writers and artists who consistently produce excellent books. This season instead we have chosen to spotlight books which might not immediately come to your attention but which we think it would be a pity to miss.
MORE »The Award Season
The Booker prize for adults and no less than three children's book awards to get people talking about books in the run-up to Christmas.
MORE »Supergran is back
MORE »Reviews In This Issue
The hero of Flat Stanley returns in a compelling and involving tale. A genie enters the lives of the Lambchop family: whishes are granted to all with resulting maythem. The author touches humorous nevers in servens-to-tens.
Three hardback originals put together to make a substantial paperback showing and telling the story of a year in the life of a sheep-farming family. Through the three sections of the book the family and the old farmhands are constant characters.
When Alfie's parents go out for the evening it seems that babysitter Maureen's bedtime story of Noah's Ark is coming true for, as Alfie announces, 'It's raining on the landing.' Maureen knows what's happened - a burst pipe - but she needs her mum and dad's help to stem the flood.
Sixes-up who enjoyed the same duo's Angelina Ballerina won't be disappointed by this fey and charming tale. The ballet school plan a special show for visiting royalty. The understudy, Angelina, saves the day at the last moment.
'Ordinary life was not exciting enough for Awful' but the arrival of the leggy Archer's Goon perked things up more than adequately, since the whole Sykes family found themselves in the midst of a maelstrom of conflicting activities conjured by a sextet of disagreeing wizards - but where was the seventh? Which one planned to take over the world and needed Quentin Sykes' two thousand words to do it? Howard Sykes, Awful's thirteen-year-old brother, sets out to discover the answer.
This is the kind of book that I want all fives and sixes to find, as early as possible in their school reading lives. It's an extended joke that can be enjoyed in one telling, held in the head, and enjoyed, first with others, then as a solo read.
For a fan of Sherlock Holmes, the idea of a brace of mice emulating that great man and Dr Watson is not instantly appealing. However Eva Titus -- of 'Anatole' fame -- has managed to capture the flavour of Victorian Baker Street, and translate it into a fantasy land where mice have problems like their human counterparts.
A friendly book this, and one which cleverly offers younger readers a different perspective on life. Earth is about to be visited by Misty Monsters when an accident results in one of them becoming separated from her family.
The first day back at school is livened up by the arrival of Martin, an E.T. being who joins in the classroom activities in this original and touching picture book. The young won't miss the messages that the author and the artist are too clever to push.
Taking its origins from the tragedy of the Vietnamese Boat People of the Tragedy of the Vietnamese Boat People of the nineteen-seventies, Butterfly Island (a BBC-1 television drama series) links the life of Vo Diem, a young refugee Vietnamese, with that of an Australian family.
Self-regarding Victoria has a fine line in acid put-downs - and we like her not just for surviving her awful parents but for her niceness with boyfriend Daniel. A broken clock, chosen on her 15th birthday from uncle's antique shop, is the device which cracks open her life.
I first read this post-nuclear holocaust novel at the same time as Brother in the Land, which seemed then, as now, far more pessimistic and CND absorbed. Louise Lawrence does portray the unthinkable but she mollifies it by speculating on into the future.
I thoroughly endorse David Bellamy's comment 'super story, important message'; Collions is an ideal adventure for today's top junior child. The quick-moving tale centres on the deliberate collision between two oil tankers, and the resulting catastrophe which threatens financially and ecologically.
The cover blurb is depressing sounding; by page 20 you're reaching for the gin! This was a compulsive, intriguingly bleak read based on the premise 'we are manipulated and pushed around by forces we are too puny to understand - like cattle.
As the author's update at the end suggests, in the 23 years since this book's first publication, his ideas about man's mutually advantageous co-operation with dolphins have already begun to become reality, and yet he set it in the twenty-first century! Johnny Clinton stows away on an inter-continental hovership and with its destruction begins an amazing adventure with dolphins; learning their language, sampling their swift intelligence and owing them his own life and the life of his mentor, Professor Kazan.
A light-hearted foray into the predominant preoccupations of a would-be teenage seducer of his eye-catch physics mistress. True to his nature, Tom farcically over-acts, creating more and more problems for himself and ending up virtually where he started, but nevertheless a wiser young man.
It's good to have this now classic version in paperback edition. I hope that the squashed nature of the text doesn't put anyone off. For I now want children and teachers to ponder together what happens when the childhood tale of loss, fear and vulnerability of children is put in a modern setting.
Why is it that American writers seem able to produce humorous work for sixes-to-nines so freshly, whereas too much of our home-grown publishing is still either outdated, or patronising, or hackneyed? In this winning picture story a child tells herself a story (visiting Auntie is really a Queen).
The book of the Warner Bros./Goldcrest/Puttnam film -- you missed it too? Or is it not out yet? -- told almost entirely in the present tense. witch I found immensely irritating at first; but what you have on the page is a full shooting script acting.
Two pieces of enjoyable nonsense which will attract many a new young reader and many an older reader with a taste for the comic fantastic. A whole Dracula family is here born out of the conventions of horror movies (and the Addams family?) with Little Dracula centre stage.
Quite simply the best alphabet book for many a year, for my money anyway. Besides the alphabet we have dozens of stories and incidents to enjoy in both words and pictures: the sequence in 'friends' fo
Small, homely events are made significant and the imaginative lives of two young children are illuminated in this perfectly-shaped group of seven linked episodes. The content is warm and real-sounding, especially the gentle banter between older girl and younger boy.
These books featuring Nicky, a tabby kitten, are proving nearly as popular with my children as Spot's adventures which no doubt were their inspiration. The formula of endearingly drawn animals and flaps to lift and explore in response to Nicky's questions can hardly fail.
These books featuring Nicky, a tabby kitten, are proving nearly as popular with my children as Spot's adventures which no doubt were their inspiration. The formula of endearingly drawn animals and flaps to lift and explore in response to Nicky's questions can hardly fail.
Young Danny Owl's initial efforts at counting 'One duck, another duck, another duck...' don't meet Grandmother's approval. Soon however he's getting his numbers right even if he does insist upon heralding the arrival of each newcomer with 'another duck' and by the end of the day, the sky's the limit such is his enthusiasm for counting.
Eight stories, most of which I liked, though saccharine Cresswell and romantic Mackay Brown aren't much to my taste. but there's love-in-death, chilly knock-about, soul-snatching, vengeful ghosts and
A lively and animated tale about T.R., a character much enjoyed by many sixes to eights in Enter T.R. and T.R. Goes to School (same publisher). A school visit to the British Museum is the setting for the streetwise Bear to foil an attempt to steal a portrait of his hero, Theodore Roosevelt.
Lol gets in trouble with the law and is sentenced to 240 hours at the Sumner House Project. He is told in no uncertain terms that 'this is absolutely your last chance.' The Project is designed to provide useful work on car maintenance for lads who have beam caught 'nicking' cars.
A selection of stories based around two mischievous cats and a bureaucratic master may not sound appealing, but here is a good story line. A book for young readers who have got started and are now developing at their own pace.
This is a new adaptation of the Irish legend of the children of Lir. King of Ireland long ago, had four children. His wife, Eva, died, leaving him a tragic, mourning figure. Eventually he is besotted by Aife, and takes her as his second wife.
From the first few pages of this book it seems that we are in for a fairly straightforward tale of village life but then we meet Emily Culpepper and discover that her bottling talents are not confined to making jam; she so enjoys talking to her three friends, the postman, the milkman and the plumber, that she shrinks them down to size and keeps them in jars too.
Whether you like stories with a moral, fantasy or magic, you are almost spoiled for choice with these nineteen illustrated tales from a poet and an artist who have left such a marvellous legacy to our children.
This extended version of the well-known nursery rhyme has long been a favourite in hardback with young listeners and readers. Maureen Roffey's colourful collage pictures of the Old Duke's diminishing
Highly commended this for 1985; the Carnegie panel thought it benefited from more than one reading. You can say that again - one reason why the book's so good. Whether you can or want to work out a tidy relationship between the nature of the beast in society and the beat Bill Coward kills is up to you.
Lore of the Incas, the Nazca Lines, the Old Ones ('the first great force of evil') and adventure where good takes on evil (yet again!); the excitement is boundless. It's a wonder super-psychic Martin and his journalist friend Richard manage to contain themselves intact to the end, but then young Martin is One Of The Five!! I daresay you've got the gist.
I've rarely read the bittersweet nature of classroom life caught so well as in this authour's writing. Some of it is harsh: everyone in Ms Rooney's class knows the child who wets the bed and smells. The slow readers know why they go out with the kindly teacher for 'help' (lots of phonics).
A cat and mouse story with a difference. When Trevor, Sid and Mabel discover thay have mice loose in their supermarket they enlist the help of Bounce, a rather rotund moggy, to rid them of the problem; and sure enough there are no more nibbled biscuits or leaking rice packets or other tell-tale signs of the 'Supermarket Mice'. This is thanks not to Bounce's mousing skill but rather to his insatiable appetite for almost everything.
The Bodach (old man, in Gaelic) has a good line in patter which makes him good company by the firelight in the lonely Scottish glen. However, one night he warns the Campbell family of the coming of the three men, one of whom will bring death.
A collection of eight ghostly' short stories for young juniors, from Penelope Lovely's work over the past twelve years. A loose title, as the ghosts in question range from Martians to dragons, but nobody is quibbling, I'm sure, as the quality of the stories is so good.