awfully big reviews

FORSAKEN by Katherine Langrish. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

2012-03-10T08:00:00.002Z

At about the age of seven I discovered Matthew Arnold's poem The Forsaken Merman.

It's a romantic poem based on a Scandinavian legend about a merman who married a human woman and took her to his home beneath the waves. They had children, and were happy - until one day the woman heard the church bells calling people to prayer, and she began to fear that she would lose her immortal soul. She left her family for a visit to her old home - and never returned. Day after day the merman and his children rose in the waves and called to her. The merman even went to the churchyard and looked into the church and called again. But she did not respond. They had lost her.

I loved the rhythms and sounds of Arnold's poem, and the whole idea of mermaids and their undersea world - and most of all I loved the sadness of this story.

So when I heard that Katherine Langrish had written a story imagining what might have happened if one of the merman's children had gone to try and fetch her mother back, my first thought was that I wanted to read it, and my second was to wonder whether I could cope with a happy ending. I'm glad to report that I could.

I loved this book, which is very short but by no means a simple read. The writing is beautiful. It's full of the same kind of romance as Arnold's poem, but Katherine Langrish imagines the life of the mer-folk in far more intimate detail; and her focus on one child allows the reader to feel the intensity of their grief and loss. This story in fact packs a much stronger emotional punch - so it's just as well it ends happily. Any other ending would be too awful to contemplate after we have struggled with Mara, the desperate eldest daughter, as she leaves her natural habitat and drags herself in agony along the stony road.

Mara has spent time pondering her mother's soul. She doesn't know what a soul is, and feels no need of one herself, but she understands how important it is to her mother. By the time she reaches the church where her mother is at prayer, she knows she cannot live much longer out of her element, and with her last strength she enters the building. What happens next is terrifying and heartbreaking. But love wins through and brings the story to a perfect end.

Published by Franklin Watts (Rivets), 2011.
Paperback: ISBN 978 14451 05574
e-book: ISBN 978 1 4551 1073 8

JUNIPER by Gene Kemp. Reviewed by Ellen Renner

2012-03-07T13:15:00.008Z

The creepy crawly swung on a spider's single thread outside the grimy bathroom window; round and back again it twirled, parcelled up with spider super glue; an insect deep-freeze, she supposed. She couldn't reach it from anywhere, not that there was much point anyway. It was very dead. Sorry, she thought-waved, and ran downstairs.
The man was there. Mr Beamish.
Standing in the kitchen and straight out of a story by Dickens or Joan Aiken. Juniper had met him before; he knew her and she knew him and they didn't care for each other one little bit. Waiting there for her, the eternal villain, fat, with purple, rubbery jowls and a shiny skin, laughter lines round eyes as small and sharp as pins, full of humour as cruel as the east wind just before the snow falls and greasy as fish and chips, cold fish and chips.
(Juniper, by Gene Kemp. Puffin Books, 1988)

Sometimes a book steals your heart and never lets go. For me, Juniper is one of those books.

Published in 1986 by Gene Kemp, author of the award-winning The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, Juniper seems never to have received the attention it deserves. I had the good fortune to meet Gene a few years ago, when I invited her to speak to a local writers' group - and the temerity to tell her that Juniper was my favourite of her books. At that point her face lit up and she confessed, as few writers are brave enough to do, to a favourite child. She no longer had a copy of Juniper and longed to see mine. Unfortunately, we'd recently moved and it was still in packing crates.

I love the cover Puffin has put on the 1988 edition. (Mine is ex-library, of course: it's sad that they sold off such a brilliant book.) The cover drew me in first; the image of Juniper herself with her one point five arms and determined face, climbing up the hill followed by her friend Ranjit. I bought the book for the cover and because of Gene Kemp's name. I had read Tyke and enjoyed it immensely, especially the clever writing that enables the twist at the end. But like Gene herself, I love Juniper best.

It's inevitable that the writers you love, the ones whose books you read and re-read, will colour your own work in ways you may not realise. Diana Wynne Jones, Margaret Mahey, Joan Aiken: these are my touchstones. But it was revisiting Juniper in order to write this review – in the very month that the American edition of my debut book, Castle of Shadows, is published – that made me realise that the character of Juniper, together with Aiken's Dido Twite, must have influenced the creation of my own heroine, Charlie, although neither was in my conscious mind as I wrote.

Like Charlie, Juniper could be said to have an 'absent' mother. Charlie's has run away; Juniper's mother Ellie is a fey and beautiful woman suffering mental illness whom her daughter must look after. Both heroines have fathers who have let them down and whose failures created the evils facing their daughters; both fathers redeem themselves in the end. Both girls are strong, determined personalities struggling against overwhelming odds in a game played by nasty, adult rules. Both books celebrate the direct, emotional truth of children and contrast a child's desire for what is right with the messiness of the adult world.

Although Juniper was written nearly thirty years ago it hasn't dated. Juniper is disabled: she has lost half of one arm. Her best friend, Ranjit Singh, knows all about racism and feeling an outsider in your home country. The adults are the mixture of goodness, badness, weakness and strength that real adults are. Kemp was a teacher. You feel, reading her books, that she must have been one of those excellent teachers who can change children's lives.

Holding my beloved copy again today, pouring through the pages, I'm newly astonished to see how slender this volume is. Kemp tells her story in 112 pages. And yet, as with all really good books, the story expands beyond the pages. There is so much here: so much poetry of language, of imagery, of emotion, of the thoughts and feelings of a quite extraordinary-ordinary twelve year old girl placed in an impossible situation.

Juniper is a mystery; an adventure about a girl in great danger who believes she no one but a tom cat and a chess-playing school mate to help her; a cracking story that compels you to turn pages full of deft, compact and visual writing. How can anyone not love a girl with one and a half arms who refuses to feel sorry for herself, who laughs and dances, fends off social services and well-meaning teachers, who keeps a tortoise and a hell-fire cat, who embraces hope and life and survives?

Juniper. Find a copy. Read her.

It's a Book by Lane Smith, reviewed by John Dougherty

2012-03-04T08:00:00.000Z

This is a charming and delightfully silly little picturebook, aimed - I suspect - at both the tech-savvy toddler and the paperback-loving parent.

A laptop-toting jackass quizzes a monkey about the object which so engrosses him. You can't blog or tweet or text with it; you don't use a password or a screen name; and instead of scrolling down you turn the page. That's because... it's a book. And yet, as Jackass discovers, this simple piece of early technology holds a strange fascination...

Lane Smith is probably best known in the UK as the illustrator of Jon Scieska's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and he brings the same wonderful simplicity and energy to the illustrations here. Jackass's puzzlement and Monkey's growing exasperation are beautifuly conveyed.

The same simplicity and energy is evident in the text; little ones will thoroughly enjoy joining in with the repeated refrain of "It's a book!", and will revel in their instant grasp of the concept that Jackass just doesn't get. The more ICT-literate readers will love the section in which Jackass attempts to simplify a page of story into a twitterish handful of characters.

It's important to note that this is not an anti-tech book; it doesn't attempt to suggest that Jackass's laptop has no value. The message is that even in a world of internet and smartphones, the book still has its place and still retains its own special and irreplaceable magic.

And with that said, just to prove I'm no technophobe, I'll finish by embedding the official book trailer*.

*I prefer the book, myself. And I think you will, too.

A SURPRISE OF A GUEST FOR WORLD BOOK DAY.

2012-03-01T15:25:00.000Z

Awfully Big Review had hoped to bring you a Guest Review today for World Book Day but, as they say, life happened. A real life Guest didn’t work out.

All is not lost.

Today I was out on a school visit, waiting in the hall. I ran my eyes over rows of bright books in the enormous wheelie book fair crates and silently mutteried to myself about the mysterious world bookselling.

I was stopped short by a moment of delight. For a second, I was unable to believe the title although I’d understood it totally. Immediately I wanted to shout about it and today’s Awfully Big Review seemed just the place.

So allow me to introduce our World Book Day Guest, THE SLEEKIT MR TOD, who was, in his earlier version, one of my favourite Dahl inventions.

I do have very mixed feelings about the writer Roald Dahl. He had some fantastic ideas and wrote some great stories. AHowever, although the author is no longer with us, a campaign of enthusiastic marketing means that his face and books are displayed around classrooms across the land.

It is almost as if Dahl has grown into a kind of BFG himself,. his legend overshadowing living children's authors and the current wealth of books, at least in many minds. His name is one of the few that all teachers know.

Bah! Away from such malignant thoughts and on to the glorious title.

The famous fox tale has been translated by James Robertson, writer, Salture Book Award winner, poet and the first Writer in Residence at the Scottish Parliament. Here’s an extract of Robertson’s version for you to enjoy:

Mr Tod sleeked up the dark tunnel tae the mooth o his hole. He pit his lang brawsoe face oot intae the nicht air and took a snifter. He jeeds himself an inch or twa forrit and stapped.

He took anither snifter. He wis ayewise gey cannie when he cam oot fae his hole.

He jeeds forrit a wee bittie mair. The front hauf of him wis noo oot in the open.

His black neb twigged and wiggle-waggled, snowkin and snifterin for the scent o danger. He fund nane, and he wis jist aboot tae pad forrit intae the widd when he heard – or thocht he heard – a peerie wee soond, a saft reeshle, as if a body had moved a fit, jist as lown as could be, through a rickle o dry leaves.

Mr Tod streeked himsel flat on the grund and lay gey still, his lugs cockit. He steyed where he wis a lang while, but he didna hear ony mair

“It’ll hae been a moose,” he telt himsel, “or some ither wee beastie.”

Doesn't it make your lips twitch? Don’t you just want to taste those words and savour that vocabulary by reading the lines aloud? Isn’t the language warmed with the history of the north?

This book is a belated find. This translation was published in 2008 but I’d never heard of the title or seen it around. Which may, alas, explain its presence in the big metal bookcases, way down in the most difficult-to-discover corner.

I shall enjoy reading it for myself by the fire, even though I am not sure how useful the sleekit's story would be for many young readers below the border. Or wa sit given free to all the school's in Scotland? Has anyone out there ever used it with children, anywhere? If so, do let me know!

Meanwhile, Happy World Book Day to you all - and to bold Mr Tod and his family safe in their “wee ablow-the-grund clachan.”

Keeping Secrets by Sue Barrow - reviewed by Rosalie Warren

2012-02-27T07:00:00.007Z

Ceri Keeping is five foot eleven and, at just sixteen, wonders when she will stop growing. She feels like an enormous lump beside her dainty, elfin-featured adoptive mum. But that's only one of her problems.

Mum doesn't seem to understand who Ceri is and what she really wants. She's trying make her a netball champion, while Ceri no longer enjoys netball and wants to focus on her desire to be a journalist. Ceri's younger brothers have a wild sense of humour which leads to humiliation on her birthday on a local radio show. And Dad is preoccupied - is he going to lose his teaching job and be forced to move his family away from their much-loved Welsh valleys home?

One of Ceri's classmates, also adopted, has just met up with her birth mother for the first time since babyhood. Ceri wonders whether she should look for her birth mother, too. But when she sets out to investigate, employing her journalistic skills, she turns up worrying secrets that have been kept from her for years.

The cleverly named Keeping Secrets is a sensitive account of a girl who, while surrounded by a loving family, feels like an outsider and is determined to find a life and people of her own. Ceri is a well-drawn character and her family are entirely believable. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am sure I'd have loved it as a teenager. I would strongly recommend it to anyone of about twelve and upwards, and I'd love to think there might be a sequel at some stage.

The language is smooth and feels appropriate; the dialogue is convincing and I love the way that little bits of Welsh creep in (all translated for the benefit of non Welsh speakers like me). Keeping Secrets was published by a small Welsh publisher, Gomer Press, which perhaps explains why it has not become more widely known. It certainly deserves a bigger audience and I hope that a way may be found to make this possible.

One small point of criticism, which I have a suspicion may not be the author's fault at all. There was a slight feeling of rushedness in the last couple of chapters. I'd have liked a bit more time to explore how Ceri felt about the denouement. I wonder whether this book was shortened at the publisher's request, or whether the author was writing to a word limit imposed by someone else.

Whatever the reason, this is only a minor quibble. Congratulations, Sue Barrow, on creating a warm and realistic character, with whom it's very easy for the reader to identify, and a piece of YA fiction which should have wide appeal.

Details:
Title: Keeping Secrets
Author: Sue Barrow
Date of publication: Jan 2006
Publisher: Gomer (Imprint: Pont Books)
ISBN-10: 1843235927
ISBN-13: 978-1843235927

Reviewer: Rosalie Warren
Blogging at: Rosalie Reviews

Man in the Moon by Dotti Enderle. Reviewed by Paeony Lewis

2012-02-24T08:30:00.000Z

I'm often wary of reviewing books written by friends. For me the book has to be particularly accomplished becauseotherwise I’m plagued with misgivings. I worry that I'm wearing rose-tinted spectacles. Am I overlooking faults because I know the angst andsweat that went into the book? Or is it the opposite? Can I be too critical?

So this is the first time on the Awfully Big Reviews Blogthat I’ve reviewed a book written by a friend. It’s a favourite and deserves tobe known in the UK. Man in the Moon by Dotti Enderle is what the Americansterm a ‘mid grade’ (ages 8-12), although in this case it’s more suitable for confidentreaders aged ten and over (and adults too).

The cover illustration of Man in the Moon may hint at coolevening breezes, but the pages ooze with the dusty heat of a relentless Texansummer. Set in 1961, this short, chatty and poetic story is told from Janine'spoint of view and you can hear her drawl. She’s a young girl trapped in a lifeof rural poverty on an isolated Texan farmstead. Janine makes the most of hersmall world and is not unloved, but an unemployed father, an anxious mother andseriously sick brother stifle her hopes for a better future.

When it seems as though all life has been sucked dry by theheat, illness and poverty, a shabby man appears. The mysterious Mr Lunas intrudeson family life and is a catalyst for change. Like the moon, Mr Lunas waxes andwanes, until a new moon brings new hope. Is it magic? A miracle? Or a series ofcoincidences? Readers are allowed to form their own conclusions

This is a novel told to us by a child who has a rich and naïveawareness of words. However, all she knows is what she experiences in her tinycorner of Texas or sees on TV. Thus sometimes the reader must read between thelines.

I can’t make up my mind what appeals most to me about thisstory. Is it the whisper of quiet magic that runs through the tale? Or is it theevocative reality of a rural Texas childhood from the 1960s? It’s a life theauthor knows intimately. A while back, when telling me about her childhood andgames, Dotti wrote:

"I didlive on a farm for about a year when I was eight. That's the farm I had in mindwhen I wrote the book. And we even had that old abandoned flatbed truck piledwith junk nearby. We found an ancient wooden leg (complete with leather foot),but unlike Janine, my mother let us bring it into the yard, and we played withit for months. We named it Charlie."

Man in the Moon haswon awards within the state of Texas and deserves wider readership. And I’m not saying that because the author is a friend. Honest!

And here’s a short excerpt from the very start of the novel:

Phase One – New Moon

I sat in the shadows of my bedroom, staring through thewindow screen. Except for an occasional lightning bug twinkling by, the nightwas black as molasses, and the air as thick. I prayed for just one breeze toblow through and cool the sweat on my face. But everything was still – dead still– like right before a storm.

… That’s when something moved in the cornfield. I heard it,just on the other side of the chicken coop…

Man in the Moon by Dotti Enderle
Originally published by Delacorte Press in the US, 2008. Also available on Kindle.

Reviewed by Paeony Lewis

www.paeonylewis.com

Blood Red Road by Moira Young: Review by Lynda Waterhouse

2012-02-21T07:00:00.001Z

I was predisposed to like this book and its author, Moira Young, even before I had bought my copy.

Here are my reasons:

In her acknowledgements Moira Young thanks Elizabeth Hawkins ‘who showed the way.’ Moira had attended one of Elizabeth’s Writing for Children classes at City Lit. I attended one of Elizabeth’s classes and it was from this experience that Islington Writers for Children sprang and the group still follows Elizabeth’s structure for hearing work in progress and giving constructive feedback. This can be a gruelling process but it teaches you to be analytical and to persevere. Moira describes eloquently her struggle to find the right voice and rhythm for this story. Finding a rhythm and tuning in to the beat of a story is one of the most satisfying experiences for both the reader and the writer in me.

I was also drawn to the book because Moira was not an apple-cheeked recent graduate from the creative writing course of life but a ‘woman of a certain age’ who had been an actress, worked the alternative comedy circuit in the 1980s, and enjoyed a spell as a tap dancing chorus girl and an opera singer. She then finds herself the subject of a bidding war with one publisher resorting to hiring tame crows to win her favour and Ridley Scott snapping up the film rights. Add one inevitable churlish book review from a quality newspaper and this woman of a certain age was set fair to like this novel.

The story tells of Saba’s quest to find her twin brother Lugh who was snatched by four horsemen. On her journey through the dusty dystopian landscape with her kid sister Emmi and her tame crow Nero she encounters an array of nasty and violent situations and surreal characters. She finds herself forced to become a cagefighter called The Angel of Death and she fights hellworms and her own growing attraction and love for Jack. The story races along at a cracking pace and Saba speaks in her own distinctive voice. The rhythm and the imagery of the story are redolent of the cowboy movie genre with a bit of Mad Max thrown in for good measure. I did get a bit exhausted with the pace and sketchiness of some of the scenes towards the end which felt more like a film treatment than a novel but overall this is an exciting read and a sparkling debut.

Blood Red Road will lead a new generation to discover the classic cowboy films of John Ford and the post apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric: review by Gillian Philip

2012-02-18T01:00:00.001Z

Please note that this review is of an adult novel.

'Do I wish to go on a long walk in the dark with this person?'

It's the question Minguillo Fasan suggests we ask ourselves as he begins his tale of torture, murder and human skin, so the Dearly Beloved Reader can't say she hasn't been warned. But Minguillo, the mad and bad son of a wealthy Venetian businessman, clearly assumes we will be enchanted by his company, even if it's against our better judgement. I know I was.

The core of this darkly fascinating book is Minguillo's undying hatred for the sister - Marcella - who is the rightful heir to his father's house and fortune. That's a problem he resolves fairly quickly, but Minguillo's enmity is not satisfied by cheating Marcella out of her inheritance, and he is intent on spending his life destroying her.

If Minguillo's evils had been solely related by other characters, his relentless malevolence might have been tiresome, but he tells us of his deeds himself, assuming the Adorable Reader's complicity. And he is very funny, as well as vile.

Luckily for our sympathies (and probably our immortal souls), he is not the only narrator: there are four others - Marcella herself; the semi-literate family retainer Gianni; the saintly and skin-obsessed Doctor Santo Aldobrandini; and a nun who is raving mad and homicidal to boot.

Skipping first-person points of view is notoriously hard to do without confusing the reader, but Michelle Lovric pulls it off brilliantly - I never once had to check back because I doubted whose words I was reading. The five voices are very distinct, and distinguished by fairly unobtrusive changing typefaces; their wildly varying stories weave together neatly for the ending.

Now, I've a terrible habit of quietly rooting for the bad guy - especially when the heroine is as saintly and luminous as Marcella. Yes, she's too good - her chief quality is resilience, which is not entirely to her advantage, and occasionally made me want to kick her. So this is where my admiration for the book really sparked: I did not once want Minguillo to triumph. He and the insane religious zealot Sor Loreta are much the most entertaining of the narrators, but that never tipped over, for me, into liking or sympathising with them. Maybe that's partly because they are (one each) responsible for the horrible deaths of my two favourite characters. (One of these deaths made me yell out loud, because I'd been nursing a faint hope of xxx making it back into a future book.)

The Book of Human Skin is not for the Squeamish Reader, as Minguillo frequently reminds us - but he does have a last barb to fling at us before he goes: 'You loved to be shocked, and you craved more.'

Maybe he's right, because I certainly couldn't put the book down. Or only in the very dark hours, when I'd begin to have horrible thoughts about its cover.

The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric

www.gillianphilip.com

Red Car, Red Bus, by Susan Steggall: published by Frances Lincoln. Reviewed by Sue Purkiss

2012-02-15T06:00:00.000Z

This is a picture book, with very few words but lots going on in the pictures. For example, the first spread shows a red bus which has just left a bus stop. It's a lovely day, the sky is clear and blue. Then we notice that behind the bus there is a red car. Some small clouds appear in the sky. We notice a woman and her little boy running towards the next bus stop, and behind them, a yellow car. Whoops! the little boy drops his teddy bear but mum doesn't notice, she's concentrating on trying to catch the bus. Will she make it? And what about the teddy bear?

In the next spread, a lot of these loose ends are picked and woven in, and new ones are introduced: new story possibilities tumble over each other. A yellow van joins the queue behind the bus. The driver of the red car has seen what happened; she stops and picks up the bear. People are getting off the bus - will our heroine catch it? No - but hurrah! The driver of the red car stops, brandishes the bear, and gives mother and son a lift to the next stop. Now there's an orange car too, and an orange truck. There are more clouds in the sky, and just as they enter a town, it begins to rain...

It sounds so simple, but there's a great deal going on, with more to notice and pick up on every time you look at the book. The illustrations are beautifully crafted collages, made of lots of torn bits of paper in bright primary colours. This is a lovely book to read with a small person, who will delight in all the familiar scenes and objects revealed as the pages turn, and in creating new stories from the wealth of detail provided by the illustrations.

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan. Headline Review trade pbk. £12.99 ( published April 12th) By Adèle Geras

2012-02-12T07:30:00.006Z

This year, during the Cultural Olympiad that will be going on in London, every single one of Shakespeare’s plays will be performed and each will be spoken in a different language. All over the planet, Shakespeare is acknowledged not only as the greatest playwright in English but also as someone whose work means something to the people of every country in the world. To say that he is ‘universal’ has become a cliché but like a lot of clichés, it’s no more than the truth.

We don’t know an enormous amount about him. Unlike Dickens, for instance, or Jane Austen, he did not leave behind letters or documents to help us. But certain facts are known. He married Anne Hathaway. He was an actor. His patron was the Earl of Southampton. He was a contemporary of Ben Jonson and Kit Marlowe. He was the son of a glovemaker. Jude Morgan’s supremely accomplished and original novel makes it clear also that he was an enigma; that even in his lifetime, no one quite understood how it was that he transcended so completely every single one of his peers and (did they but know it) every other playwright who would ever put pen to paper.

This book, which doesn’t appear in the shops till April 12th, is a revelation. The first thing to say is this: at no point do you feel wrenched out of the comfort zone of modern life and thrust into a fusty, musty, olde-worlde England where you’re not sure what’s going on and where everyone speaks oddly. There is no pish-tushery here. The novel follows young Will from Stratford, to London and also follows, in two more parallel narratives, Anne left behind in Stratford with the children and Ben Jonson, struggling to learn and write while apprenticed to his step-father as a bricklayer.

Morgan is adept at giving a shape and meaning to lives and talents we find it hard to grasp. His novel A Taste of Sorrow brought the Bronte family to life in an extraordinarily moving way and here, his great achievement is to have fleshed out the facts we know in such a way that we are there, with the protagonists, sharing their fortunes, their setbacks, their personal tragedies and above all, the separate stories of their relationships.

Chief among these is the tender and beautiful love story of Anne and Will. She is older than he is. When he leaves for London to follow the players, he promises her he’ll be faithful. She understands his need to leave but his need to write doesn’t become clear to her till she sees a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Then, like the millions upon millions who’ve been enchanted by it since its first performance, she realizes that “ this was where Will had gone. This was where he had taken his self…….Oh, she could offer him truth, perhaps, beauty, love- but nothing, nothing compared with what he could make.”

Earlier in the book, when she wonders how he’ll manage in London, Anne thinks: “he must cherish some great recompense within him. It was as if somewhere there was another box in which he kept his contentment, unassailable and secure. Contentment or joy, she couldn’t tell.”

This is the best thing about the book: the fact that Will, though its hero, acts mostly as a mysterious centre of other people’s stories. There is scarcely any quotation from his work. There’s no trite scene where we see him chewing the end of his quill while struggling to find words. Only a few of the plays are alluded to. Rather Morgan has made the writing almost the ‘secret life’ of the title: something that happens, something he does, away from the main action of the novel. We are aware of it going on off-stage and our main focus is on Will’s personal life, his friendships, his heartaches, his love for his wife, through everything that happens to them both.

Will has always been aware of the power of what he can do. From childhood when he followed the players who came to perform in the town, he’s understood plays. He knows the repertoire backwards. He knows the parts by heart. And he realizes that it’s all done with words.
“And what those words must do: from the moment the play begins, they must make everything: the earth and sky and the people who move there. A soldier’s breastplate, a painted throne –these tawdry bits and pieces are the only aid the words can call on. First, words. First and last, words.
He wants to make it with words. He wants to try it. He doesn’t think it’s his destiny - it’s necessary to be clear about that. But still, there is a gathering. Droplets must gather to make a storm."

This is a beautifully structured, perfectly written book which is moving because it brings out the human story of an almost supernaturally gifted writer. Anyone who already loves Shakespeare will find it compelling and fascinating and for those who still have to discover him, this novel is an ideal way of approaching him. There’s a point in the book when Will is comparing himself with Marlowe and Jonson. This is what he thinks, and it sums up his genius exactly.
“He is like neither of them. No grand doer of deeds…..instead he has this, and to win he must take it up, light with a sharp sure tip to balance the world on: his pen.”

This is no more than the truth. Morgan puts it very well: the whole of the universe and everything in it is balanced on the end of William Shakespeare's pen.

Dead Boy Talking by Linda Strachan. Reviewed by Emma Barnes

2012-02-09T01:48:00.001Z

A boy is dying. He has been stabbed. He is lying, abandoned, in a pool of his own blood, knowing that his life is trickling away.

This is the arresting start to Dead Boy Talking. It’s a bold and brave premise for a book. Certainly it grabs the reader’s attention in a very shocking way. But the end looks inevitable. How can the writer maintain suspense and create surprise, and maintain a deep interest in the characters, in the face of such a grim beginning – a beginning that seems to go only in one direction?

All I can say is Linda Strachan pulls it off. The writing is powerful and visceral and does not dodge the bleak present.

"I start to laugh but my breath vanishes in an icy purple stripe of pain. I grab at the pain to make it stop and stare in disbelief at my hand, a thick, sticky glove of blood."

Yet by going backwards, and delving into the story of how Josh has ended up where he has – a story which contains a tragic accident and a family mystery – Strachan cleverly creates suspense, surprise and a real desire to find out what happens next.

Furthermore, she adeptly handles – and gets into the heads of – a large cast of characters. Josh, his loyal friend Danny, his ex-best friend Ranj – and Skye, the nerdish girl-next-door: all of them are more than they seem, all have their own stories. The online friendship of Josh and Skye, based around gaming and messaging, seemed to me authentic and particularly moving.

Of course, as a reader you are hoping all the time that Josh will pull through. At the same time, you know a fairytale ending would feel like a cop-out. I won’t give away what happens, I will only say it is satisfying and contains an element of hope.

A gritty tale for teenagers, with a very human heart.

Emma Barnes is the writer of very un-gritty books for the 7-12 age-groups. Her latest book, How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good, concerns a naughty child who is sent a suprising and unexpected "Guardian Agent".

Write To Be Published by Nicola Morgan. Review by Penny Dolan.

2012-02-06T08:22:00.000Z

When I’m busy with a book, I find it quite hard to read fiction. A good tale easily distracts me, filling my mind with that story, not the one that should be in my head. It’s also a time when I often read through books on writing, mainly because I like to be reminded of those things that are so easy to forget.

Some writers don’t need or want such books. I admit I quite enjoy them, maybe because I don’t have a writing buddy, don’t read my work to a partner and don’t belong to a writing group. I think such books – perhaps? - act as critique by proxy or at least a kind of nudge.

The writing book that I’ve just read is “Write To Be Published”.

I’d followed Nicola Morgan’s blog from the start so slightly missed the liveliness and surprise subject in each new post and the variety in the comment thread. However, the book has kept the same accessible and amusing tone and offers a breadth of firm advice and information, set out clearly and simply.

Nicola offers a well-structured account of how and what gets published, as well as what doesn’t, and – importantly - the many reasons why. (She alos warns that luck plays a part, too!)

A good section of the book deals with complicated subjects like submissions, contracts, agents and platforms but it is also a useful guide to writing effectively, covering fiction, writing for children, non-fiction and more, plus a list of useful resources.

I was particularly pleased by the way that Nicola's examples of titles were all current books, easily obtainable in the UK.

WTBP is about what it says on the cover. The friendly tone does not overwhelm or discourage but at the same time the reader ends up with an overview of the practical, tough business of modern publishing.

I’d certainly suggest this title to any of the would–be writers met at writers circles, social events or even in staff-rooms.

"Write To Be Published" by Nicola Morgan

Published by Snowbooks at £8.99

ISBN 978-1-906727-94-9

Other Nicola Morgan titles for writers are now available..

http://www.nicolamorgan.com/author/

Out of the Depths By Cathy MacPhail by Guest Reviewer Linda Strachan

2012-02-03T06:00:00.003Z

Linda Strachan lives near Edinburgh and knows a good story. Her own work ranges from the charm of her Hamish Mc Haggis picture book series through to strong teen novels such as Spider, (Winner of the Catalyst Award 2010) and Dead Boy Talking. She also wrote a useful handbook for people interested in this market: "Writing For Children".

Here's Linda Strachan's specially chosen book:

OUT OF THE DEPTHS by CATHY MACPHAIL

‘I saw my teacher in the supermarket last Christmas, Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. She’d been dead for six months’

And so begins the first book in Cathy MacPhail’s new scary thriller series.

Cathy MacPhail is a consummate storyteller and in Out of the Depths she weaves a ghostly tale of murder and suspense around her main character which makes you hold your breath as you turn the page, desperate to find out how it will all end.

Tyler Lawless can see dead people but it causes her no end of trouble. She had to leave her last school because no one believed her and she is determined that she is going to make a fresh start at her new school. She even tries to ignore it when she hears about a boy who died her new school, until the dead boy appears in her classroom and strange things begin to happen, again.

Trying to make new friends Tyler is determined not to believe her eyes when statues come to life, putting it all down to her vivid imagination. But when the boy appears to her and seems to be asking for her help she wonders if she will be able to find out wht he wants.

It all goes from bad to worse as her friends and everyone around her suspects that she is just telling lies and seeking attention. But Tyler knows that she has to help the boy that no one else can see.

Out of the Depths is a wonderful blend of thriller and ghost story and Tyler Lawless is a feisty and dauntless heroine. This is a series not to be missed.

Format: Paperback. Also available for Kindle.
ISBN: 978-0747599098

Published: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Price: £5.99
Reviewed by: Linda Strachan

HOW (NOT) TO MAKE BAD CHILDREN GOOD by Emma Barnes, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

2012-02-01T06:00:00.001Z

Children do love stories about children who are even naughtier than themselves. Go to a primary school on their Dressing-Up As A Children's Book Character Day, and you always bump in to multiple Pippi Longstockings and Horrid Henrys. Well, there's a new kid on the block as far as fictional naughty children go, and her name is Martha Bones. As a middle child myself, I relate to Martha, loathing her goody-goody older sister, jealous of her can-do-nothing-wrong baby brother, vying with friend/enemy next door, but expressing all those familiar feelings in such joyously REALLY NAUGHTY ways (she bit Father Christmas, for goodness sake!) that she's a real pleasure to read about. It's Martha's view of events that we get, and we very quickly realise that her views are somewhat prejudiced. A few sentences into the story we are told - 'It wasn't fair, she thought. anybody could accidentally drop their sister's library book down the toilet. And then pull the flush. anybody could accidentally write Baby For Sale accross their baby brother's head. In green felt-tip. The Non-Wash-Offable kind.' Isn't that escalating of naughtiness to the point of wickedness delicious?! But a reluctant and incompetent Interstellar Agent (an updated form of Guardian Angel) called Fred is soon doing battle to make Martha good. The results of their tussle are fast-moving and slapstick, with situations all too familar from real family life, but taken here to enjoyable extreme. But this isn't just a comic romp of a book; it also lightly explores something of the complexities of goodness and badness to show that things aren't always black and white, and that adults as well as children struggle with goodness.
As a rare treat in a book for children of about five to eleven, this book has full page illustrations. They are rather beautiful black and white pictures done in characteristic style by Emma Chichester Clark. The book is nicely presented altogether.
You'll be glad to know that Fred doesn't totally succeed in his mission to make Martha good. Will we see more of this character? I do hope so.
Review by Pippa Goodhart, website: www.pippagoodhart.co.uk

A SORT OF INTERMISSION

2012-01-28T17:22:00.000Z

Apologies, people. It's that time of the year when ice, snow, hail, fog, rain, bugs and flu have hit the review team, let alone all the normal pressures of the writing life.

There'll be a new review along soon but in the meantime, here's the wonderful Joy of Books. You can almost smell that magical bookshop scent, can' t you? One, two, three, breathe in:

TALES FROM MOONSHINY HALL by Stuart Hill, reviewed by Susan Price

2012-01-23T00:30:00.000Z

'Tales From Moonshiny Hall' by Stuart Hill

This collection of ghost stories for adults is much scarier than it might seem if you only dip into its first few pages.

The title seems quite cosy: it conjures up an image of Dickensian characters sitting round a fire, telling stories.

And, indeed, this is the frame of the book, albeit in modern dress. A ‘businessman with an 'interest in the paranormal’ hires Moonshiny Hall for a dinner party on Hallowe’en, choosing the house because of its ‘unquiet’ reputation.

The host asks each of his guests to tell a tale about their own paranormal experiences, and even the group’s sceptic obliges, starting them off with an affecting little story about a friend’s childhood. The story-telling then goes around the table, to a young woman social-worker, a shy young student, an ex-military policeman, the widow of a Tory MP, and others.

The stories are much more varied than I expected, and a lot more disturbing.

The second, for instance, is set at a Municipal Waste Recycling Unit: a more modern and less cosy or spooky setting could hardly be imagined. Yet this story rises to a pitch of horror that few ghost stories I’ve read can equal (and I’ve read a lot, and am a great fan of M. R. James and Le Fanu.)

As with the best writers of ghost stories, Stuart Hill has a knack of evoking, in a few words, the movements and sounds that make our flesh creep, whether it’s the soft impact of a body against a door when we’re alone in a flat at night, or something shadowy moving towards us with ‘the loathsome grace of a hunting spider’.

The voices of the different story-tellers are beautifully done too, whether it’s the crisp, controlled voice of the Tory wife, the bluff and humorous Redcap, the waspish doubter, or the more tentative voices of the young social worker and student.

This book is certainly for adults: it's far too disturbing for children. But any adult who loves ghost stories, and that grue that only a well-told story can give, will enjoy Tales From Moonshiny Hall.

Tales From Moonshiny Hall can be instantly downloaded from Amazon here,

Susan Price also has e-books of ghost stories available from Amazon: Nightcomers and Hauntings

Susan Price also blogs at 'Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?' together with 28 other authors who independently publish e-books.

PENNY DREADFUL IS A MAGNET FOR DISASTER by Joanna Nadin

2012-01-20T07:00:00.002Z

Publisher: Usborne (June, 2011)

Reviewed by Wendy Meddour

It is very hard not to love Penny Dreadful as she hurtles from one disaster to the next: providing ‘hair cuts’ with Dad’s electric razor, rescuing a possibly abandoned dog, and giving the school inspector a locust-filled day to remember!

Our little narrator chats away unstoppably and is so utterly believable, it’s as if Penny has completely taken over her creator - Joanna Nadin. Which is exactly as it should be, in this fast-paced world of fiasco and fun. The book is peopled with delightful, quirky, characters that slip in and out of the story effortlessly – and the narrative is only broken up by the gorgeous and perfectly matched illustrations provided by Jess Mikhail.

Penny Dreadful is a Magnet for Disaster absolutely deserved to be shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize this year – and I only have one complaint to make: I can’t keep up with antics of either Penny or Nadin! To my shame, I didn’t realise that Usborne have already published the second book in the series (Penny Dreadful is a Complete Catastrophe), and a third and fourth book are lined up for 2012! But it doesn’t surprise me. This character could just keep going – she’s so full of energy and mischief – and Nadin brings her to life with fluency and ease.

This is a wonderful book for children and child-like adults; particularly those with a slightly silly sense of humour, a love of chaos, and an aptitude to giggle in a group. I’d recommend it to all my favourite people – both large and small.

THE HENRY GAME; DELILAH AND THE DARK STUFF; MAD, BAD AND TOTALLY DANGEROUS by SUSAN DAVIS. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

2012-01-17T09:44:00.001Z

Susan Davis's three novels about teenagers Abbie and Lauren and their spooky adventures were first published in paperback and have now been reissued as e-books by Random House. Abbie, the first-person narrator, is a typical teenager - anxious, jealous, occasionally bitchy, and always horribly embarrassed by her parents. She is also fascinated by the occult and desperate to fall in love.

In the first book, THE HENRY GAME, Abbie, Lauren and their friend Marina use a home-made Ouija board to conjure up spirits and are haunted by the ghost of Henry VIII. Henry lusts (though not explicitly, so adult guardians need have no fears) after all the girls, but especially the lovely Marina, who falls under his spell and ends up in real danger. Meanwhile, Abbie is drawn to Marina's flashy, charming cousin, Nikos. Henry is a superb creation who not only demands the girls' attention to his royal commands but will not allow any other admirers ("Master Nicolas is a foul churl," he remarks, via the Ouija board).

Perfectly paced and sparkling with wit, DELILAH AND THE DARK STUFF has mystery and an engaging new character in lonely, grungy Delilah with her dreadlocks, Doc Martens and knowledge of witchcraft. Delilah's stepfather, 'the Loathsome Verne', is a manic Puritan who forces repressive energy-saving economies on his family and forbids almost all aspects of modern life. But there is also a shadowy presence stalking the girls: Matthew Hopkins, Witch-Finder General. The action moves from north London to the depths of Shropshire, where Hopkins' power increases. It's far too funny to be truly frightening, but there is gruesome historical detail of how alleged witches used to be trussed and ducked.

MAD, BAD AND TOTALLY DANGEROUS - the last story in the series, and possibly the most scary - involves the ghosts of Lord Byron and his unhappy mistress Claire Clairmont. Abbie and Lauren are roped in to help at the local poetry festival. Abbie has bad vibes about this right from the start, and soon both girls realize that handsome poet Ron Lord is not what he seems. But the other young helper, Ruby, refuses to believe that the man she's throwing herself at is a ghost. All three girls are drawn into a nightmarish mix of past and present - with Byron's grand house and grounds providing the perfect gothic setting for the finale.

These books are clever, funny, with characters you'll care about, and just a dash of genuine creepiness. Do try them!

Published as Kindles by RHCB Digital in 2011.
The Henry Game ISBN: 1446453626; Delilah and the Dark Stuff ISBN: 0552547948; Mad, Bad and Totally Dangerous ISBN: 1446453669.

There’s No Such Thing As Dragons by Philip Reeve: Penny Dolan

2012-01-17T09:30:00.000Z

Opening a book by a favourite author is a mixed moment. Will it be as good as other titles or differently good – or just that tiny bit disappointing?

This book doesn’t at first suggest a brave new idea. It is set in a kind of classic mid-European past and its hero is Ansel, a mute unwanted ten-year old boy bought as a servant by Brock the Dragon-Slayer, a man with a touch of faded glamour about him.

As gentle, likeable Ansel follows Brock, he discovers that Brock hides a supposed “dragon skull” in his baggage. He is confidence trickster who has never yet seen a dragon and now he is off to fleece those who live in the villages below the legendary Drachenberg mountain.

Reeve’s adults are not entirely nice people. The village already has a “saviour” in the form of Father Flegel of the red leather boots, who claims to keep the dragon away by the power of his prayers although the villagers have also made their own plans.

As Brock and Ansel set off on their climb, accompanied by the unwilling Flegel, the mountain and the quest reveal their treacherous nature – and of course there is a dragon.

The story is told in smooth, secure prose that supports the young reader even as it offers plenty of excitement, danger and a magnificently described trek across icy summits.

But what makes Reeve’s book so very satisfying to read – and why I am recommending it - is the way that at almost every point of the plot, he turns the traditional moments of quest and heroism kindly but wittily from dull expectation to sharp comment on the diffrence between dream and reality.

“Here Lies Arthur,” was Reeve’s novel for young adults about heroism but “There’s No Such Thing as Dragons” examines the same matter delightfully for the 9-12 year old child. It’s a tale that’s well worth reading and would be good for reading aloud. The illustrations are by the author too.

I read this novel without the slightest sense of disappointment and am very, very glad of that. Hope you enjoy it too!

Penny Dolan

www.pennydolan.com

Millie’s Marvellous Hat by Satoshi Kitamura - reviewed by John Dougherty

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000Z

I really wasn’t looking for a picture book. My son’s eleven, and learning to be cool at secondary school; my daughter’s nine and newly obsessed with the works of Lauren St John. Sad as it is, I think the time for buying them picture-books is over.

And yet… sometimes you just fall in love with a book. Sometimes you have to buy it, even though there’s no-one in particular to buy it for. This is how it was with Millie’s Marvellous Hat, which I bought at a festival at which Satoshi Kitamura and I were both appearing.

The story is at once beautifully simple and gloriously extravagant. Little Millie falls in love with a hat in an expensive shop and tries to buy it, but her purse is empty. Thank goodness for the kindness of the man behind the counter, who offers her an imaginary hat in exchange for her imaginary money. And what a hat! It can become anything you want; it can reflect your mood or your surroundings… and soon Millie sees that she’s not the only one with a marvellous hat. Everyone has one. “All you have to do is imagine it.”

Really, the only way to tell you exactly how wonderful this book is is to reproduce it - pictures and all, for (as you’d expect from Satoshi Kitamura) the illustrations are every bit as gorgeous, every bit as colourful, and every bit as mind-expanding as the text, and of course they complement each other perfectly. Just go, find it, and read it - as soon as you’ve finished this article, of course.

You see, I want to tell you what happened when I brought it home. I’d asked Satoshi to sign it without dedicating it to anyone - I thought that, just for me, I’d read it to my own two just once, and then put it in the presents trunk and give it to some small child on their birthday.

My children are terribly indulgent. They let me read it to them, and even the big, learning-to-be-cool one offered his opinion and agreed that it was a good book.

Then I caught my nine-year-old reading it for herself.

And then I caught her reading it again.

And again.

And again.

Eventually, I had to admit defeat and give it a home on the bookshelf in her room. But yesterday I borrowed it and took it down to the kitchen, so that I could re-read it prior to writing this review - and guess what? I caught her reading it again.

“Why do you like it so much?” I asked her.

Well, she told me, it’s that… it’s about the imagination. She reads about Millie imagining, and then, when she’s finished reading, she can imagine her own hat.

So there you have it. Millie’s Marvellous Hat by Satoshi Kitamura: a truly marvellous book, both hymn to and stimulus for the imagination, and your Awfully Big Recommendation for today.

'Being Billy' by Phil Earle - reviewed by Rosalie Warren

2012-01-08T07:00:00.004Z

Billy is a lifer - not in prison but in a care home. He has just turned fifteen and he's angry - oh boy, is he angry. His fury blazes out from every page.

Billy is not easy to like, or not at first, anyway. Not if you are a middle-aged woman like me, brought up in the 1960s in a family who gave you all the love and security you ever needed. After the first few pages, I wondered whether Billy and I were going to get on.

But slowly, Phil Earle led me into Billy's world and I started to get glimpses of why Billy is the way he is. Nine years of institutional living, for a start. An attempt at being fostered by a family with an eye to adopting him, which all went disastrously wrong. Before that, an alcoholic mother with a partner who physically abused Billy. This young man has many reasons for being the way he is.

Billy's redeeming feature is that he loves his younger brother and sister, the ten-year-old twins, Louie and Lizzie. He will do anything to protect them and keep them from harm. He'll beat up anyone who tries to hurt them. He stands guard outside the bathroom-without-a-lock while Lizzie is inside, reads them bedtime stories and tucks their duvets round their feet at night to keep them warm.

Care home worker Ronnie is on Billy's side or wants to be, if only Billy would let him. Ronnie goes to great lengths to help Billy sort out his life, but Billy's having none of it. It's not till he meets Daisy, a girl from a similar background to his own, that he begins to thaw out, just a little bit.

There's talk of the twins moving back home to live with their mother, leaving Billy behind in the care home. He hates this idea, both for their sake and his own, though with Daisy and Ron's help he finally starts to come to terms with it. But that's only the beginning of further trouble. Billy will have to dig deep to find what he needs to help his brother and sister now.

Books don't often make me cry these days, but my eyes were wet at a couple of points in the reading of this one. Phil Earle knows what he's talking about. The introduction says he worked in a children's home and moved on to train as a drama therapist and worked in a community in London caring for traumatized adoloscents. All that experience shines through the novel. And Phil understands Ronnie as well as Billy, that's very clear.

Young readers may well identify more quickly with Billy than I did. When I finally 'got' him, I was ashamed it had taken me so long. From the outside, I would have dismissed him, for sure, as yet another troublesome and violent young lad. I'm sorry, Billy. I understand you a bit better now and I see how I could easily have been you or Daisy if I'd experienced the kind of things you did.

Well done, Phil Earle. I see you have a new book out, called Saving Daisy. I hope it's the troubled Daisy, Billy's friend from the first book. I'll be reading it very soon, anyway, and I'll be recommending Billy to everyone who crosses my path.

Title: Being Billy
Author: Phil Earle
Publisher: Puffin (6 Jan 2011)
ISBN-10: 0141331356
ISBN-13: 978-0141331355

THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND by Jonathan Stroud, reviewed by Paeony Lewis

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000Z

When The Amulet of Samarkand was first published there was a hugemarketing splash which made me reluctant to read the book (perverse!). Plus I’d heard it contained a genie and magic, and thatmade me yawn. Then a personal recommendation encouraged me to put my prejudiceaside and give Jonathan Stroud’s book a go.

Back then my children were at primary school. I read to them every night andthis took thirty to sixty minutes, so the book had to be enjoyable (for all oursanities). And phew, there was lots of laughter and pleading for a few more pages. Yes, we all adored The Amulet of Samarkand.

I’ll admit that in retrospect I wonderhow much my positive perception of this book was coloured by my children’s enthusiasm. Ithink adults are influenced by their children, and we often join them in their pleasures.

So, without the influence of children, would I still enjoy The Amulet ofSamarkand? I suspect I would. Therefore I recommend this book to all ages, including older primary, teen, and adults who aren't embarrassed to be seen reading children's books.

The storyis set in a parallel contemporary London, where magic rules and is corrupt. Magiciansgain their power from enslaved djinnis (what the more common of us might call genies).The protagonist, Nathanial, is a young magician’s apprentice. That may sound familiar, but thisboy is a refreshingly flawed young man who still has plenty of character defects by theend of the book. The magic is corrupt and so are the characters.

In the adventure, the humiliated and vengeful Nathanial commands the djinni, Bartimaeus, to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from another magician. The taleis filled with wicked humour and suspense, and although the general plot might be considered rather well worn, the glorious characterisation of Bartimaeus overshadowsany doubts.

Bartimaeus is an ancient, powerfuldjinni. You can’t fail to adore this arrogant, lovable, sarcastic,witty anti-hero. There are footnotes in the story, written by Bartimaeus, andto give you a feel for the humour, I’ve reproduced a couple of his observations(don't worry, unlike the footnotes, the main story is written in the past tense):

Footnote 5: They were all at it –beetling off in coach parties (or, since many of them were well-heeled, hiringjets) to tour the great magical cities of the past. All cooing and ahhing atthe famous sights – the temples, the birthplaces of notable magicians, the placeswhere they came to horrible ends. And all ready to whip bits of statuary orransack the black-market bazaars in the hope of getting knock-me-down sorcerousbargains. It’s not the cultural vandalism I object to. It’s just so hopelesslyvulgar.

Footnote 6: I’m no great looker myself,but Faquarl had too many tentacles for my liking.

The Amulet of Samarkand wasoriginally published in 2003, and was the first in the Bartimaeus trilogy. These threebooks have recently been reissued and in October 2010 a fourth book waspublished (so now it’s classified as a Bartimaeus 'sequence').

My teen son says thenew volume, The Ring of Solomon, isexcellent. I think I’m going to read it too. And I'll be reading it on my own, without children...

The Bartimaeus Sequence
Volume 1: The Amulet of Samarkand
by JonathanStroud
is published by Random House (Corgi Children's Books)

Reviewed by Paeony Lewis
www.paeonylewis.com

A HAPPY NEW READING YEAR TO YOU ALL!

2012-01-03T11:42:00.000Z

Hope that you had a very comfortable and happy holiday and that you received (or bought for yourself) some wonderful books.

As ever, in 2012, Awfully Big Reviews will bring you a mix of specially chosen books for children and for young people.

ABR also includes occasional reviews of novels for adults as well as books about writing and educational matters.

So I'd like to start the year by mentioning my favourite adult non-fiction book of last year: "Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick" by biographer Jenny Uglow.

Thomas Bewick was a farmer's son from Tyneside who revolutionised wood-engraving and influenced book illustration for a century to come. He produced hundreds of images for all sorts of publications, but he is most known for his best-selling book, "History of British Birds".

Uglow sets Bewick's story within its historical period, a time that included new understandings of science, religion and industry as well as an increase in reading, printing and books.

Bewick's finely detailed woodcuts of birds and animals seem comfortably familiar now when they appear on pub walls and dinner mats and tea-towels and so on.

But back in the eighteenth century, his precise woodcuts were instrumental in spreading an interest in natural history and animal husbandry.

Why is the story of Thomas Bewick relevant to Awfully Big Reviews?

Although his wonderfully illustrated books were intended for adults, the pictures made them much loved by children at the time.

I have just read "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and feel sure that "Bewick" is the book Anne Bronte shows the young son reading with contentment and interest.

Iin later life, Bewick often met naturalists whose education and interest had sprung from his careful studies of birds and their habitats and his approach to illustration certainly influenced some of the earliest books printed specifically for children.

Maybe Thomas Bewick, that wild boy who mis-spent his youth fishing on the banks of the Tyne, created the first "cross-over" book?

Hint. If you can, borrow this book in the 2006 Faber hardback edition from your local library . You might find the real-sized tiny illustrations easier to study than those in my 2007 paperback. Or else get a magnifying glass!

Penny Dolan.
www.pennydolan.com

THIS IS NOT FORGIVENESS by CELIA REES. Guest Review by LINDA NEWBERY

2011-12-22T07:30:00.003Z

Awfully Big Reviews is taking a short break until the New Year. Thank you, writers and readers, for the wonderful range of books and other materials mentioned here over the last few months.

So here's wishing everyone - especially all the regular Reviewers - a most Happy Christmas and a cheering and comfortable New Year for 2012. With plenty of interesting reading, of course.

To conclude our Reviews for 2011, here's an excellent Awfully Big Guest Review from the Carnegie winning children's and Y/A author Linda Newbery.

Best wishes from Penny Dolan and all the Awfully Big Review team.

Most of Celia Rees’ readers will know her through her excellent historical novels such as Witch Child, Sovay and The Fool’s Girl. But before Witch Child broke through to major success and well-deserved acclaim, its author specialised in contemporary thrillers, and she returns to this genre with her latest book.

This compelling new novel bears similarities to my favourite Celia Rees book, The Wish House (which is not meant to imply any criticism of This is not Forgiveness; just that The Wish House is the one I wish I’d written myself). Both have a somewhat gullible and inexperienced central male figure who is captivated by an intriguing, seductive girl. Both novels take place in the summer break from school, during which the boy is drawn into this girl’s world and experiences first love, first sex, first death, as the cover of The Wish House so memorably puts it. Both Richard in the earlier novel and Jamie in this one are irrevocably changed by their experiences, left with complicated feelings of shame and guilt.

Here, the seductive girl is more dangerous than Clio, the artist’s daughter in The Wish House. She is Caro, already viewed with suspicion and distaste by Jamie’s well-grounded sister, Martha, when Jamie takes up with her. From the moment Jamie meets Caro, we know that he’ll do whatever she wants. And she has the same effect on Jamie’s older brother, ex-soldier Rob, invalided out of the army and now left purposeless, but armed with knowledge of military tactics and equipment which Caro intends to put to practical use.

Having gone through a phase of Tarot-reading, she’s now moved on to Red Army Faction anarchism. She “doesn’t do love”, as she makes clear to both brothers; only sex; she is adept at keeping them both in thrall, playing one off against the other. When an idea presents itself as a way of emulating her idols in the Baader-Meinhof gang, she easily recruits Rob to her cause.

We know from the opening chapter, in which Jamie describes his brother’s bleak and sparsely-attended funeral, that Rob won’t survive. But who will he take with him? The narrative is shared among the three characters; Jamie’s first-person account dominates, but is interspersed with Rob’s podcasts and Caro’s journal entries.

Such is Rees’ skill that the reader doesn’t feel capable of condemning either Rob or Caro; impressions must be constantly adjusted. As for the ending: the reader will certainly be waiting for the explosive situation to detonate, but will more than likely be as surprised as I was by how this happens.

This is not Forgiveness is a powerful thriller which will readily engage its readers, but also it explores with painful honesty the overwhelming compulsion of teenage love and lust, the attraction of identifying with a cause to give some purpose to life, and the ways in which relationships can be manipulated and loyalties misplaced. It will surely be one of the most impressive young adult novels published this year.

Linda Newbery

www.lindanewbery.co.uk

Linda's new novel for Orion, THE TREASURE HOUSE, will be published in May 2012, along with reissues of THE SANDFATHER and CATCALL, with new covers. THE DAMAGE DONE, one of Linda's own favourite young adult titles is now available as a Kindle edition

Scapegoat -Why we are failing disabled people by Katharine Quarmby

2011-12-18T20:10:00.000Z

The quote on the cover of this book states, ‘This may be the most important book you will read all year.’ Usually this kind of hyperbole brings out the curmudgeon in me but I know Katharine in her capacity as a children’s author so I began by reading Chapter One on line. My heart skipped a beat as Katharine’s clear and accessible prose began to tell the events that lead to the brutal murder of a young man with severe epilepsy called Kevin Davies at the hands of his so-called friends. And so my journey into the world of disability hate crime began.

In 2007 Katharine had started to investigate a number of violent killings of disabled men and women across the UK. As news editor of the disability magazine, Disability Now, she was able to put together the first national dossier of such crimes that year, following it up with an investigative report on disability hate crimes, Getting Away with Murder, for the charity Scope and the UK's Disabled People's Council, in 2008.

There are many upsetting cases of extreme bullying and violence in this book. Christine Lakinski, a woman with learning and physical disabilities collapses outside her home and a neighbour Anthony Anderson thinks throwing water over her, covering her in shaving foam and urinating on her will make good Youtube material. All this is videoed on a mobile phone as she is left to die in agony. There are other examples in the book of people recording their crimes on mobile phones or hounding on social networking sites.

Katharine puts such hate crimes in a historical context with chapters that span the Greek and Roman legacy, Witch-Hunting and The Eugenics Movement. There is a chapter that considers the motivations for these crimes

Katharine invites us be clear- headed and face up to our prejudices as we confront what she calls ‘the ugly truths about our society’ such as the obsession with the body beautiful.
‘Because what we want for ourselves, we should demand for everybody in our society. Friendship, kindness, respect and humanity. It shouldn’t be too much to ask.’

Read this book and weep then get angry and get writing. We need some strong YA fiction to support and illuminate this issue.
Reviewed by Lynda Waterhouse
Published by Portobello Books
ISBN978-1-84627-321-6

VIII by H.M. Castor; reviewed by Gillian Philip

2011-12-16T01:00:00.002Z

Forgive me for being sexist but I do especially love a young male narrator. And there can be none more flawed, fascinating and powerful than Hal, HM Castor’s protagonist who becomes Henry VIII.

Henry has had many fictional outings (and I’m afraid he can’t help but look like Jonathan Rhys Meyers in my head, though that’s no kind of disadvantage), but by no means too many - and HM Castor’s direct and original take on the king is a brilliant addition. Written in the first person and in present tense, the novel takes you into Hal’s head, and into the moment.

Now I have limited patience with present-tense writing (even when I’m using it myself) but in this instance it felt exactly right - immediate, vibrant and powerful. Hal spoke straight into my head, and much like the hallucination that haunts him, I felt I was constantly in his. That gives the reader an empathy and understanding that might otherwise be tremendously hard to achieve, given what he gets up to.

As it was, I never lost sympathy with him, not once, even though the author herself acknowledges his sometimes monstrous villainy. These are some of the most physically vivid descriptions of depression, mania and paranoia I have ever read. Hal is alternately endearing and terrifying; one moment you’d like to hug him, the next to - well, shall we say snog him. And the next, you know all you’d do is run. Hard and far.

There are shades of Mary Renault’s Alexander in Castor’s descriptions of battle - when you can hear the swords clash and smell the blood - and also in Hal’s need and longing to lead his troops from the front, to get down and dirty and fight at the side of his friends. That makes it all the more tragic when he descends into the tyrannical fear and paranoia of his later years, and so many of them pay for it with their lives.

HM Castor is so at ease with the historical period, you’d think she’d been there, and the sheer beauty of much of the writing doesn’t hurt; the descriptions of Hal’s physical surroundings and experiences are completely sensual. But it’s what goes on in his head that keeps you reading. Hal is a creature of his time, but he’s also a human being, a flesh and blood boy and man who might be living now.

I thought I might be alienated by Hal’s visions of a sinister child - whether a delusion or an actual ghost - but I found them entirely believable, and a solid reality in Hal’s mind. They contribute to his crumbling grip on morality, but they’re not solely responsible. VIII is a fine distillation of the compromises, the cruelties and the pragmatic ruthless realities of politics: realities that can so easily morph into that tendency of absolute power to corrupt.

I loved this book, and what’s more, I’m far more confident now of remembering both the order and the fate of the six wives. Go and buy it.

VIII by HM Castor

www.gillianphilip.com

www.facebook.com/gillianphilipauthor

PIGEON ENGLISH by Stephen Kelman reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr

2011-12-13T06:00:00.000Z

Pigeon English is seen though the eyes of an 11 year old boy recently arrived from Ghana, but it doesn’t fall into the category of young childrens’ fiction.

It opens with the aftermath of a murder.

You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought. It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy.

Jordan: ‘I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.’

Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’

Jordan: ‘One quid then.’

Harri observes:

The dead boy’s mama was guarding the blood. She wanted to it to stay you could tell. The rain wanted to come and wash the blood away but she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t even crying, she was stiff and fierce like it was her job to scare the rain back into the sky.

And with these few words on the very first page I'm completely hooked and completely in the head of the main character, Harri. What brilliance!

Harri decides to start his own murder investigation with his friend Dean on the case. His surroundings bristle with half-understood menace, from drug dealers, alcoholics, criminals and the members of the terrifying Dell Farm Crew gang who stalk the estate and whose leader X-Fire (Crossfire) gives Harri tasks to prove himself. But Harri retains his fresh ebullience in his newfound world of high-rise flats, escalators with teeth trying to eat you, the underground, a new slang language, fights with his sister, fending off her friend Miquita who is trying her best to seduce him, the first flickering of love for a girl called Poppy and an aunt who burns off her fingerprints so that she gets to stay in the country.

This is a first novel for Stephen Kelman but what a debut! Publishers were bidding for it and against strong competition he made it to the short list for the Man Booker 2011. So what makes Pigeon English such a ‘break-out’ novel? For me it all boils down to voice. Kelman has captured it perfectly – both the voice of the protagonist and his own authorial voice. And the fact that he writes so convincingly of what he knows. In the run-up to the Man Booker I heard him on a panel with the other five finalists where he told of growing up on a Council Estate. He only had to look out his window to see the gangs and the culture of crime.

The novel’s name is a play on the estate's ‘pidgin’ English, a patois that Kelman captures with conviction (and has fun with too) and the feral pigeon with pink eyes that Harri comes to believe is watching over him.

In 1994 I wrote a novel seen from the eyes of a boy at a time of incredible violence in the backstreets of Johannesburg South Africa, when people held kangaroo courts and necklaced victims (by putting burning tyres filled with petrol around their necks and shoulders so they couldn’t escape) and gangs mowed down people with AK-47’s. It went on to win the M-net Award with J.M. Coetzee on the shortlist. I mention it because I know how hard it is to balance a story about hope and childhood innocence against a background of harsh reality without being too dramatic or too mawkish.

Kelman has found the perfect pitch. Harri balances on the edge of innocence with fresh energy and enthusiasm against the squalor of poverty, drugs and violence. One can’t help but be thoroughly charmed and moved by Harrison ‘Harri’ Opoku, aged 11. It's a wonderful read.

PIGEON ENGLISH – Stephen Kelman published by Bloomsbury

ISBN 978 1 4088 1063 7

www.diannehofmeyr.com

THE CAT KIN by Nick Green. Reviewed by Ellen Renner

2011-12-10T13:05:00.010Z

Ben and Tiffany never expected their after-school gym class to be like this. For Mrs Powell teaches pashki, a lost art from an age when cats were worshipped as gods. But who is their eccentric old teacher? What does she really want with them? And why are they suddenly able to see in the dark?

They are going to need all of their nine lives ...

One of the delights of reviewing purely for pleasure, as we do on ABBA, is being able to return to books that have a special place in your affections. I first read The Cat Kin about two years ago, when a couple of friends recommended it to me. And they were right. The Cat Kin is a cracking read.

Ben Gallagher and Tiffany Maine are young teens living in London. They have loving but far from perfect families. They are ordinary, good kids: nice – but not angelic. Their problems are problems many readers will easily identify with: Tiffany has a young brother with muscular dystrophy and her distracted parents often seem to forget she exists. Ben's mum and dad are separated, but (because Nick Green is too intelligent to fall back on easy clichés) there are no villains here, just two adults trying, with mixed success, to muddle through somehow.

The Cat Kin is an adventure story offering classical ingredients: main characters who find they have special talents, an elderly and wise mentor, spectacularly evil villains. But the familiar outlines are filled in with real originality, such as Green's invention of the lore of Pashki. It's a strong plot handled deftly, with plenty of twists and turns, but it is the author's flare for characterisation that I most admire. Green's ability to get inside his characters' heads, reveal their motivations and emotional journeys, and make the reader care about what happens to these kids is what has pulled me into and and through this book now for the third time.

The pacing is consistently spot on. We're immediately drawn into Ben's world, then Tiffany's. Both these young people are isolated: their parents can't, just now, give them the support they need. And so, while hanging out at the local sports centre, they find themselves drawn into the strange classes given by the mysterious Felicity Powell, who teaches them the secrets of Pashki: a martial art that gives the talented and dedicated extraordinary cat-like powers.

Green gives us just enough of their apprenticeship. He has thoroughly thought out his invented martial art and its history, and offers us a taste of it with wit, intelligence and humour. And because he's got the balance right, it's great fun to join Tiffany, Ben and the other children as they learn how to walk and jump with a cat's skill, to see in the dark, to hear sounds no human could distinguish. The Cat Kin can climb near vertical surface and leap huge distances. If they fall they land on their feet, then turn and strike with invisible but deadly claws. Mrs Powell, their enigmatic and supremely talented teacher, is a charismatic character: like a older version of Catwoman, only fighting on the right side this time.

But Green is careful not to spend too long with the initiation into Pashki, fascinating as it is, before we, Ben and Tiffany are flung headlong into adventure and danger. A sinister businessman, a mad scientist, a brother in danger, a missing teacher. The two teens are faced with moral dilemmas as they face seemingly impossible odds. They make mistakes and bad choices, but keep trying to find the right path and the courage to follow it to the exciting, deadly and satisfying end.

Because I'm familiar with the story, having read it twice before, I thought I'd just glance through the book to prepare for this review. I should have known better. I started reading yesterday afternoon and finished over breakfast this morning. Now I'm looking forward to re-visiting the sequel, Cat's Paw, which I remember as an even more compulsive read. Both published by Strident with fabulous covers. Highly recommended for readers from age nine to adult.

Whisper My Name, by Jane Eagland: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000Z

At the beginning of Whisper My Name, twelve year old Meriel is travelling 'home' to England from India. Her mother had died, and her father, who is almost penniless, is sending her to London to live with her grandfather, believing that this will be the best thing for her. Meriel is bitterly resentful: she's already lost her beloved mother, and now she is losing her father and her home as well.

Things do not improve when she meets her grandfather. He is cold and fierce, and almost the first thing he does is to put her through a series of mysterious tests - he makes measurements of her, he tests her educational attainments, and he makes it very clear that he finds her a very disappointing specimen in every way. Meriel is not sure who she hates most: her father for sending her away, or her grandfather for being so unpleasant. But she is a determined girl, and she refuses to be cowed. 'She only had herself to rely on. Very well. She would be like the tiger, solitary and fierce.'

The one thing that keeps her going through the next few years is the hope that she will eventually be able to go home to India. But on her sixteenth birthday - marked by the usual tests and the gift of a box of pen nibs - her grandfather tells her that this is not going to happen. Her father has no means of paying the fare, and her grandfather expects her to stay with him until such time as she makes a suitable marriage. Her ambition is to be an actress - not a suitable calling for a girl of her class.

Furious, Meriel rebels. With the help of her maid she manages to escape the house and explore a little she meets an old friend of her mother's, Mrs Jolly, who proves to be the catalyst for change in Meriel's life. Through her, she meets two mediums - one a charlatan, but one genuine - and as a result, she eventually comes face to face with the shocking truth behind her grandfather's coldness

I can't say any more about what happens because it would spoil the book for you. What happens is intriguing and unexpected; we are given glimpses into aspects of Victorian life which certainly I knew virtually nothing about. Meriel is a powerful and colourful character; sometimes, I found her a little too powerful: she constantly forges ahead doing what she thinks she must, without considering the effect of her actions on people she is fond of. But she certainly makes life interesting. The character of Sophie, the young medium, is an interesting counterpoint - subtle where Meriel is brash, thoughtful where Meriel is headstrong.

The story is a great page-turner, colourful and passionate and vivid - definitely recommended for teenage girls.

But one quibble - why on earth is the default cover for historical fiction a girl with her head chopped off? (Not literally - I mean that the picture shows her face only from the mouth down.) I remember going to a talk by Philippa Gregory years ago where she commented on this curious phenomenon - how can this still be the design du jour? It's almost as if it's saying that the girl's individuality is not important, when the book itself says exactly the opposite. Very strange.

Whisper My Name is published by Macmillan, and costs £6.99.

THE DOUBLE SHADOW by Sally Gardner . Reviewed by Adèle Geras

2011-12-04T07:30:00.009Z

This is a wonderful book but it's also almost impossible to write about. Every review I've read of it has said certain true things but none of them has conveyed properly the flavour of the novel and reading it will be the only way you're all going to experience a truly original and memorable work.

It's original in its extraordinary complexity but basically it's an exploration of every kind of love. It is sometimes realistic but it has a streak of magic running right through it. Several things will echo with those who've read widely. For instance, the first encounter of Amaryllis, the heroine, with Ezra, the hero is deliberately reminiscent of the first meeting of Pip and Estella in 'Great Expectations.' You'll find a villain here who comes straight from old movie melodramas, and references to various films scattered through the pages. And Ezra, as the writer herself has told us, is a tribute to the poet Ezra Pound who was so important to T.S. Eliot when he was writing The Waste Land.

The plot is complicated. It involves a millionaire who builds, somewhere in rural England, a glittering picture palace which is an enchanted time and memory machine. He creates it so that his beloved daughter's bad memories can be erased and so that she can live forever in a place where nothing difficult can trouble her. Of course his plan goes wrong and Amaryllis (together with other characters) gets stuck there, unable to escape. Enter Ezra, who, like Orpheus, goes into the Underworld to rescue the girl he adores. She is still seventeen because time has stopped for her. Ezra has grown up and is a boffin working for the delightful Sir Basil as a special agent charged with discovering the secrets of this astonishing place that keeps on appearing and reappearing much to everyone's consternation.

The War is on. The action of the novel starts in 1937, but it moves backwards and forwards in time. Ezra lives in a village with his mother and his father (shell-shocked during the First World War). A whole cast of other people, some alive, some presented in flashback, revolves around him and Amaryllis. There is war, and rape and desolation but glamour and beauty and love too, all whirling round in a kind of kaleidoscope of events and thoughts and memories and thrills. The characters are all brought vividly to life, from Tommy Treacle and his mouse to the hideous Everett Roach and the mysterious Vervaine Fox. Gardner is good at names. She's good at most things. She creates a world that both is and isn't our own. She makes magic seem plausible and at the same time as artificial and glamorous as a magic trick. The true meaning of 'glamour' is "deceptive or bewitching beauty or charm" and that's what this book has in spades. Towards the end of the story we're told "All is in disguise, nothing is what it appears." This is the most accurate summing up of all: Gardner is dealing in illusions and what happens when they're shattered.

But the novel also has a kind and generous heart and that's what makes it moving and true. The descriptions of the nation at war are superbly done and with great economy, too. Gardner doesn't hide anything but she describes horrors with a deft touch and they are more powerfully present in our minds because of it. Her style is light and sometimes humorous but always full of a kind of poetry, and I don't mean by that soppiness of any kind. There's an astringency and sharpness to the writing that means she avoids sentimentality and gush.

This novel is published by Orion on a new list called INDIGO which is for Young Adults. The designer of the volume deserves a mention because every detail of the book's appearance is exactly right: the font, the Art Deco vignettes that appear throughout the text, the cover image: it's typographical perfection and makes the novel an object of desire unmatchable by any ebook version. Adults would love it. Older teenagers would love it and perhaps even a few younger ones but it's a highly sophisticated novel and a complicated one. It will find its readers and they'll spread the word. My advice is: read the book before a movie is made of it. I will bet money on that happening quite soon and in the hands of the right director it'll be great. You will, however, lose a lot of the words and that's what makes this such an intriguing and fascinating book.

I've only mentioned The Wasteland (that's how it's written in this novel) in passing, but that's important. I've not told you about the white tiger. He's important, too. So are many other things I've left out. You are going to have to read the book for yourselves.

INDIGO
Hardback. £9.99
ISBN:9781780620121
pp. 384

The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart. Reviewer : Yvonne Coppard

2011-11-30T06:00:00.003Z

Today, to start off the month of December, Awfully Big Reviews Guest Post comes from author Yvonne Coppard, She offers an interesting review of Susan Maushart's book, particualrly suitable for a time when Christmas Lists everywhere are filling up with all kinds of gadgets, devices and electronic toys. My thoughts are that only a brave person would follow this example but it sounds as if it is an interesting expereince to read about. Thank you for your choice, Yvonne.

Could you live without Internet access, television, mobi, mp3 player or any other kind of electronic media in your home for 6 months? Think you’re hard enough? OK – what if you had 3 teenage children, and decided take away all their stuff, too?

Susan Maushart, an American journalist settled in Australia, imposed a 6 month ‘digital detox’ on her family because in recognising an addiction to social networking in her own life, she took a long hard look at her kids and felt it was all getting out of hand for them, too.

‘When my children laugh, they don’t say” ha ha”. They say “LOL”

‘(for) eight to eighteen year olds, media is not an activity – like exercise, or playing Monopoly, or bickering with your brother in the back seat. It’s an environment: pervasive, invisible, shrink-wrapped around pretty much everything kids do and say and think.’

The book, a gift from my daughter, was well chosen. As a borderline technophobe and virtual hermit who is neither on Facebook (gasp!), nor Twitter (horror!) and who never, ever, talks on the phone while walking down the street (sad Norma No-mates!), my daughter could see this was the book for me. But even I would find it hard to function without my desk top, lap top, i pod shuffle and blackberry. My children have grown up and left home – so would my husband, if I announced that he could no longer watch football on TV, or check cricket scores online. Maushart is a braver woman than I. And she really saw it through, with almost no compromises.

What comes out of Maushart’s account of these six months in the digital wilderness is fascinating. Her writing is succinct, painfully observant of her own life as well as what’s happening in society. Along with the funny stories of the family’s adaptation to an electronic version of cold turkey, Maushart has thoroughly researched the good and bad effects of the huge technological advances this century has seen.

She distinguishes between the ‘Digital Natives’, born with technology at the crib-side and imbibing it from the start, and the Digital Immigrants – like me – who have to overcome not only ignorance, but a sneaking fear that technology is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, ready to bare its teeth and consume us as soon as it gets the chance.

Many of the outcomes of the technological miracles of our age are amazing, in a positive way, and some are disturbing. Children have never had so many opportunities to explore and learn about the world – nor so many distractions and pressures. We all know that the arrival of the digital age has been a mixed blessing; we talk about the ‘bite-sized’ generation whose concentration spans are dismal but whose knowledge of the world outstrips that of their parents (and often of their teachers, too). Maushart evidences this not only from her own family (the son who re-discovered his saxophone to alleviate the boredom, and is now a professional musician; the daughter who finally learned how to sleep at night) but from good quality research around the world. The way she weaves family memoir, common sense knowledge, literary references and humour make an entertaining as well as challenging read. It was a life-changing experience for her family, and it was fascinating to see how the mother and each of the three children adapted to survive.

The book has weighty points to make, but there’s plenty of wry humour, too. Maushart recounts telling her youngest daughter, Sussy, about a man who completely lost it when his 3 sons didn’t hear him yelling at them that dinner was ready; they were all plugged into their earphones while simultaneously gawping at a huge plasma TV. The father threw the TV out of the window, where it smashed into smithereens.

‘Well, the neighbours hear all the noise of course, and call the police, and they file a report. And in the end the Family Court gets hold of it, and well, the man loses his children.’

It’s a pretty full-on story, and now I’m regretting I’ve told it. I can see Sussy is on the verge of tears. ‘You mean…you mean…’ she quavers, ‘they never get the plasma back?’

There was a long period in my family’s life when, as parents and foster parents to a mixed bunch of teenagers, we had to resort to subterfuge, blackmail and manipulation to get everyone around the dinner table together. We believed this was an essential opportunity to share news, keep a quiet eye on a child who was struggling, build the confidence our mob needed to face the world – all that good, life-affirming stuff. But it was very hard work – and we only had the single telly, with four channels (WYBI!) and one clunky telephone in the hall (LOL) to contend with. I bet these days, family meals would involve every single one of us sitting at the table shovelling food with one hand while texting or playing on Nintendo with the other.

So hats off to Susan Maushart – firstly for the courage and staying power to undertake the task, and secondly for an entertaining, informed book that really makes you think about how you relate to the people around you, whether they are at home, or work, or out there in cyber-space. And about how far we’ve come, we human beings, and how much we have yet to learn.

The Winter of Our Disconnect

by Susam Maushart

Profile Books ISBN 978-1846684647

www.yvonnecoppard.co.uk

CHIME by Franny Billingsley: review by Katherine Langrish

2011-11-25T07:00:00.000Z

'I've confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged. Now, if you please.’

For many years I’ve been telling folk tales and fairytales to children, especially around Halloween time, and one of my (and their) favourites is a story from the Lincolnshire fen country called ‘The Dead Moon’. In brief, it’s the tale of how the Moon herself came down one night to see the dangerous boggy fens, full of corpse- candles and dead folk and other creeping horrors - and was seized by the bogles and pulled down into the bog so there was no more moonlight to help travellers find their way. How the story ends you can find out in Katharine Briggs ‘A Dictionary of Fairies’.

‘Chime’ by Franny Billingsley is not the tale of the Dead Moon, but it’s set in the same kind of world, and I feel sure she must know the story. Briony and her sister Rose live in Swampsea, a small coastal town surrounded by dangerous and wild swamplands inhabited by spirits who must be either avoided or placated: ghost-children, the Boggy Mun, the Wykes, and the Dead Hand - while the estuary has its personified tidal wave, Mucky Face.

Briony, the unreliable narrator, is a bitter, damaged girl who holds herself accountable for far too many accidents. She adores the memory of her beloved Stepmother, resents her quiet, apparently uncaring father, and spends her days and nights looking after her beautiful but difficult sister Rose. When golden-haired, charismatic Eldric arrives in Swampsea, it takes her a while to adjust to his sunny, light-hearted ways. Slowly he begins to show her how to enjoy life. But she has secrets - dreadful secrets. Terrible things have happened in Swampsea. Witches are evil. And Briony knows she is a witch.

‘Chime’ is maybe the best book I’ve read all year. It’s beautifully written: lyrical, funny, full of twists and turns and drama - and with a fantastic sense of place. Briony’s voice is astounding. I’ll leave you with an extract. Here she is, talking to herself, as Eldric’s tutor Mr Drury vanishes into the swamp:

Next time, Briony, keep your promise to Stepmother. Don’t pretend you’re interested in doing good. How long can a clever girl trick her own self? It’s been three years since you learned you were a witch. Perhaps you didn’t kill Stepmother, not technically, but that doesn’t mean St Peter’s going to wave you through the pearly gates.

Slurp and swallow, slurp and swallow. Mr Dreary had vanished. Too late to pull him out. The false lights had vanished. Everything had vanished except Eldric and me. Everything had vanished except the two of us, the lantern, the stars, and the swamp, which breathed slowly through its jellied lungs.

'Chime' by Franny Billingsley is published by Bloomsbury at £10.99
ISBN 9780747583813

Katherine Langrish
www.katherinelangrish.com

THE RABBIT GIRL by MARY ARRIGAN : Review by Penny Dolan

2011-11-22T13:30:00.001Z

All Mam’s comforting clutter had been hidden away. Even the picture of rabbits in a field was covered by a white cloth.

“We’ll go there,” Mam used to say. “You and me, Tony, we’ll go there and play with those rabbits.” Maybe that’s where Mam is, thought the little boy. Maybe she’s gone to play with the rabbits and is waiting for me.”

Rabbit Girl is a tale of two lives that meet in a pet shop. It begins back in 1934 Ireland, when five-year old Tony is taken to say goodbye to his dead mother. Too soon, his father has to go to London to find work, leaving Tony with a neighbour, Mrs Mooney, and the bullying of the local rabbit catcher’s sons. A year later, his father returns to collect Tony and take him back to life in a room in a tenement block, and the occasional care of kindly Doris.

Eventually, as time goes on, Tony returns to the green of the countryside, but as an evacuee, extra labour for a farmer whose son is away.

The hard tale of Tony’s life is balanced and warmed by the character from the present day: Mallie, a lively fifteen year old girl. Although Mallie has problems, being almost a carer for her mother who is a depressed artist, the pages are very much brightened by the jokes, laughter and fun that Mallie shares with her bold best friend Jamila throughout the book: a most wonderfully described relationship.

Mallie is desperate for money to buy her mum a birthday present so she takes on a secret part time job in a pet shop, offered to her by Steve, the man behind the counter, who is caretaking the shop while his dad is in a convalescent home.

Mallie copes with many trials and tribulations, including fear of her job being discovered, the return of Mr Armstrong the ill-tempered pet-shop owner, as well as her attempts - encouraged by Jamila - to bring employment and happiness into her own mother’s life.

Mary Arrigan skilfully weaves chapters from the past among Mallie’s modern life. Gradually we learn about Tony’s friendship with his fellow evacuee Alice during war time among the Lakeland fells. We also discover, as Tony and Alice do, another important character - a woman farmer and artist at Hill Top Farm, Windermere - and about a drawing of rabbits among green grass that brings rage so many years later.

I felt the writing style of this book was very nicely judged for the older junior/KS2 or the young teen reader. Although Mary Arrigan tells the story lightly and almost swiftly, her scenes still captures the impact of moments of pain or sadness. I also liked the way she offers a non-simplistic approach to past times, hinting at the true economic necessity behind what now seems like harsh treatment.

Bit by bit, the reader, often alongside the memorable Mallie, understands the reasons behind the older characters behaviour and actions and the story circles round in a satisfying way. An enjoyable and thoughtful book.

By the way, all this is written in awareness of the particular surname, Dolan, that Mary Arrigan gave to that rabbit catcher and his bullying sons.

Penny Dolan

www.pennydolan.com

The Rabbit Girl by Mary Arrigan. Published by Frances Lincoln at £6.99.

ISBN 978-1-84780-156-2

www.maryarrigan.com

'Life: An Exploded Diagram' by Mal Peet. Reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

2011-11-20T20:23:00.000Z

This is a truly wonderful book. It mixes the tragic-comic, but loving, observation of ordinary lives in rural Second World War and post-war Norfolk with the tragic-comic, but breath-takingly scary, games played by powerful men who very very nearly blew our world to bits in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It is very real, very poignant, very funny, deeply thought-provoking, and absolutely beautiful in its execution. The writing is clear and true, with no need for literary frills and furbelows because truth doesn't need decoration. It makes for a fun read. Who could resist chapters headed, 'The Perfume Of Axle Grease, The Whiff Of Halitosis', 'A Wink In The Barley', or 'Things Ruth didn't Know About George At The Time'? It had me laughing and crying.

My only query about this books is whether or not it should have been published in the Young Adult category. It's certainly a story that would engage many older teenagers, particularly the parts of the book that deal with seventeen-year-old Clem's passionate love affair with his father's boss's daughter. But the teenage readers who would enjoy this book will be the teenagers who are already reading adult books, and would, I hope, read it anyway, whether or not it is age-labelled for them. To me, this is a story with particular resonance for my own generation; those of similar, or slightly younger, age to Mal Peet whose childhood has fed into this book. I certainly found echoes with my own childhood, and with the experiences of my own parents and neighbours. I remember the grubbing-up of hedges around the East Anglian fields behind our house to make for the 'prairie' style of farming. I remember the twin-tub washing machine with the ribbed grey hose that hung into, and sometimes flipped out of, the sink, spewing grey water! I remember the 11 plus exam, Ladybird clothing from Woolies, Formica table tops, Meccano, and so much more of the small domestic details of life back then.

Some reviewers have objected to the history lesson on the Cuban Missile Crisis that is at the heart of this book. I don't. In fact I'm grateful to have such a very readable explanation of events that I lived through, but was unaware of, as a child. Having said that, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed that 'history lesson' section of the book if I'd read it as a teenager. And I wonder about the book's ending. Was it an add-on designed to engage more with teenage readers by bringing the story into the new millennium and to events which have happened in the lives of today's teenage potential readers? To me, the book would have been even nearer to perfect without that extra chunk at the end.

This is a book that I will be buying for friends for Christmas. Why? Because it is the funniest, most insightful, interesting, and, above all, essentially kind, novel that I have read for a long time.

By the way, if others, like me, are left puzzled by the title, I've been given a possible explanation by a friend. Her husband told her that comics of the 50s and 60s, such as The Eagle (which gets mentioned in passing in this book) apparently had a middle section that gave an 'exploded diagram' of a bit of machinery or something from nature, or a building, and this book does the same trick; looking at chunks of life that come together to form Clem's one life.

Very very highly recommended.

Pippa Goodhart: www.pippagoodhart.co.uk

Pirate House Swap by Abie Longstaff and Mark Chambers

2011-11-16T06:30:00.000Z

Reviewed by Elen Caldecott

The Clark family never go on holiday; their summer is usually spent doing d.i.y. That is, until they see an advert for the perfect get away - a house swap. The advert reads:

"Lovely timberhome. Picturesque views. Right on the sea - fish, swim and sail! Sleeps four."

The Clarks set off and find that their new home is more in the sea than on the sea - it's a pirate ship, complete with ship's parrot and crow's nest.

Rather than being daunted, the family actually embrace the pirate's life. Soon enough they are navigating by the stars and having the time of their life. Back at the Clark's home, the pirates too are getting used to landlubbing ways.

This picture book is witty and inventive. There are visual jokes running through it (for example, even the mice have to learn new skills alongside their resident families) which will please children. There are also some great jokes for adults too - in the wanted ads in the newspaper we see the notice:

"For Sale: magic beans. Not for eating. May cause giants. One cow o.n.o."

At its heart, this is a story about resilience and bravery in the face of new experience. It is also a light-hearted look at how people with different cultures rub along together. I particularly liked the Clarks' return home, where they discover that the pirates have been doing some d.i.y. of their own. Lots of the damage can be repaired, but some changes are permanent. Next door's cat, for example, won't be giving up his earring any time soon.

Pirate House Swap is a great book to share with the top end of picture book readers who will enjoy decoding the pictures alongside the words. It's a great, gender-neutral companion to Abie Longstaff's The Fairytale Hairdresser which had a same delightful humour, but was a bit pink to be shared with boys.

www.elencaldecott.com
Elen's Facebook Page

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson. Reviewed by Sue Barrow

2011-11-10T07:54:00.004Z

What makes a good sequel? Or to put it another way, when you’ve written Chains, a book short listed for the 2010 Carnegie, how do you top that?

Forge is not just a sequel; it’s the second volume of Laurie Halse Anderson’s trilogy about the lives of two young slaves caught up in the American War of Independence. Chains was Isabel’s tale; in Forge the story is taken up by Curzon Smith, slave turned soldier, whom Isabel befriended and rescued from prison at the end of the first book. Puzzling then that the UK publisher decided on a cover photo of 'Isabel'.

After their escape from New York, Curzon and Isabel have parted company on bad terms, Isabel doggedly going in search of her little sister Ruth from whom she has been cruelly separated. Irritated with Isabel but at the same time struggling to suppress his feelings for her, Curzon rejoins the rebel cause as they prepare for battle against the British at Saratoga. After a hard won victory, the Patriot army moves on to Valley Forge as the severest of winters tightens its grip on the north.

Forge is a story of battles, severe hardship and a starving winter and Anderson’s vivid prose puts you right at the heart of the action. Curzon’s voice is distinctive and despite the grim subject matter, often humorous. But the reader is never allowed to forget how precarious his position is. Soldier he may be, fighting on the winning side for the freedom of the American states, but the question of his own independence is another matter. African Americans fought for both sides in the war but the Patriot declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ did not extend to people of colour when it was written in 1776. Readers may be surprised to learn that it was the British alone who promised freedom to slaves who joined their cause.

Curzon and Isabel eventually meet up again as recaptured slaves in the same household. There they encounter a dangerous new enemy and have to decide whether to join forces in a bid for freedom or to go their separate ways.

Read as a sequel, Forge delivers on every score. It keeps up the pace of Chains, maintains the reader’s interest and resolves at least some of the issues arising in the first book. But if, like me, you start it wondering whether Isabel manages to catch up with her little sister . . . well, you’re just going to have to read the book!

Forge Bloomsbury

ISBN 978-1-4088-0380-6

279 pages £6.99

A QUIET AFTERNOON IN THE MUSEUM OF TORTURE by Catherine Czerkawska Reviewed By Susan Price

2011-11-07T00:30:00.000Z

A Quiet Afternoon In The Museum of Torture - Czerkawska

I don’t know how the blog, Authors Electric UK, is workingfor other people, but, as one of its members, I find it’s certainly widening my own reading.

With so many writers joining us, natural curiosity leads to medownloading at least a sample of their books, and often the books are so cheap- cheaper than a magazine – that I think, why mess about? I’ll just buy it. And often I read the books thinking, this isso good, why haven’t I read these author before? Why have they been abandoned by publishersand pushed into self-publishing?

This is exactly what I thought when I downloaded these three short stories by Catherine Czerkawska.

They are exquisite – like ‘The Butterfly Bowl’ of the secondstory. It’s a plain little Chinese bowl,handed down from Debbie’s great-great-grandfather. It’s nothing special to look at but, whenfilled with water, the bowl seems suddenly filled with butterflies. Showier articles from Great-Great-Grandad’scollection had been lost or sold, but this modest little bowl had beentreasured for its secret.

Debbie, a lecturer, falls heavily for a playwright, andfinds herself in that awkward bind of loving the man but thinking his workmediocre. She hides her true judgement,and praises and reassures him; but the more she reassures, the more reassurancehe craves, exhausting her. One day, tocheer him, she fills the plain little bowl with water. ‘Nice gimmick,’ he says; but is much more enthusiasticwhen he has the bowl valued…

I won’t tell you any more.

The author says that the stories are about love – and theyare, but not in the usual way. ‘TheButterfly Bowl’ deepens and widens the more you think about it. It’s about love, about cost and value, aboutthe deceptiveness of appearance, about memory and family. It’s about the need to keep the central,hidden core of yourself free, about the way love threatens that freedom, abouttalent and creativity. All held in the imageof a little white bowl. I've read long novels that didn't hold as much as that little bowl. Hell, I've written long novels that don't hold as much.

The title story is about torture, but not the kind oftorture to which the museum is dedicated. The central characters are a couple with a newborn baby: and suddenlytheir world is full of terror and threat. ‘I didn’t know it would hurt thismuch,’ says the mother, and she isn’t talking about the birth.

Three stories about love – but not the happy-ever-after,romantic idea of love. These stories arefor adults: they're about love in the real world – plain, perhaps, as a white china bowl: painfulas thumb-screws.

Love hurts.

www.susanpriceauthor.com

THE MAGICIAN'S DAUGHTER: Little Angel Puppet Theatre on Tour. Penny Dolan

2011-11-01T09:36:00.000Z

“It’s all gone wrong. Oh boo and foo and gloo!”

Only it didn’t go wrong at all. Boo and foo and gloo! is one of the lines from THE MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER a delight of a puppet show coming from the Little Angel Theatre and the RSC. I watched the play with two young children in the Studio at Harrogate Theatre last Friday and heard the line chanted over and over again over the following days.

"Isabella flying "puppet

The Magician’s Daughter was a perfect example of show for young children. Written by Michael Rosen and inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, the two "human" roles are those of the young Isabella and her mother Miranda - Prospero’s daughter - and their world is being spoiled by rainstorms.

The plot is suitably simple. Helped by a magical book from her grandfather’s old wooden chest, Isabella flies by night to a magical Isle so she can re-unite the two halves of Prospero’s broken staff, using the magic to stop the everlasting rain. On the Isle she meets the two main puppet characters: the elegant, mocking Ariel living among branches full of fruit and the slow, angry greenish-coloured Caliban searching for truffles down on the ground. Isabella tries to help the two squabbling inhabitants make peace.

Small children, especially those likely to be unfamiliar with real-world puppets, were drawn into the story carefully. The show began with the sounds of stormy weather, and the two actors huddled under an umbrella singing a simple joining-in kind of song: “Drip drop! Will it never stop?” and then Clare Rebekkah Pointing’s portrayal of young Isabella, totally fed up with the rain. The puppets were gradually introduced. First came the early shadow puppets seen through the "window", and then by the flying “Isabella puppet” being flown in her dream by the real Isabella, both dressed in identical nightgowns.

Ariel and Caliban

The play kept the young audience’s attention throughout. The plot had clearly defined steps, such as the scene-change from the child’s room to the island. There were some special effects to catch the eyes, such as the moving wooden chest and light shining from the magic book. There was a clever mix of music and song throughout, led by Lizzie Wort, who also acted as the warm, lively and motherly Miranda. In case the children were getting lost by the action of the story, there were moments of direct to-the-audience involvement and memorable songs.

The performance was advertised as being from “three upwards” so the audience was very much family-based. My borrowed five-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl were kept fully involved by the layers and variety within the play and everyone around there seemed to be enjoying it too. I even saw a couple of sullen pre-teens nearby smiling in the darkness.

My final point of praise goes to the script, which was written by Michael Rosen and whose voice is heard narrating the introduction. The script not only "tells the story" , but is enriched throughout by a whole range of language; it also contains occasional lyrical lines from “The Tempest”, a scattering of lively Italian expressions, and plenty of the rhyming, repeated child-friendly word play that came home with us afterwards. Much loved was Caliban’s attempts at the name Isabella – Ellabella! Izzybelly! – along with the now famous family saying “Oh boo and foo and gloo!”.

The Magicians Daughter is a gem of a puppet play - better and more magical than the video on the Little Angel website suggests. It was wonderfully worked by the actors and puppeteers - congratulations to all of you! - and was an experience that stays in the mind and on the tongue. Better still, The Magician's Daughter is still on tour a while longer!

ps. The Little Angel Company has two shows on at its home, the Little Angel Puppet Theatre in Islington, London. Just right for the winter season.

http://www.littleangeltheatre.com

LOB by Linda Newbery, reviewed by Ann Turnbull

2011-10-29T10:33:00.000+01:00

This lovely, poetic story for younger children has a classic feel to it.

Lucy's grandfather tells her about Lob, who helps him in his garden. No-one else in the family can see Lob, but Grandpa Will knows he is there. "Lob-work" is what he does: filling the watering-cans, sweeping up the leaves, cleaning the tools and hanging them neatly in the tool-shed. Only certain people can see Lob. Lucy longs to be one of them, and is thrilled when at last she catches a glimpse of him.

So far, so idyllic. But change comes, and it's sudden and brutal. Lucy must cope with loss and with an undermining of her belief. And Lob must set off in search of a new home. As Lucy, in south London, longs for Lob to come to her, so Lob, walking the roads, feels a pull towards the south and follows it, despite setbacks and danger.

Walking is slow. During the year that Lucy waits for Lob, she learns to adapt to her changed life, to resist the taunts of others and hold fast to her beliefs, and - above all - to have patience as the seasons come and go. And in the end, all is well.

This is a story that celebrates the life-force, the earth itself, and all green, growing things. It's about the joy of gardening, the neighbourliness of allotments, the cycle of life and age-old beliefs in the Green Man. It's also about the stranger in our midst who may be in need of kindness. Lob - a tired little old man on the road, and yet the one who will bring new life to all growing things - is a powerful image.

The black and white illustrations by Pam Smy perfectly complement the story. They are subtle, with a secretive feel to them. And here and there, if you look closely, you may see Lob.

And Rocky Too by Jayne Woodhouse, reviewed by John Dougherty

2011-10-23T08:00:00.000+01:00

My children got very excited when And Rocky Too dropped through the letterbox. Like me, they’d loved The Stephensons’ Rocket, Jayne Woodhouse’s first story about injured greyhound Rocky and the troubled family who, in taking him in, find themselves drawn back together.

We weren’t disappointed. And Rocky Too contains many of the same elements that made the first book such a delight: page-turning plot, humour, warmth, human interest, and a set of compelling characters. All the original cast make a welcome return - Rocky, of course; grumpy old neighbour Wilf; bad boy Marcus Harding; well-meaning but impractically optimistic Dad; exhausted and exasperated Mum; irritating younger brother Darren; and sensible heroine Anna, whose very credible narrative voice skilfully manages the difficult trick of conveying both objective reality and subjective experience without compromising either.

Following the events of the first book, the Stephenson family faces a new crisis - or rather, two new crises; for on top of Dad’s loss of his much-needed job, Darren’s friendship with Marcus appears to be on the rocks. It turns out that Marcus has a problem - his own family life, which makes the Stephensons’ look idyllic by comparison - and it's the uncovering of this problem which provides much of the narrative thrust.

Jayne Woodhouse has, once again, done a wonderful job with this story. A number of the established characters are beautifully developed further - notably Wilf, who gets the opportunity to show his warmer and wiser side without losing any of his lovable crotchetiness, and Anna, whose hurt reaction to her Dad’s behaviour is entirely convincing - and whilst it touches on unemployment, potential family breakdown, mental illness, and the plight of juvenile carers, And Rocky Too never becomes a book about issues. It’s very much a book about people.

I was a little disappointed that, having tied up all the loose ends, Woodhouse introduces another one in the very final paragraph. Clearly the intention is to make us want to read the next book - but there really is no need. If the next book is anything like the first two, we’ll want to read it.

My children (now a little older than in the picture) wanted me to say that - while they do also enjoy books with fantastical elements - they really like the books about Rocky because they’re realistic. I’ll go along with that.

And Rocky Too by Jayne Woodhouse, published in 2011 by The Clucket Press. £5.99 in paperback. ISBN 978-0-9549256-9-7

This review will also appear in Armadillo

'Writing for Children' by Linda Strachan: reviewed by Rosalie Warren

2011-10-20T07:00:00.004+01:00

First of all, a big thank you to Linda Strachan. Reading her book, Writing for Children, helped me get started with writing for young folk, to persevere with my revisions and submissions and, eventually, to find a publisher for Coping with Chloe, my first children's/YA book.

Actually, to speak of 'reading' Strachan's book is something of an understatement. I tend to treat my how-to-write books rather like Bibles or other religious texts. Perhaps if I squeeze a book hard enough, some of the magic will seep from it into me... inspire my dreams and help me unlock the golden gate to success. I like to think I'm a bit more rational than that, at least some of the time, but to be honest, I'm not sure...

Writing for Children certainly opened a number of gates for me. First and foremost, it helped me believe I could do it. I'd already had two books published for adults, but writing for children was something new, and I had no illusions that it would be easy.

Linda Strachan's book focuses on writing for children up to the age of 12, and she tells you everything a beginning author could possibly need to know, in the straightforward and unassuming manner of one who has been doing it for years and has over 50 books to her name. Unusually, she gives plenty of space to writing non-fiction as well as fiction, and she also discusses at length the practicalities of writing for a fee or writing for companies like Working Partners. All this was new to me and very useful to learn about. Strachan also discusses writing and publishing poetry and plays, and there's a useful section on research. She gives a great deal of helpful advice on the mechanics of writing - how to get ideas, how to tackle plot, structure, characterisation, dialogue, settings, beginnings and endings and point of view... and how to revise your work.

Strachan provides useful writing exercises, too. Normally I skip the exercises in books, but I did try some of hers and I'm very glad I did, as they are unusual and inspiring. She takes you through the process of how to prepare your submissions and send them off to agents and publishers - and what to do when the inevitable rejections come.

There's a useful chapter on what to expect of your publisher or agent - and what they might expect of you. Plus there are many ideas for self-promotion and advice on how to deal with school visits and other author events. Money matters, contracts and royalties are covered, too, and Strachan offers good counsel on how to work - as I do - without an agent. At the end there's an invaluable list of resources of all kinds, including organisations for writers, courses and consultancies, plus magazines, websites and recommended books.

Another great thing about Writing for Children is the way it is scattered throughout with helpful and inspiring remarks by children's authors of all kinds (plus Anton Chekhov, for good measure). You get the feeling that you're in the company of experts and that, with their help, you won't go far wrong. I've started recommending this book to budding authors who come to me for advice about writing and submitting their children's books.

My copy is now severely battered. Like a favourite old teddy bear, I still turn to it from time to time, and the section on handling rejection is well-stained with coffee, chocolate crumbs and tears. It's been scribbled on, too, and a number of the page corners turned down. Can a recommendation come more highly than that?

Writing for Children
Author: Linda Strachan
Publisher: A & C Black
Year of Publication: 2008

On Amazon:

Kindle edition (2009):

Rosalie Warren's website:

The Whales’ Song and The Princess and the Pea, reviewed by Paeony Lewis

2011-10-17T08:49:00.011+01:00

Here are two very different picture books. Or are they? Both are picture books aimed at five years and older. Both contain glorious illustrations. Both utilise photography. Both tell an enchanting story. Both should appeal to girls with imagination. Both are books I yearn to read aloud to children (will somebody lend me a child until mine sprout grandchildren?).

The Whales’ Song by Dyan Sheldon, illustrated by Gary Blythe

When I ventured into my 17-year-old daughter’s room and asked her if she remembered this picture book, my daughter smiled wistfully. It’s a favourite children’s book she’ll never forget. So what makes The Whales’ Song a haunting classic?

It’s a poignant tale about a young girl, Lilly, who is enthralled by her grandmother’s tales of whales. Patiently, Lilly waits by the ocean to hear her own whale song. The ending is likely to be too subtle for children under five. It’s mysterious and evokes quiet wonder in an older, thoughtful child.

The award-winning illustrations are softly stunning. The paintings have a realistic, faraway quality that appears to be inspired by photographic images. Unforgettable.

The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child, photographed by Polly Borland

The cover of this pink picture book didn’t grab me. However, after a recommendation from a bookseller I took a peek inside and was beguiled. This modern retelling of The Princess and the Pea doesn’t try hard to be politically correct. Hey, romance is OK and we discover the key to true royalty is good manners.

For me, it’s the theatrical illustrations that captivate. Paper cut-outs of the royal characters have been photographed within a real miniature world. Twigs become forests. The shadow-filled castle is filled with adorable doll’s house furniture. I want to play with it!

The photographs are complemented by a quirky story narrated with charming contemporary humour. The ever-changing fonts may irritate, but most readers will still be enchanted: “One day when the prince was old enough, his parents decided it was time for him to be married. You know what parents are like and a prince’s parents are no different…”

Published fifteen years apart, both picture books are still available and I hope they remain in print for many years to come.

Reviewed by Paeony Lewis website: http://www.paeonylewis.com/

Singing it by Anne Cottringer

2011-10-14T10:01:00.006+01:00

This wonderful story is about a girl with a strange name called Flower Power who is seeking to find her place and her voice in the world. It was first published in 2007 and it does not contain vampires, zombies, spies or has an gritty urban vibe but like its central character it has a quiet and intense narrative and a poetic soul.
Flower is constantly on the move as her feckless parents flit from place to place. Her parents are still deeply in love with each other and behave like soppy adolescents. Flower does have other ambitions than to be noticed by her parents. She wants to save tigers from extinction and has set up her own website. She also wants to become a singer because ‘your voice is part of you. It’s like your mind and body all mixed into this sound that goes out into the world.’
She meets Mick an old flowerseller who introduces her (and the readers) to the music of Billie Holliday, Nina Simone and Janis Joplin and encourages her to sing and write her own songs. She also befriends Cat and Liam at school and finds an oak tree where she can escape to write and sing her own songs.
The book contains ‘boy crushes’, fall outs with friends and a music competition but Flower has to deal with the heartbreak of losing Mick. This is not a story about a girl winning an X factor competition it is about someone discovering ‘the power that I have to connect to the world through music.’
This story would make a fabulous e book with links to the music that inspires Flower.
As I reread the book I find myself thinking about Amy Winehouse and the power she had to connect with an audience. I would love to know how Flower negotiates the music business.
By Lynda Waterhouse
Singing it published by Anderson press ISBN978-1-84270-678-7

THE VANISHING OF KATHARINA LINDEN by Helen Grant

2011-10-11T07:00:00.000+01:00

Review by Gillian Philip

The atmosphere at the beginning of this heart-stopping novel is oppressive, and it only grows more claustrophobic as the story unfolds. THE VANISHING OF KATHARINA LINDEN is a kind of hybrid thriller-fairytale, and Helen Grant treads the line between the two with delicate skill.

The narrator of the story is, unusually for a YA novel, a 10-year-old girl – though she’s looking back on events from the age of seventeen. Surprisingly, this works very well on all kinds of levels; Pia’s voice is a blend of wide-eyed innocence and horror with the knowingness of later experience – and the first-person narrative does nothing to diminish the tension.

Girls are vanishing in the small town of Bad Munstereifel and Pia, like any self-respecting heroine, is determined to solve the mystery, win the admiration of the whole town, and erase her family’s reputation as The Ones with the Exploding Grandmother. Woven into this very contemporary mystery are local legends of ghosts and witches, as told by the genial Herr Schiller to Pia and her only friend Stefan. These are terrific self-contained tales (though they are of course very relevant to the denouement) and until close to the end of the book, I was still wondering if the puzzle’s solution would have an occult element. That’s how seamlessly Helen Grant weaves her story threads, and she does it in a poetic writing style that echoes fairytales.

Grant is also a genius at evoking a small and isolated community – the closeness and mutual supportiveness, and the perilous gossip and groupthink. Despite its prettiness Bad Munstereifel made me shiver, and not only because of the terrible events that take place. It’s a real place and Helen Grant used to live there – like Pia’s exiled English mother, who rages against her restricted options in this small town – and I’d love to know how Bad Munstereifel has reacted to its depiction, both positive and negative.

The denouement kept me up very late, piling horror upon ghastly horror, but the ending was entirely satisfying without being simplistically ‘happy’.

A final mystery: why doesn’t the Amazon listing display the very beautiful cover that’s on my copy? Never mind. Wearing any outfit, Katharina Linden is a gripping, terrifying, and lyrical read.

THE WISH HOUSE by Celia Rees

2011-10-08T06:00:00.003+01:00

The Wish House reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr

I loved this book. I grew up rebellious and grumpy. At age twelve on holiday in a new city, I once asked my parents to walk on the other side of the road to me. They being kind, loving and understanding parents, complied. Later as an awkward fourteen year old all I wanted to do was get away from what I thought was my very humdrum, ordinary family. I lived in a small seaside village and in the summer of ’61 when a local artist asked me to help in his studio/shop I thought I had reached the pinnacle of sophistication. So when I read Celia Rees’s The Wish House I had a strong sense of déjà vu.

The Wish House is that perfect story that tells of this transition between childhood and a very different more adult world that confuses and excites. Rees has said on the backflap: ‘Everyone has special places and special summers, special people, that combine to create times they will never forget.’

Richard on his annual camping holiday in Wales goes exploring and finds the passions, undertows and intrigues he yearns for in the messy, bohemian lifestyle of the summer people living in the Wish House. The contrast between his own caravan-holiday family experience and this family with its rowdy mealtimes, pot-smoking son, half-naked mother and brooding artist father, is vast. He can’t keep away. And he especially can’t keep away from the daughter Clio, with her dark hair and mysterious violet eyes.

Celia Rees constructs her novel in a compelling and mystical way, adding new dimensions brush stroke by brush stroke so that just when you think you know what's happening, something new is revealed. She’s clever at with-holding information. The reader, like Richard, is almost beguiled into believing one thing when in fact the reality is something else.

The way Richard and Clio meet up in the forest is a perfect example of her ability to capture an inchoate moment that leads breathlessly on to something far more powerful. The forest with its wildness and lack of containment unleashes in them both a wild playfulness. Their energy and awkwardness goes into playing highly imaginative almost childish games of gods and hunting that bring them to edge of what Richard truly wants to experience… a sexual encounter.

The characterisation is superb. Clio, Richard’s obsession, could easily have in a lesser writer become a cardboard figure but Celia Rees manages to imbue her with unexpected reactions so the reader, like Richard, can’t pin her down. She remains remote almost adult, but in brief moments, the shellac of her character cracks to reveal the fragility of her youth. These surprising moments of vulnerability are what make Celia Rees’s writing so powerful... that and her ability to evoke scenes, whether a crazy bonfire moment on the beach or a wild Bacchanalian feast, or the bleakness of the caravan park itself, that imprint as vividly as film in the mind.

The story is interspersed with descriptions of paintings from Clio’s father’s retrospective exhibition. But Rees uses a very different language for these descriptions. The words are coldly analytical and dispassionate even though they are describing scenes with undertones of sexuality that reveal a tangled web of intrigue. The removed voice adds texture and expands and almost reflects as if in a mirror for Richard, his own sexual awakening and experience of what happened that summer.

As in all her books, Pirates, Witch Child, and Sorceress, Celia Rees writes strong female characters so that even though this story is essentially about Richard and told through his viewpoint, the reader feels it's also Clio’s story. For them both, the summer has been a period of growing up that evokes deep memories. In revisiting the summer through Clio’s father’s retrospective exhibition, Richard is able to see it as a capsule in time and is able to move on.

Highly recommended for someone who wants an unusual and vibrant read that perfectly captures a moment of vulnerability.

The Wish House published by Young Picador UK in 2005 ISBN 978-0333947395

The Wish House published by Candlewick Press US in 2006 ISBN 978-0783629519

Reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr www.diannehofmeyr.com

Celia has a blog up today Sat 8th on ABBA http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2011/10/notebooks-celia-rees.html

Tribe: Monkey Bars and Rubber Ducks

2011-10-05T00:54:00.004+01:00

Tribe: Monkey Bars and Rubber Ducks by T. M. Alexander. Review by Ellen Renner

Once upon a time, books about school friendships were a commonplace. But in these days when 'high concept' is a mantra in the publishing industry, books about ordinary children in real-life situations have become something of a rarity. Series fiction, however, can occasionally offer the younger reader a break from a steady diet of protagonists with special powers and/or an affliction of zombies, vampires or fairies.

In addition, T. M. Alexander has succeeded in creating a series for 8-12 year olds which appeals across gender lines. The Tribe is neither blue or pink; it is merely witty, well-written and positive. Here is a writer who enjoys exploring the wonders and disasters real life holds for real children, and who allows her readers to do the same.

My son and I were introduced to The Tribe in 2010 with the publication of the first book in the series: Jonno Joins. My then 13 year old swallowed Jonno in one sitting, and had very positive things to say about the humour and characterisation. We've gone on to enjoy the subsequent titles: Goodbye Copper Pie, Labradoodle on the Loose and now the fourth instalment: Monkey Bars and Rubber Ducks.

The books are episodic in content and narrated in first person by one of the four Tribe members, Keener. Alexander is spot on with the voice, worries and preoccupations of a ten year old boy. She cleverly incorporates lists and diagrams in the books, sprinkling humour or World Record-like information throughout the text. This lightens the whole and breaks the text into easily digestible chunks.

Instead of affliction at the (dead) hands of zombies and vampires, Keener and his friends – Jonno, Copper Pie, Fifty and Bee – suffer lost dogs, school bullies, scary head teachers and tiresome siblings. The adventures are on the mild, rather than the wild side, but they are engrossing nonetheless, and the reader enjoys spending time with the five very different members of the Tribe. The heart of the books is an exploration of the importance of friendship, but also finding individual identity within a friendship group.

Recommended for boys and girls aged 8 to 12.

Skin Deep by Malaika Rose Stanley: Guest Reviewer Catherine Johnson

2011-10-02T07:00:00.014+01:00

Skin Deep is the first book in a new series about four girls which will follow their friendships, families, and problems. Thirteen year old Destiny, the subject of this first book, is pretty and confident, as well as a talented cello player.

Destiny has the usual hurdles of young teenhood, a crush on a boy at school, confrontations with class bullies, but her life is pretty sweet. In fact she wants to enter the Bright Sparks competition, a beauty pageant that values talent and brains as well as good looks to prove she is more than a just a pretty face. But Destiny’s mother – an ex model well aware of the pitfalls of beauty competitions - doesn’t approve.

But Destiny is feisty – perhaps not as feisty as cousin Keisha who will feature in book two – and with the help of friends and neighbours raises the entrance fee and enters independently. Then out of the blue, confident, Destiny is struck down with Bells’ Palsy. The illness means her face is semi paralysed and Destiny’s world crumbles.The novel follows Destiny as she learns to cope with her new self image and put her life back together.

Skin Deep is a perfect early top Juniors, or lower Secondary school read. It is just right for girls who love the younger range of Jean Ure, Karen McCombie, or Jacqueline Wilson novels. It’s a light, quick, read, but with enough depth to make the reader laugh and cry. The ending moved me – a cynical nearly fiftysomething – to happy tears.

You might be thinking you’ve read many books where a pretty, feisty, heroine, with the help of her friends, learns to deal with whatever life throws at her. True, but it’s a theme we love reading about and this story reads like a dream and zips along beautifully. And the setting and characters mark this book out as head and shoulders above the pack.

The writer has a lovely light touch so that the Birmingham setting is invoked just enough, that the friends all have clear individual characters and that Destiny is likeable and believable. It’s well written and warm hearted and would make a perfect back to school present for a Year 5,6, or 7 girl reader.

Did I mention the cover is pitch perfect too?

THANK YOU, CATHERINE FOR YOUR GUEST REVIEW!

www.mailakarose.stanley.com

www.catherinejohnson.co.uk

Catherine's new novel BRAVE NEW GIRL (Frances Lincoln) is published on 11th November 2011.

The Case of the Deadly Desperadoes by Caroline Lawrence: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

2011-09-29T06:00:00.000+01:00

Caroline Lawrence is well-known for her very successfulseries, The Roman Mysteries – and forher appearances and talks appropriately clad in a toga. But now she’s swappedthe toga for buckskins, because her new series, The Western Mysteries, which features a twelve year-old would bedetective by the name of P K Pinkerton, is set in the American West

Tales about the Wild West have been pretty thin on theground lately, with the exception of the occasional film. When I was a child itwas very different. There were masses of series on television – Tenderfoot, Wells Fargo, The Lone Ranger,Wyatt Earp, Bonanza – there was a serial on Saturdays at the cinema, andevery library devoted a special section to Westerns (along with one to Romanceand another to Mysteries). It was all very clear-cut: the Indians (mostly) werethe baddies and the cowboys (well, some of them) were the heroes.

Then that changed. Films like Soldier Blue came out, and books like Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Itbecame clear that a great wrong had been done to the Indians, and thesimplistic landscape of all those old books and serials plummeted out offashion.

But something was lost here. With its extraordinarycharacters, its lawlessness and its dramatic setting, the American Westprovides a wonderful breeding ground for adventure – and Caroline, herselfAmerican, has, thank goodness, seen its potential and seized on it as thesetting for her new series.

At the beginning of the first book, The Case of the Deadly Desperadoes, Pinky solemnly announces that: ‘Myname is P.K. Pinkerton and before this day is over I will be dead.’ Pinky tellsit like it is. What makes this particularly interesting is that Pinkie doesn’tsee things like other people do: he has a ‘Thorn’. This Thorn – his Problem –is that people ‘confound’ him. He cannot understand their expressions, and hedoesn’t show emotion himself. For instance, his adventure starts when he findshis foster mother and father dead, killed and scalped by desperadoes disguisedas Indians. He realises that they are after a document which is almost all hehas left of his real mother.

He catches the stagecoach to nearby Virginia City – where his adventures reallyget going – and meets up with all kinds of colourful characters – including ayoung Mark Twain, there as a reporter. But at first, no-one believes his story –how could he speak in such a cold and matter of fact way about the deaths only thatmorning of his foster parents? But they quickly realise he’s telling the truthwhen Whittlin Walt, so called because he ‘whittles pieces off his victims whilethey are still alive’, appears, with P.K. firmly in his sights. There followsan action-packed chase, involving Soiled Doves (saloon girls), opium dens,Celestials (Chinese), and a fabulously cool gambler called Poker Face Jack –who sees considerable advantages to Pinky’s Thorn.

The whole thing is tremendous fun, and rips along with greatpanache. But to my mind the most appealing thing about it is the characterof Pinky: serious, conscientious, brave –and constantly puzzled by the people he meets. Caroline Lawrence is incrediblyskilful in the way she tells a story which is so funny, so full of variety,through the lips of a boy who himself has no sense of humour and no ability atreading faces. I think children will love it.

Published by Orion in 2011

£9.99

SECRET TERRITORY by Miriam Halahmy Reviewed by Adèle Geras

2011-09-26T08:00:00.012+01:00

(The yellow cover is the one on the copy I have. The other cover is what I found on Amazon. I thought it best to show both.)

Miriam Halahmy is best known as the writer of HIDDEN which came out last year and which tells of the adventures of a teenage girl who rescues an illegal immigrant washed up on Hayling Island. This novel is for adults but there's nothing in it that would be unsuitable for younger readers and I think a great many of them would greatly enjoy it.

This is the story of Eve, who is dropped by her Gentile boyfriend for being Jewish. "It just wouldn't work," he says to her. She is devastated. She goes to Israel both for the traditional 'finding herself' reasons and to get away from everything that's familiar to her and also because there is in her family history a certain mystery.
Eve feels that she ought to have been born in Israel and blames her father and mother for coming back to England and preventing her from being a 'sabra': a native-born Israeli.

She goes to work on a kibbutz (communal farm) and also on a moshav (a small village, basically) in the Golan Heights. We are in the 1970s, after the Yom Kippur War and the Golan Heights were captured from the Syrians in the 1967 Six Day War.

As a counterpoint to this narrative is the story of Eve's father who was involved with the Irgun during the run-up to the setting up of the state of Israel in 1948. The Irgun is the name of a militant grouping which was responsible for, among other things, the blowing-up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Their aim was to get the British, who had a Mandate at that time over the whole of Palestine, out of the territory.

It's a fascinating time in history...or actually TWO fascinating times...and Halahmy conveys well the emotions of everyone involved with the turbulence. The shadows that the past casts over the present are vividly demonstrated as are the difficulties of knowing even your own history properly. Eve finds out that she had a brother whom no one had ever mentioned to her before. Everyday life in Israel is accurately depicted, and we meet a great many different characters who are all well fleshed-out, but it's the main characters,Eve in the 1970s and Jack and Deborah in the 1940s, with whom we must identify.

The events of the novel occur before the rise of the PLO and before the Intifada and in any case, the difficult situation of the last four decades or so is not what concerns this author in this book. Anyone reading it will enjoy discovering much more about something most British readers know woefully little about: the beginnings of Israel and the way it was just after the war in 1973. Most of all, readers will care about how all the personal stories are resolved.

Pub: Bookchase pbk
ISBN:9780754400646
Price: £7.99

My Secret Unicorn by Linda Chapman Reviewed by Emma Barnes

2011-09-23T06:00:00.000+01:00

My Secret Unicorn, a series by Linda Chapman, is hugely appealing to many young girls. The first story, The Magic Spell, winningly combines several favourite themes: moving to the country, getting a pony of your own, and discovering you have special powers. In this case, those special powers allow the heroine, Lauren, with the help of a mysterious old lady and a spell book, to turn her new pony, Twilight, back into a unicorn. He can talk, too. And Lauren discovers that she is a “unicorn friend”.

These are children’s books that are not aimed at adults, but at newly independent young readers, mostly six to nine. Having read the ubiquitous “Rainbow Fairies”, they are now looking for something a little meatier – and yet with the same attractive themes of friendship and magic. Most importantly, there is a sympathetic heroine of their own age.

Series fiction for this age-group does not win much serious attention, still less praise, from adults. But it’s not easy to produce a pacy, adventurous, exciting (but not too scary) story that hooks young readers, still less a whole series of them. Linda Chapman is a prolific author for this audience, and she knows exactly what she is doing! The covers look girly, but her heroines are bold and resourceful. Her books are addictive – and at a time when young readers need to be sucked into the reading habit, if they are to become fluent, enthusiastic book-lovers.

Published by Puffin 2002

ISBN-10: 0141313412
ISBN-13: 978-0141313412

Gamerunner by BR Collins - reviewed by Katherine Langrish

2011-09-20T08:00:00.004+01:00

Ever since reading her first novel ‘The Traitor Game’, I’ve been quite a fan of B.R. Collins, who writes fast-moving, dark YA thrillers with a twist of horror. More than any other writer, she reminds me of Ann Halam: and they don’t come much better than that. She’s inventive, original, and hard-hitting. ‘The Traitor Game’ is a riveting story about an imaginary world shared between two friends – and what happens when trust turns sour. I was less keen on her second novel, ‘A Trick of the Dark’ – still fantastically atmospheric, but let down by what seemed to me poor characterisation – but I loved her third book, ‘Tyme’s End’, an atmospheric ghost story told in reverse, from present to past.

So I was excited to see her latest book, ‘Gamerunner’, set in a future world ravaged by climate change and rain so acid it can etch glass. To live outside in the city of Undone is to risk early death. Young Rick lives a literally sheltered life inside a vast building complex owned by a ruthless corporation called Crater which produces and markets the virtual reality games which are the opiate of the people. Rick’s work – or sport – is to run the Maze, the game developed by his enigmatic mentor Daed, who may or may not be his father.

At the beginning of the book, Rick is a naïve self-absorbed teenager who doesn’t realise the precariousness of his privileged life. Daed has promised Crater that the Maze is an endless game which no-one will ever complete. But then it looks as if someone is about to do just that, and Rick is dispatched to stop him.

It’s a firecracker of a book – B R Collins can do pacy, nail-biting narratives like no-one else. Careful readers will spot the parallels to the myth of the imprisoned genius Daedalus, who built the Cretan Labyrinth for King Minos, and his son Icarus who flew too near the sun... Tension rises as Rick disobeys Daed, begins questioning the basis of his protected life, and runs headlong into terrible danger.

The play of love and anger, trust and distrust, obedience and rebellion between Rick and Daed is excellent. But there are a few strands I should like to have seen more developed. Near the beginning of the book, Rick steals the identity of an unknown girl, and by doing so, probably destroys her. I wanted to find out more – perhaps to have Rick encounter someone who knew her, a sister or a friend. Instead, we never discover her fate and she remains a cipher who causes him some guilt but no real distress. And Rick is not a particularly likeable character. We can pity him but not love him. He doesn’t grow much through the narrative. He is disillusioned, but otherwise remains much as he began – inevitably, since he forms no new relationships. I had the feeling that, at some points, the imposed framework of the myth was constricting character development and plot.

All in all, though, ‘Gamerunner’ is an absorbing and relentless read. I highly recommend it, and look forward to B R Collins’ next book.

GAMERUNNER by B.R. COLLINS

Bloomsbury 2011

ISBN 978-1-4088-0648-7

£6.99

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

2011-09-17T08:23:00.009+01:00

When I was a teenager, my favourite author was Robert Cormier. He broke new ground in the 70s when he published his debut novel, The Chocolate War, and, along with other notable authors such as S E Hinton, radicalised the young adult genre. His writing was thought-provoking, edgy, daring; he relished tackling dark and difficult scenarios; his endings were often bleak and uncompromising; and Cormier went on to become one of the most celebrated YA authors – as well as one of the most banned by US librarians. He had a talent for taking the most outrageous or controversial subjects and exploring them with a brutal honesty, avoiding preaching, moralising, or sensationalism. I’ve been looking for a modern day author to inherit his crown for some time – and I may have just found that writer in Tabitha Suzuma.

‘Forbidden’ is Tabitha’s fifth novel and the first I’ve read by her. I bought this novel because I loved the cover, black with a thorny heart patterned on the cover, which perfectly captures the dark romance of the book. Before you start thinking that this is a paranormal romance, I’ll stop you there – for this is a book which explores a modern-day Romeo and Juliet scenario, a tale of forbidden love – but the hero and heroine are brother and sister.

Maya is 16 and has never been kissed; Lochie is 17 and shy and intelligent. They have three younger siblings and a mother who is a drunk and neglects them half the time to hang out with her boyfriend. As a result, Maya and Lochie have become the father and mother of their family, supervising homework, doing the washing-up, desperately trying to keep Social Services at bay. Tabitha slowly builds up the tension until it becomes unbearable; you feel that Maya and Lochie cannot survive and will have to snap, one way or another. Thus, the ugly concept of incest is turned on its head, for when they begin to feel romantic feelings for each other, their relationship becomes redemptive, a salvation for both of them, a chance for them to retreat from the burden of being adults – ironically, a chance to become innocent again, carefree, teenagers in love.

I read and enjoyed Ian McEwan’s brilliant ‘The Cement Garden’ many years ago; I savoured the cool, cynical, amoral voice of the narrator. ‘Forbidden’ is, in mood and tone, quite the reverse of McEwan’s novel, for the novel is told in alternating voices, between Maya and Lochan, in prose soaked with emotion, with passion and pain and longing. One of the greatest strengths of the novel is the fact that Suzuma never judges her characters, never moralises, and is neither inhibited by her subject matter, nor caught up in trying to shock – she simply dives into their feelings, and presents them with naked, raw honesty. The result is a novel of tremendous power. It is 9 months since I read it but I still remember how much the ending shocked me and made me shed tears. It is sophisticated enough to appeal to adults as well as teenagers; in fact, I think her publishers should publish an adult edition - it would sell by the truckload.

Forbidden: published 2010 by Definitions
£6.99 paperback
ISBN: 1862308160

www.sam-mills.co.uk

CHAINS by Laurie Halse Anderson. Review by Sue Barrow.

2011-09-11T08:24:00.022+01:00

I came across Chains while I was researching the subject of child slavery.
I wanted to understand what life was like for a child captive, with no freedom to make her own choices and abused in the most terrible way by adults. This book delivered in every way, telling me all I needed to know and a lot more besides. Chains is one of those remarkable books which succeeds in educating and engaging at the same time.

In summary the year is 1776. The American War of Independence is moving on apace. Isabel and her young sister Ruth live as slaves in Rhode Island. When their owner dies, instead of granting them the freedom they were promised, her greedy nephew sells the girls off to the Locktons, a wealthy Loyalist and his cruel wife. They go with them to New York City where Isabel immediately befriends a young slave named Curzon. She is horrified when he suggests that the quickest route to gaining her freedom is to spy on her
master and report what she knows to the Patriots.

But Isabel has other problems too. Ruth is prone to fits and Isabel spends
much of her time trying to hide this from her mistress. When Ruth’s condition
is eventually revealed, she is considered devil-possessed and to Isabel’s
consternation, sold on.

Becoming increasingly involved with the conflict through her friendship with
Curzon, Isabel now finds herself on a dangerous mission and facing a moral
dilemma: which side - Loyalist or Patriot – can she trust to help win her
freedom and find her sister?

If you enjoy historical fiction this book forces you to confront the hidden issues
behind the American Revolution - racial tension, the invisibility of slaves and
the horrors of the treatment meted out to them by both sides. Each chapter
starts with a brief contextual extract from letters, diaries and newspapers of
the time and the book ends with a question and answer interview with the
author, confirming its historical accuracy and helping the reader distinguish
fact from fiction.

I can thoroughly recommend Chains. Through the voice of Isabel readers will
have no trouble imagining themselves in 1776 America, but the language is
far from dry or difficult to understand. Ideal reading for older children as well
as invaluable research material!

Chains: Bloomsbury 2010
ISBN 978-0-7475-9806-0
300 pages £6.99

http://www.suebarrow.com/

I Don’t Believe It Archie, by Andrew Norriss. Reviewed by John Dougherty

2011-09-11T08:00:00.008+01:00

One of my favourite comic literary ideas is Douglas Adams’s Infinite Improbability Drive, which enables a spaceship to travel infinitely improbable distances by generating a field within which the infinitely improbable can, and does, occur. It’s a notion of genius, because (at least within the context of the story) it provides a plausible mechanism whereby absolutely anything can happen.

In I Don’t Believe It, Archie, Andrew Norriss has come up with an equally clever idea. Archie is a child to whom unusual things happen just about every day, simply because - well, because they just do. After all, there are plenty of people to whom nothing unusual ever happens; and somebody must be at the other end of the spectrum, mustn’t they?

It’s reasonable, uncomplicated, and - in Norriss’s hands - makes for a very entertaining book. It would be easy, given the premise, for the author to go completely overboard and introduce aliens, magic, and zombies; but he takes the sensible course of sticking to the believable but highly unlikely - so, for instance, Archie finds himself stuck in a house with an escaped leopard, or mistaken for a kidnap victim, or accidentally glued to the library doors by an inept protestor. The story is episodic, each chapter taking place on a single day in the same week, though young readers will love how the final chapter neatly ties all the others together.

Archie himself is an endearing hero, resilient yet resigned - to the facts both that all these strange things keep happening to him, and that the grown-ups he meets just won’t believe his account of things. In fact, it’s easy to see Archie’s adventures as a metaphor for childhood - a time of life when much of what happens is unexpected, and when the grown-ups around you insist on imposing their own interpretations on events. Fortunately, in the first chapter he meets Cyd, a girl with a huge amount of common sense and the ability to remain calm in the face of strangeness. Both children are very believable and immensely sympathetic, and appealingly drawn by our own Hannah Shaw; and their developing friendship through the story is really quite touching.

My own children loved the story - at the start of the summer I received a big box of books for review purposes, and this was one of their absolute favourites. I loved it too - it's funny, clever, and well-written - and one of the many things I love about the concept is that it leaves room for an unlimited number of sequels. I’m hoping that I Still Don’t Believe It, Archie is already in production.

I Don't Believe It, Archie by Andrew Norriss, illustrated by Hannah Shaw.
Published August 2011 by David Fickling Books. Hardcover price £10.99.
ISBN 978-0857560100

Reviewed by John Dougherty - www.visitingauthor.com

A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E. by Penny Dolan

2011-09-08T01:00:00.001+01:00

A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E. by Penny Dolan, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

There are many recent novels for children that I’ve greatly admired, but I know very well that the child me would never have chosen them or enjoyed them. They are too sophisticated for somebody still finding their feet on the reading front in later primary school years. Eva Ibbotson’s romantic funny fast-moving adventures are books which I would have loved reading then, as I do now, … and so too is ‘A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E.’.

Penny Dolan has imaged for us a richly fun and exciting world of caricature dreadful/wonderful/scary/funny/fascinating characters and places, Dickensian in style and epic in scope. This is a moving adventure story full of twists and turns, feeding small clues that lead us on, ever hopeful for a happy ending even when hope all seems lost. Short chapters make this a compelling ‘just one more’ kind of a read. Most of those chapters have Mouse telling his own tale of the cruel bullying and deprivation at Murkstone Hall School, the happier times of escapades shared, lessons learnt and friends made with an old puppeteer, a tramp, a watch mender, and a wonderful theatre full of exotic characters young and old. But there are also chapters which give glimpses of things happening that Mouse himself is unaware of; the Child Snatcher-like Mr Button tracking ever closer, the lost-at-sea parents whose existence Mouse knows nothing of, now returning home in the hopes of finding their son. There’s a wonderful thrill and tension in our knowing more than Mouse does!

Once the book gets into its stride, it rolls along at an excitingly breathless pace. This once ‘reluctant reader’ would certainly have been swept along by it. The writing is vivid –

‘…Button rubbed his palms together contentedly, thinking of the …rich music of the fees that jingled into his money chest …’

‘Rowdy pie shops offered warm, oniony greetings.’

The many characters, with their wonderful names (Scrope, Shankbone, Niddle, and many many more) are all complex and compelling and often strange, in contrast with Mouse himself who is a very ordinary boy, but one with an exciting ability to climb and walk up high. Other than the climbing, Mouse is a kind of Every Child character who is easy to identify with, so we ‘live’ his exciting, romantic adventure with him. The impulse that fires this dramatic story along is one that any child can relate to: Mouse’s need to find his ‘Ma’ (“Ma, Ma, whoever you are…”), even though she isn’t actually his mother at all. The fuel that powers the story along is that universal child passion; ‘it’s not fair!’ We read on, hoping, hoping that all will be made fair in the end …. and it is, but not in a pat everything ‘happy ever after’ way. There is scope here for further Mouse adventures. The child me would have also longed to know what happens next. The grown-up me does too. I wonder, is there more to come?

Published by Bloomsbury isbn: 9781408801376 £6-99

Reviewed by Pippa Goodhart www.pippagoodhart.co.uk

COPING WITH CHLOE by Rosalie Warren. Review by Miriam Halahmy.

2011-09-05T07:00:00.005+01:00

‘Coping with Chloe’ is Rosalie Warren’s debut Y.A. novel and it is a totally compelling read. I literally couldn’t put it down and was finished within a day. This is a novel about the mystery of twins, an endlessly interesting topic. Rosalie says that she wrote the novel because she is fascinated by twins. Whilst doing some research, Anna, the main character, started talking to her, “and I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.”

Twelve year old Anna has a twin called Chloe and they are very close. They do everything together, even after the most terrible accident. Dad has moved in with another woman and Mum seems very self absorbed. No-one is interested in how Anna is coping and even Chloe is not always around. At school her friends have abandoned her and this leaves a clear field for the class bullies to move in. Who is going to stick up for Anna now that Chloe has changed her earthly presence? Then gorgeous new boy, Joe, joins the class and the temperature rises amongst the girls. Anna assumes he will be interested in anyone but her. However, Joe brings with him a host of problems which match Anna’s any day and draws them together.

Coping with Chloe is a novel about being a twin and about coping with losing someone who couldn’t be closer. But it is also about life on the cusp of the teenage years with all the pressures of keeping up with fashions, peer group pressure, the competition for boys and coping with family life. As the novel moves towards its crisis and we are drawn more and more into Anna’s rapidly changing world, Joe’s life also reaches breaking point.

Written with humour and acute observation this is a novel which will absorb any reader from the age of ten to adult. Rosalie Warren deals with some deep and difficult issues in a sensitive and accessible way while maintaining a light touch throughout. Thoroughly recommended. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Miriam Halahmy

Coping With Chloe: Phoenix Yard Books 2011; ISBN : 978-1-907912-02-3

233 pgs £6.99

http://www.rosalie-warren.co.uk/

Dark Summer by Ali Sparkes

2011-09-01T23:09:00.000+01:00

I first came across Ali Sparkes work when I kept losing to her on regional book awards. You might think that that would sour me to her, but that wasn't the case at all. The more I heard about her, the more intrigued I became. Young readers would tell me that Ali Sparkes was like Enid Blyton, but more real; like Susan Cooper, but happening now; like Alan Garner, but with contemporary children.Then, when Frozen In Time won the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award in 2010, I realised it was time to get her back-catalogue and start reading.

I'm reviewing Dark Summer, but I could equally have recommended Frozen In Time or Wishful Thinking, her other standalones. Or indeed, her series fiction. They're all great reads.

Dark Summer is the story of Eddie who is forced to spend the summer with seriously annoying, self-serving relatives. His mother is ill and until she's better, he can't go home. His only ally at his aunt's house is Great-Uncle Wilf, who is also long-suffering at her hands.

It is all set to be the worst summer of Eddie's life, until a day out at Wookey Hole caves changes everything.

Eddie meets a girl who is perfectly at ease in the darkness, who appears and disappears at will and seems very interested in Eddie's home life and in Uncle Wilf in particular.

As I live in the West Country it was great to see a local attraction get such a starring role. But I would have enjoyed the descriptions of the caves anyway. Caves have always been gateways in stories: to faery realms, to hades, to chaos and confusion. Sparkes makes full use of the claustrophobic and panic-indusing nature of darkness. I had cause to remember a visit to a cave system in Australia, where I crawled through a very small fissure in order to reach the next cave. For one moment, I felt the crush of the bedrock above me on the small of my back and the insanity of what I was doing was suddenly laid bare. A proper horror moment. Well, this book took me back there. I found myself reading with sweaty palms more than once.

Eddie's discoveries below ground, with the mysterious Gwerren are mirrored by discoveries above ground about just how dastardly his aunt has been. It is a very clever structure and both stories dovetail into very satisfactory and complimentary conclusions.

Dark Summer is a book I would heartily recommend to children who are confident readers, especially those with a taste for mystery and adventure.

OUP 2009
ISBN: 9780192710987
RRP: £5.99

THE DEVIL WALKS by Anne Fine

2011-08-30T08:00:00.016+01:00

You might think you know all about Anne Fine and her books. She's the wicked dissector of social mores. She's the hilarious creator of books like Bill's New Frock and Diary of a Killer Cat. She's the person who knows everything there is to know about families of every kind. She was an excellent Children's Laureate. She's a tireless promoter of good books for everyone. She's sharp and clever and witty and also, along with the precision of her analysis of relationships, tender-hearted and anxious for every unhappy child in the world.

But it doesn't do to take her for granted or think you've got her classified. She's diversified again. The proof that she can turn her hand to anything and make it her own is to be seen in her latest book, Thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhe Devil Walks.

If you go to Anne's website (apologies...I haven't been able to put in a link so I'm afraid you'll have to Google her!) and follow the links there to some interviews, she talks about the genesis of this novel, which is a Gothic tale of a young boy who is, as Anne puts it "horribly orphaned" and then undergoes more torments than a young lad should ever have to deal with when he's sent away from his kind adoptive family and has to live with the wicked uncle of all wicked uncles.

There are all the elements here of a great scary read. A big house. An old dolls' house, hints of voodoo and worse, possible evil residing in all kinds of unexpected places, a garden with a maze in it, hidden things, things that aren't what they seem at first: Fine deals herself a full hand of the Gothic imagery and trappings but if the book were no more than a collection of special effects, it wouldn't be the wonderful book it is.

What makes it really good is the emotional heart of the story, which deals with the way we find love in a hostile world. It tells us, among the frights we have to endure, about the persistence of goodness in opposition to evil, and of kindness and benevolence sharing the world with the dark things that abound in it. It's written in the first person in the most convincing Victorian style which nevertheless is miles away from fusty and difficult. Any child picking up this book will understand every word. The language is simple and it's precisely this simplicity which makes the the horrors appear even more frightening. A really terrific read for anyone of any age who loves a creepy tale which is more than just smoke and mirrors.

Doubleday hbk £10.99 ISBN:9780857530646

DEATH SINGER by Katherine Roberts. Reviewed by Susan Price

2011-08-27T05:08:00.015+01:00

Death Singer by Katherine Roberts

Susan Price is the Carnegie Medal winning author of The Ghost Drum, and The Sterkarm Handshake.

‘On my one hundredth birthday, Papa made me a present of a mortal man…’ So we’re told by Kryssa, the heroine of ‘Rubies’, one of seven fantasy stories in ‘DEATH SINGER.’

‘Rubies’ reminded me of Bradbury’s tales of supernatural families, not only in its subject, but in its sensuality: ‘Her hair, black as mine, glittered with diamonds that outshone the early stars…’ And later, as Kryssa, her hair threaded with rubies, looks at her reflection in a lake: ‘Yes, I could see myself. Or…I could see moon-pale flesh shimmering with gold, and the pinpricks of red stars surrounding me: Grandpa’s rubies blurred with the millions of worlds above…’

‘Rubies’ is romantic, lush, Gothic, and its theme, like the other stories, is that of rebelling against the rules your society insists you live by. And, in these stories, at least, the rebels mostly gain a kind of victory.

Roberts imagines other worlds and other ways: her characters spirit-travel and meet singers whose voices can heal or kill, savage unicorns and soul-leaders. There is horror, and humour, and beauty.

‘Mars Take Seed Make Man’ is the closest to science-fiction, set in a Martian colony where soldiers are grown to supply Earth with fodder for its wars. But the peaceful women farmers of Mars have found a use other than killing for their 'man-roots'! - and the roots themselves are not quite the vegetables Earth's Generals took them for.

I Am The Great Horse by Katherine Roberts

The final story, and perhaps my favourite, ‘Empire of the Hare’ is historical-fantasy, featuring the most audacious take on Boudicca I’ve read in a long time: and possibly closer to the truth than the usual druid-hugging, noble freedom-fighter. As in her wonderful book, I Am The Great Horse, Roberts demonstrates that although she mingles fantasy with history, she is sharply aware of the machinations of politics, both ancient and modern, giving her stories a cynical edge.

These seven stories are available for download from Amazon kindle for £1-71 – seven thoughtful, beautifully written stories for less than half the price of a glossy magazine filled with adverts.

And the cover was designed by Roberts herself, using her own photograph. This is hand-crafted, designer fiction at a give-away price!

Title: DEATH SINGER

Author: Katherine Roberts

Kindle e-book, Price £1-71 or $2-99. Download it here.

Both Katherine Roberts and Susan Price can be found at Kindle Authors UK

Awfully Favourite Writer!

2011-08-25T08:33:00.000+01:00

Here's a quick Awfully Big Reviews interlude with a link to an article & podcast with Morris Gleitzman

Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music - Review by Wendy Meddour

2011-08-24T07:00:00.002+01:00

Published by France Lincoln (April 2011) Hbk. £9.99

About the book:

When Victor's parents go away for two weeks, leaving his older sister in charge, he is glad when she takes off on a vacation of her own. Home alone, Victor can do anything he wants. He stays up late, eats his pizza with anchovies, visits the zoo, and enjoys his favourite TV news programme without interruption. It is while staying up late watching television that he discovers evidence of a secret community of intelligent lizards. In fact there seems to have been an invasion from outer space that went almost unnoticed! In the course of some detective work, he meets the Chicken Man, an eccentric with a hen in his hat who knows about these things. Together they visit the lizards in Thunderbolt City.

Lizard Music is a weird and wonderful book. It begins in a fairly conventional way: the narrator – a young boy called Victor – unexpectedly finds himself home alone. His bickering parents have gone to Colorado to ‘try and sort things out’ whilst his big sister, bored with ‘babysitting’ duties, has gone camping in Cape Cod. And so Victor falls into a daily routine of ready-made meals and late night movies. But something has disturbed him. Who are the strange lizards that play haunting music after the horror shows? They’re not in the TV listings. Has earth been invaded? In his effort to find out, Victor encounters the ‘chicken man’- an amazing character who spouts philosophy and keeps a chicken under his hat. The chicken man starts to turn up everywhere and seems to know about everything. Even the lizards! Guided by Claudia (an intelligent hen), Victor and the chicken man embark on a journey into the ‘other world’ – the place where the lizards live.

Not many writers could make this seemingly crazy plot work. But Daniel Pinkwater's not just any writer. He has an incredible talent for making us question the everyday. In his hands, the absurd seems plausible and the plausible absurd. The lizards are a civilised community – they follow ‘schedules’ and are guided by the ‘truth’. Humans, are the other hand, are a far more worrying species (especially as seen through Victor’s eyes). As the chicken man explains, many of them ‘go through the motions of being human without really meaning or understanding it.’

Despite being first published 1976, Lizard’s Music is fresh, witty, original and thought-provoking. It’s a clever book that calls for clever readers. And like so many of the best works of fiction – it makes us question what it means to be human.

SECRET SONGS by Jane Stemp. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

2011-08-21T09:31:00.000+01:00

Teenage emotions and ancient legends combine in this coming-of-age story.

Ceri is fifteen, poised between childhood and the adult world. She lives with her mother and step-family and wonders about her American father, whom she has never met. Are they alike? If she lived with him, would they get on better than she and her mother do?

Because she has impaired hearing, Ceri sometimes feels out of things when she can't catch what others say or she mispronounces words. But often she wants to be separate. Taking out her hearing aids is an act of defiance that empowers her. Then she can be alone with her thoughts, or listen to recordings of whale songs and paint and daydream about her imaginary country under the sea.

A family holiday on the Scottish coast, where Ceri's American half-sister Ruth is living, causes Ceri's real and imaginary worlds to collide. There she encounters a local man, Euan, who swims with the seals and seems to communicate with them. He empathises with Ceri, and she is instantly drawn to him. But Euan, she soon realises, is Ruth's boyfriend - her lover - though Ruth is afraid of the sea and tries to keep Euan away from it. Ceri's feelings of rivalry with her sister are intense but only half-acknowledged; the author conveys these emotions without ever bringing them into the open.

Ceri knows that she and Euan are alike in some deep way. They share a longing for the sea - but is there more to it than that? Ceri is haunted by legends of the silkies who inhabit the seas around Scotland. She begins to guess at a secret that seems unbelievable until one night when Ruth gives her something extraordinary to keep safe for her.

The magical spects of this story are subtly woven into a narrative of family tensions and growing friendships. I read the book twice, and it was only on the second reading that I saw the shape of it more clearly and picked up on things I'd missed first time around. This is definitely a book to come back to.

Secret Songs has been out of print for some time. It's a quiet book, of a sort that's not much published nowadays. I believe it deserves to be republished, but even if that doesn't happen I hope it will not be long before Jane Stemp finds a publisher for a new story. In the meantime, try your local library or search out copies on the internet.

Hodder, 1997, pb. ISBN: 0 340 68160 8

'David': Mary Hoffman reviewed by N M Browne

2011-08-18T01:46:00.005+01:00

‘David’ is a wonderful historical novel which powerfully evokes another time and place. More than that, the fascinating details of renaissance Florence provide a vivid backdrop to an exciting personal drama. What more can you want from a novel? And in our fame obsessed time it is particularly clever to focus on one of the most well known faces in western art and to tell the story of the unknown man behind the image: Gabriele, the model for the famous giant statue of ‘David’. In this story the iconic face and body of the shepherd boy who felled Goliath are those of a humble stone cutter, the ‘milk brother’ of the sculptor, Michelangelo. The novel is very much Gabriele’s story simply and economically told from the vantage point of his old age. He recalls the glory of his youth and the dangerously turbulent politics of the time and, as a guide to his own past, is able to make the complex factionalism of his youth comprehensible to the reader. This is no mean feat and one of the great strengths of the story that the reader learns the secrets of the city along with the young Gabriele, the handsome innocent from the country. On his first night in Florence Gabriele is mugged by thugs and then seduced by his rescuer, a wealthy widow, Clarice de Buonovicini. He fathers a son, whom she passes off as the child of her new husband, Antonella de’ Altobiondi, leader of the compagnacci. This group support the reinstatement of the banished Medici ruling elite and Gabriele himself finds himself using these connections to spy for the opposing faction, the republicans, for whom Michaelangelo’s ‘David’, is a political symbol as much as a work of art. When the true paternity of Clarice’s child is revealed and the pro republican statue is unveiled riots erupt on the streets and Gabriele and the statue are both in terrible danger. As we all know, ‘David’ the statue survives but what of Gabriele the man who is blamed for the murder of Altobiondi? How can the best known face in Florence escape the city unseen? The answer provides a radical solution for those who come face to face with the downside of fame. Maybe David Beckham et al could take note.

'Ashes, Ashes' by Jo Treggiari - reviewed by Katherine Langrish

2011-08-15T08:53:00.002+01:00

Dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA novels are in vogue right now, in accordance with the flowing tides of the Zeitgeist. I’m writing one myself, which gives me an extra reason for reading and enjoying many of them… but for me, Jo Treggiari’s ‘Ashes, Ashes’ stands out.

Yes, it’s about teenagers caught up in the aftermath of catastrophe – but lo and behold, there are older folk involved too. Yes, there’s romance: but Treggiari disdains the Hollywood approach. Instead of the gamine heroine with perfectly tousled hair, dressed in battle-chic and ready for combat, the book opens with 16 year old Lucy, dirty, sweaty and greasy-haired, crouched in her muddy shelter on the shores of what used to be Central Park, painfully trying to butcher a turtle. Sea-level rise and haemorrhagic plague have devastated the human population, and the survivors spend most of their time and energy trying to scavenge enough food to get by.

Pursued by a pack of vicious dogs, Lucy is helped to safety by a boy called Aidan. When her camp is destroyed by a tsunami she joins his small community of survivors, only to discover that their shanty town is regularly raided by an army of ‘Sweepers’ who carry off children and elders to their headquarters and – apparently – experiment on them.

The world of the novel is detailed, carefully imagined, realistically bleak, but with flashes of beauty. Lucy and Aidan feel like real people – ordinary teenagers caught up in something terrible, whose resilience comes out in humour, wisecracks, and ultimately in the sort of selfless courage it's good to be reminded young people - or any people - are capable of.

The title ‘Ashes, Ashes’ is a line from the American version of the nursery rhyme ‘Ring a Roses’:

Ring around the roses

A pocketful of posies

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down.

I don’t know if there’ll be a sequel, but if you’re into post-apocalyptic fiction, this is definitely one to look out for.

“Ashes, Ashes” by Jo Treggiari, Scholastic Press 2011

Hardcover $17.99 US

Available as a Kindle Edition

ISBN 978-0-545-25563-9

'Hidden' by Miriam Halahmy - reviewed by Rosalie Warren

2011-08-12T07:00:00.004+01:00

In creating this review, I'm struggling to stay in the voice of a slightly stodgy middle-aged reader, who normally expresses herself, at least when writing reviews, in measured, mature, Radio 4-like prose!

No, I'm sorry. Miriam Halahmy's Hidden is fabby, awesome, brilliant and cool. It rocks. It ... er ... well, that's all the teenage idiom I can lay hands on for now. But the point is that my 12 or 13-year-old self (never far below the surface) loved this book, as did the older me, and you can't ask for more than that.

What's it about? Halahmy's narrator and protagonist is called Alix. She's 14, she's a talented runner and she lives on Hayling Island, a place I'd never come across before but am now determined to visit. Alix's dad has left them for 'Gorgeous Gloria', aka 'the Gremlin'. Mum has recently lost her own father and broken her leg, and appears to be suffering from depression.

Alix battles on as best she can, missing her dad and granddad, relying on her dog and her best friend, Kim, for company and support. But Kim is getting caught up in her music and her new boyfriend, 'Trumpet Steven'. And it's hard work for Alix, looking after Mum and the house, doing an early morning paper round in the freezing winter mornings to help Mum with the bills, and trying to keep up with her homework and training as well.

All Alix needs is a further complication to her life. But that arrives when she and her new friend Samir encounter an asylum seeker named Mohammed from Iraq - deposited offshore, half-dead from cold, hunger and his dreadful wounds.

What can they do? Alix and Samir find shelter for Mohammed and hide him from the authorities, taking him food, hot water bottles and flasks of coffee every day. Are they doing the right thing? Samir and his brother think so, and they've been refugees too, so they understand. But what would Alix's mum say if she knew? How would the police react? And how will Alix and Samir deal with the bullying racists in their class at school?

Alix is a marvellous heroine - an apparently ordinary girl who turns out to have enormous reserves of courage and strength, yet who tells her story with disarming honesty and some wonderful touches of humour. Hidden raises questions about refugees and asylum seekers and the way they are treated by our society. Racial prejudice in both adults and youngsters is presented in all its ugliness - and Alix herself learns not to judge by appearances.

As an adult reader I felt humbled by the depths of compassion and understanding in this book, written by an author who has worked for many years with asylum seekers and refugees. It's a novel that will stretch the minds of readers of any age, encouraging us to look beyond our everyday concerns to the needs of those on the outer edges of society.

This is a thrilling and enjoyable read, perfectly capturing the voice of a 14-year-old girl, in a way that goes deeper than mere teenage vernacular. The descriptions of Hayling Island (look at the opening to Chapter 13, for instance) are superb - yet they come naturally from the pen of Alix herself.

Congratulations, Miriam Halahmy and Meadowside Books. I'll be waiting eagerly for the next two books in the series, which are due out soon.

Stinky! by Ian Whybrow and Lynne Chapman. Review by Penny Dolan.

2011-08-09T08:01:00.013+01:00

Oh dear! Having, in my comments on Paeony Lewis' thoughtful post, agreed with the need for quiet, calm picture books for young children, this title doesn't fit into that category. Yet I do agree with her, because what children need is a range of books to fit different moods and times.

I chose Stinky because of the writing and because of the illustrations. Obviously, but what does that mean?
In picture book texts, what I look for is a certain amount of playfulness, a sense of the changeability of language, a hint at the difference that intonation can make as well as a certain poetic and rhythmic quality that makes the words sound alive in the mouth or the head.

I like moments of repetition because that is where I find children - whether being read to, reading themselves, or maybe both - can join in with the story-making. Those moments are where they enjoy predicting and recognising what’s coming next, and where they learn about the literacy game, the “let’s pretend” of a book. I am also, I must admit, easily lured into a picture book by an element of quirkiness.

This is why – and please don’t back away – this review is about a book with the full title of "Stinky! OR How the Beautiful Smelly Warthog Found A Friend."

The writer, Ian Whybrow, is known for the Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs series, However, way before that, Whybrow wrote a marvellous chapter book “Little Wolf’s Book Of Badness”, where sweet, caring Little Wolf is sent to learn from Uncle Big Bad how to be a truly Bad Wolf and a credit to his parents. (Quotes such as “Fib Your Head Off” still resound in our family house at times of crisis.)

Stinky! is written with a similar sense of fun. Being a little warthog, Stinky is sweet but smelly. Mrs Crocodile and then Mrs Monkey ask Stinky over to play with their own little darlings. Stinky is as well behaved as can be but his aroma attracts swarms of “the tickly, quickly flies.” Havoc, blame and sadness follow. Only when Mrs Littlebird asks the now-bewildered Stinky round to play with her little baby is there a happy, insectiverous ending.

Stinky may not be the book for all children in every circumstance, nor for all grown-ups. Sweet it isn’t, but I’m sure many young children, especially boys, will laugh and enjoy the joke. It's an ideal book to borrow from your local library - if you still have one, that is.

The bold, cheery illustrations – another reason for my choice – are by the artist Lynne Chapman. Her brightly coloured work appears in a host of popular picture books, including Class Two At The Zoo by writer Julia Jarman so you will know that Lynne’s choice of pastels as her medium is anything but “pastel”. The pages of Stinky, like all her other books, vibrate with colour and are all worth looking out for.

Additionally, if you are a writer, illustrator, or just interested in picture books in general, do visit Lynne Chapman’s website, www.lynnechapman.co.uk, a truly value-for-viewing website. It has short videos about how she makes her books, and her blog gives an insight into the variety of work in an illustrators daily life, as well as pages from her sketchbooks and information about Sketchcrawl projects.

Meanwhile, if you’re anywhere up north, there’s an exhibition of Lynne’s work at Salford Art Gallery. Great for young children on summer holiday too, I suspect, but on till November 6th. And not stinky at all.

ps. For anyone alarmed by this double set of picture book titles, the next Awfully Big Review will not be a picture book. At all.

Penny Dolan

www.pennydolan.com

Three Picture Books That Inspired A Writer

2011-08-06T10:16:00.002+01:00

Reviews by Paeony Lewis

When my children were tiny I discovered the world of picture books. What a glorious world, although sometimes I felt like sobbing when a story had to be read for the two hundred and seventeenth time. However, three classic books that never made me sob are all by Martin Waddell, and they are still in print.

Not only did these books not make me sob at the two hundred and seventeenth reading, they were also influential in inspiring me to write my own picture books. Although I adored quirky picture books (and still do), I also hankered for more traditional stories that affirmed my love for our very young children. I wanted to reassure them that the world could be a good place. In the nineties, Martin Waddell’s books fulfilled this emotional need and became a potent catalyst for my future writing. I too wanted to write picture books that would speak to others.

To celebrate this, here are short reviews of these three wonderful, influential books: Owl Babies, Farmer Duck and The Big Big Sea.

OWL BABIES
by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Patrick Benson

Very young children worry when a parent leaves them with somebody else. Will the parent return? Of course! But it’s natural to need reassurance. Owl Babies does this. With simple and spare text, lyrical writing and repetition, the story is a joy to read aloud. The three baby owls are all characters we recognise and they mirror the worries of children without being condescending.

The illustrations in Owl Babies are by Patrick Benson. Unusually for a picture book, there isn’t much variety. However, it’s not necessary. We’re drawn in by the intimate illustrations of the owls with their huge eyes and the way they patiently wait for their mother in the dark, atmospheric forest. Don’t worry, there’s only a tiny hint of the scary night. The use of bark patterns relieves the darkness and the child will only remember the loving warmth of the story.

I challenge parents not to get a lump in their throat when they read the last line of Owl Babies (or maybe I’m just soppy!).

FARMER DUCK by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

Think Orwell’s Animal Farm, then rewrite and truncate it for children, and give the story an ending full of hope. That’s Farmer Duck! The oppressed, hard-working duck only ever says one word, “Quack!” Oh, so much is said with that one quack, and children adore shouting “Quack!”

Helen Oxenbury’s delightful watercolours soften what could be a harsh tale and the different expressions on the faces of the animals and the lazy farmer help tell the story. The ending of Farmer Duck is left open and it’s an opportunity for the adult and child to discuss the fairness of the animals taking over the farm and how everybody needs to do their bit. Mind you, I never had one of those discussions with my children and perhaps that’s why they’re so messy?

THE BIG BIG SEA by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Jennifer Eachus

I wonder if this is one of those books that appeals most strongly to the parent? It epitomises the ‘special moments’ we want to share and remember; forever. Quite simply, in very few words, it’s the tale of a mother sharing a night-time walk with her daughter on a moonlit beach. It’s a reminder to parents that quiet, together times can mean so much. The softly-focussed, realistic illustrations by Jennifer Eachus perfectly complement the poetry of the text.

So there you go. Three picture books that pack an emotional punch so strong that they inspired me to write. There are other books, but that’s enough of my secrets! Does anyone else want to share their secret influences?

Owl Babies, Farmer Duck, and The Big Big Sea are all published by Walker Books and new editions are available from libraries and bookshops.
Reviewed by Paeony Lewis http://www.paeonylewis.com

A Laura marlin Mystery:Kidnap in the Caribbean,by Lauren St John reviewed by Lynda Waterhouse

2011-08-03T10:13:00.010+01:00

I was inspired to read this book after reading a feature in the Independent newspaper featuring Virginia McKenna and Lauren St John. It mentioned that Lauren had grown up on a wildlife reserve and spoke about Virginia’s amazing organisation – The Born Free Foundation which rescues animals. These were facts I already knew about but my interest was piqued when Virginia went on to say of Lauren ‘She is a typical writer – reserved and quite private – so when she does say something it means a lot.’ This description appealed to me. A ‘typical’ writer these days is perceived as needing to have lots of bells and whistles and loud trumpets attached to them so much so that the real story they are burning to tell can often get lost in the hype. Sadly, so many ‘typical’ children’s writers of series fiction do not exist at all being merely commercial constructs. Lauren St John is a far from a typical writer.
In the article Virginia also goes on to describe an evening spent with Lauren at her cottage- ‘We are both vegetarians so I’ll make soup, quiche, apple crumble, and we’ll sit by the fire and talk about animals.’ I loved the warmth and cosiness of this image as well as the precise details about the food. In this story Lauren is very good at describing the delights of feasting.
As an adult reading the 'Laura Marlin Mystery :Kidnap in the Caribbean', the experience is a similarly warm and cosy experience with the added thrill of watching a James Bond Movie thrown in. The story has a timeless classic feel whilst at the same time not shying away from contemporary subject matter. David Dean’s illustrations enhance the experience.
Laura Marlin is the archetypal orphan sent to live in St Ives with her mysterious uncle. In this story they win a Caribbean cruise and by various plot twists Laura, her friend Tariq and her beloved husky Skye end up aboard the Ocean Empress where they team up with the annoying Jimmy Gannet. The children face real dangers on their voyage and it is their own courage and resourcefulness that saves the day and the lives of lots of rare sea creatures. Children will love and treasure these books as the series progresses.
A Laura Marlin Mystery: Kidnap in the Caribbean by Lauren St John published by Orion Books.
Isbn 978-1-440-0021-4

Photograph by Victoria Brikinshaw

ANGEL'S FURY by Bryony Pearce; I AM THE GREAT HORSE by Katherine Roberts. Reviews by Gillian Philip

2011-07-30T13:22:00.007+01:00

Everybody loves a villain, especially when you’re not quite sure who the villain is, and that’s one of the things that makes Bryony Pearce’s ANGEL’S FURY such an absorbing read. Who really is on the side of the angels? And would you really want the angels on your side?

Conflicted characters make a writer’s life worth living. OK, that’s hyperbole; maybe I should say conflicted characters make it fun to sit down in front of the laptop in the morning. There’s only one thing more fascinating than the villain with a touch of good, and that’s the hero with a touch of evil. And of course, what’s good for the writer is wonderful for the reader. Nothing keeps you turning the pages faster than wondering what the characters are up to, and why.

Bryony Pearce delves into myth and theology in her debut novel, and they are a rich vein of moral conflict and uncertainty. She keeps you guessing about the motivations of each and every one of her characters. Cassie Farrier suffers from insomnia caused by horrific nightmares; in desperation her parents send her for very unconventional therapy under the mysterious Dr Leaza Ashworth. Once confined at Mount Hermon with her fellow patients, Cassie has to try to unravel the ties between not just them and herself, but the lives of the long-dead. It’s a tense and occasionally horrifying journey that leads to the revelation of more than one spectacularly scary enemy.

When it comes to complex characters from history, one of my absolute favourites is Alexander the Great. There’s much about him that isn’t known – especially his motivations – and he tends to provoke wildly different reactions. Was he a thug and a tyrant, or an immensely skilful warrior, strategist and diplomat? Or a bit of all of those?

Alexander has been seen from the human perspective in fiction and non-fiction, from Mary Renault to Robin Lane Fox. Katherine Roberts’ sidelong approach gives an entirely new and enlightening angle – one alpha male on the quirks and foibles, the triumphs and disasters of another.

I AM THE GREAT HORSE is not just the story of Alexander’s war horse Bucephalas, though that would no doubt have been a terrific read in itself. Told by Bucephalas in the first person, it’s also his take on the humans around him – Alexander, but also the stable girl Charm who wins his trust by keeping away the ghosts of battle.

Bucephalas’s voice is completely convincing: arrogant, proud and all horse (and he’s funny, what with his habit of ‘dominating dung’ and the way he compares it to the behaviour of human kings). Yet somehow, through his eyes, Katherine Roberts tells a subtle and nuanced story of real human struggles. Mingling fact and fiction, myth and legend, the story manage to be completely convincing.

Bucephalas died before Alexander, and I wondered how Roberts would deal with that. But with only a minor tweak of history, she makes the ending convincing and moving. It was beautifully done.

ANGEL’S FURY Bryony Pearce (Egmont, ISBN 978-1-40525153-8)

I AM THE GREAT HORSE Katherine Roberts (Chicken House, ISBN 978-1-90529427-5)

www.gillianphilip.com
www.facebook.com/gillianphilipauthor
Twitter: @Gillian_Philip

Grahame Baker Smith’s FArTHER flies off with the 2011 Kate Greenaway – Dianne Hofmeyr

2011-07-27T06:00:00.001+01:00

There are books for children who need fluffy chickens and cuddly bears at certain times in their lives - and there are books for children who need to fill their imagination. If you want to be visually transported into a dream world that stays with you long after the book is closed, and if you admire the work of Peter Sis and Shaun Tan, then rush out immediately and buy FArTHER. It will awaken your dreams and those of the child who shares the story with you.

FArTHER with its incredible endpapers that could have leapt from Leonardo's notebooks, and its illustrations that have me rubbing the pages to make sure they're not real pencil, ink and paper collage, is a triumph not just for Grahame Baker Smith but also for Templar Publishing.

I first notcied Grahame Baker Smith's work when Leon and the Place Between, written by Angela McAllister, and also published by Templar, was shortlisted last year for the Kate Greenaway. Who can resist a magic show with pure magic in the illustrations?

But in FArTHER we have a story that bores deeper into our inner psyche. Slightly dark with its themes of death and hope and renewal, which might seem heavy in a picture book, but not in the hands of Grahame Baker Smith, where a father who dreams of flying goes off to war, never to return, but instills in his son the courage to soar.

Don't we all want our children to soar?

Grahame Baker Smith creates a world where the story plays out against a wild sea with a lonely house clinging to haphazard rocks. One can feel the wind and taste the salt in the air. The rock seems to epitomize the father stuck solidly to the earth even though he'd rather be airborne and the boy's realtionship with his father unfolds almost like a dream sequence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Baker Smith doesn't wake in the night and write out or draw his dreams. Perhaps like the dream that comes to the father in tones of sepia with a dash of red - 'a busy bossy dream that would not leave him alone.'

Each page is filled with detail that demands another inspection. Strange symbols tease - the bright red poppies against the rocks - the white goose standing at the feet of the father while he despairs of ever flying - the eyes that convey the dream. The contraptions that he imagines and builds are beautiful machines with delicately spiralling cogs, gilded cages and fluted and folded wings that appear more like paper origami, or finely beaten foil with spines that suggest ancient fishing rods. Mechanical yet strangely organic, bringing to mind the contraptions built by the Wright brothers in that lonely shed on Kitty Hawk Beach in North Carolina some hundred years ago.

Perhaps I'm beguiled by the adolescent boy climbing the tree to stare out at the world. My teenage son used to climb a gigantic pin oak. I'd come out and find him in the topmost branches at a death-defying height standing still and silent. What was he imagining? And what does the boy in the story imagine? But however much we are beguiled by the illustrations, we haven't been tricked. It's not the medium that tells the story. It's the story that tells us. It's a big story but a convincing one. And Grahame Baker Smith engages the reader in his fictional world because he himself is engaged in the real world. He underpins the story with a truly human sense of desire, hope, fragility and loss.

Grahame Baker Smith seems to paint and draw and use photography and scan natural material and makes things from paper and fabric and generally play around with them in Photoshop in the same was as the father plays in his workshop with pieces of paper, foil, fabric and sketches to produce his dream. This recent work is radically different from his past illustration as in Little Pilot or his version of The Velveteen Rabbit. It's a big brave leap that has paid off. On the CILIP website, after winning the Kate Greenaway he says: 'It's been an extraordinary, painful, joyous, frustrating and wonderful trip. The only thing that has kept me going through all the ups and downs is a connection to my imagination.'

And what an imagination! FArTHER surprises and enthrals. Give this book to all fathers of sons and to all children who dream and need their imagination filled - and even to those who don't - because afterwards they will.

FArTHER by Grahams Baker Smith

edition: Hardcover £10.99

publisher: Templar Publishing 2010

ISBN 978-1-84877-126-0

Reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr http://www.diannehofmeyr.com/

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/ A Heady Mix - Poetry and Perfume in Ancient Egypt

Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy by John Dougherty. Reviewed by Ellen Renner.

2011-07-24T09:36:00.006+01:00

Classic children's fiction for the 8-12 age group demands adventure, and the first book in John Dougherty's Bansi O'Hara series offers thrills and dangers aplenty.

Bansi lives in modern day London. The only child of an Irish father and British Asian mother, she has no idea that her parents are descended from two different lines of faery royalty, or that their bloodlines, combined in her, offer certain dark powers the long-awaited opportunity to fulfill a dread and fateful prophecy. On a visit to Ireland to stay with Granny O'Hara, Bansi is befriended by a brownie, Pogo, and Tam, a shapeshifter. They are the representatives of a small band of faery folk who are trying to keep the power Bansi represents out of the hands of the Lord of the Dark Sidhe. But the rebels are few and weak, and soon Bansi and her new friends are facing overwhelming odds.

The classic elements are here: a prophecy, a child forced to come to terms with a unique magical inheritance, a dark lord, the battle between good and evil. But bravely, Dougherty chooses a girl to be his hero. Female main characters in adventure stories for this age group are all too rare. Bansi is brave and quick-witted while remaining believably human. She is an ordinary child thrust into an extraordinary situation, and there are times when it seems impossible that she will survive the magical forces ranged against her. Boys as well as girls will be engrossed by the story's twists and turns and geniunely scary moments.

Dougherty plays with British folklore and also borrows from Greek or European myth as the notion takes him. The invitation to the reader to join in the fun is irresistible. Druids rub shoulders with dwarves and selkies, and Doughtery uses the comic potential inherent in certain types of Good People to the full. But the veil of humour regularly lifts to show the darkness behind the myths. Death and destruction lie in wait for the unwary, and the scene where Bansi is chased by a Bruid, the headless man from European myth, is simply terrifying.

Indeed, one of the things I most enjoyed was the way Dougherty weaves humour and terror so effectively into a single compelling story. Scary is hard to write, humour even harder. Dougherty accomplishes both. His comic characters, such as Bansi's grandmother and her best friend, Mrs Mullarkey, squabble hilariously whilst outwitting the faeries ranged against them. His dark characters are suitably chilling and when betrayal enters the picture, we find that the author deals in shades of grey as deftly as he does black and white. The characters in this book will remain with you after you have finished it. I look forward to meeting them again in the sequel, Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en, out in September.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780440867876
Published: Corgi Yearling, 2008
Price: £5.99
Reviewed by: Ellen Renner

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2011-07-21T11:44:00.001+01:00

Bloodstone, by Gillian Philip, and Sky Hawk, by Gill Lewis: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

2011-07-21T06:00:00.001+01:00

Bloodstone, by Gillian Philip, is the follow-up to Firebrand, which came out last year and introduced us to the world of the Sithe. The Sithe are faeries – but don’t think gossamer wings or glitter, or indeed anything that’s pretty and dainty. This lot are fierce, violent, and very down to earth. They live in a parallel world (parallel to Scotland), or maybe another dimension of this one, and can cross between their world and ours pretty much at will.

Firebrand is set in the last decade of the sixteenth century, and the protagonist is Seth McGregor, the bastard son of a Sithe nobleman. He’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and (like Byron, apparently) also very attractive. In the real world, it’s a time of witch-hunts and religious wars. Brilliantly, Gillian Philip has Seth and his older brother Conal rebelling against the Sithe queen, Kate McNiven; so they have a tumultuous time in the Sithe world and are as a result banished into the real world to search for the magical Bloodstone

– where they have an even more tumultuous time falling foul of a witch-hunting priest and, in the case of Seth, falling in love with a mortal girl. Wherever they are, life doesn’t come easy for the two brothers. The pace is swift, and the book fairly crackles with energy.

By the time the next book begins begins, several centuries have passed and the brothers, with another Sithe couple and their daughter, are in 21^st century Scotland. They are still hunting for Kate’s Bloodstone, but without success. They have made illicit trips back to their own world and got away with it: but their luck is about to run out, and the ensuing cataclysm engulfs mortals and Sithe alike.

The fantasy world is strongly grounded in reality. We are convinced by this world partly because in many ways the Sithe are all too recognisably human, albeit with that gloss of alien glamour, but we are also drawn in by Seth, whose voice as the narrator is direct, powerful, and very convincing. To him, the Sithe are obviously real, and it’s the mortal – us – who are the ‘other’; and so while we’re in the world of the novel, that’s how we see it, too. He’s violent and quick tempered, but he’s also capable of great affection and loyalty – particularly towards his brother. He’s also very funny, and he usually wins. So he’s an attractive hero – we care about him and about Conal, and we go willingly with them on their adventures. These books – there are to be two more, and the title of the series is Rebel Angels – are action packed and enthralling, whether or not you are normally a fan of fantasy.

Sky Hawk, by debut novelist Gill Lewis, couldn’t be more different – except in that it’s also set in Scotland and, much more importantly, that it too is a very, very good book. It’s about two young teenagers and their discovery in the Scottish Highlands of a rare osprey’s nest. It’s beautifully written and the characters are complex and real; the narrator, Callum, has to negotiate his way between his old friends and Iona, his new one. So far, the territory is fairly familiar.

But then, half way through, something very unexpected happens, and after that the narrative takes a turn that I hadn’t anticipated at all. There is no fantasy element, nothing which isn’t perfectly feasible: but all of a sudden, I was completely gripped and couldn’t put it down – it’s a cliché, but it’s what happened: I lost sleep for this book! And I didn’t mind, because when I’d finished it, I felt that rare and precious sense of seeing the world a little differently which only happens with a very good book.

It’s also very beautifully produced. The cover’s striking, the book's a nice size, it has generous margins and lovely little sketches of the landscape at the head of each chapter. In every way, this is a pleasure to read.

Sue Purkiss: www.suepurkiss.com

Bloodstone: paperback, ISBN 9781905537235, published by Strident Publishing on19 August 2011, RRP £7.99

Sky Hawk: large paperback, ISBN 9780192756237, published by OUP 2011

WE’RE THE DREAM TEAM, RIGHT? by Helena Pielichaty. Review by Adèle Geras

2011-07-18T10:00:00.008+01:00

I was at the launch of Girls FC, Helena Pielichaty’s series of books about a girls’ football team. This was a very jolly affair at the Football Museum (then in Preston) and Helena was resplendent in a blue and white footie strip. Since that day, she’s brought out nine books, each one of them told from the point of view of one of the team’s members. I haven’t read all of them, but on the basis of the ones I have read I can recommend the series as perfect for anyone who likes both reading and sport.

Thousands of women in this country play football. Our team has just played in the Women’s World Cup and done rather better than their male counterparts. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was news to most of my readers. But it’s true: girls love playing football and Girls FC shows readers that you don’t have to be freakish or strange to want to do this.

Pielichaty is an experienced novelist of books for many different age groups and she knows that it’s not enough to fill your pages with good and accurate football information and concentrate on accounts of games. You need also to have an engaging story to carry the reader through the novel. You need sympathetic characters, interesting situations and a gripping plot that will make everyone, and not just those who like to play the game, eager to turn the pages.

“We’re the Dream Team, Right?” is a model of economy. In the space of 105 very widely-spaced pages we’re given a mystery which is only resolved properly on page 101 and it’s to the author’s credit that she can pull the last mystery rabbit out of the hat at this late stage and still keep us (to use some footie slang) onside. Gemma has a father who’s somewhat of a mystery. Her home life is a little different from that of her team mates. The match in the book is important but its details don’t overwhelm the human story and it’s Gemma’s relationships with both her parents and her team mates which are much more important and very carefully worked-out. The ending is a little downbeat in a particular way, but completely convincing nonetheless.

Each book in the series is narrated by a different player in the first person. This makes the books easy to read and immediately engaging and Pielichaty has a good ear for the way girls both think and talk. In this kind of quick-moving, character- based story, there’s not much room for passages of deathless prose. Nevertheless, Pielichaty describes things well: “…while the fields and hills behind us remained wedding-cake white, the snow on roads and pavements had turned into that yucky sludge.”

A really enjoyable book, this, in a series that deserves promotion into the Premiership of series fiction.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 4063 1741 1
Published: Walker Books 2011
Price: £4.99
Reviewed by: Adèle Geras