A LIBRARY OF LEMONS by JO COTTERILL. Reviewed by John Dougherty

I should start with a declaration of interest: Jo Cotterill is one of my best and dearest friends, and so this review is likely to be a little bit biased. For an accurate rating, I suggest you take the figure I’ll award the book at the end of the review, and half it.

That said, I’d have loved this book no matter who had written it. I warn you, though: when you read it you might need to keep a hanky handy. It’s a very powerful and emotional story, and I found myself shedding proper tears several times.

Calypso, the protagonist, is a strong and likeable character, but there are a lot of things that she doesn’t realise about herself. She’s lonely. She’s a carer. She’s being neglected - both physically and emotionally - by her dad, who is still grief-stricken following the death of her mum five years previously. But things change when unwillingly, accidentally, Calypso makes a friend. Mae is everything that Calypso’s dad is not - warm, in touch with her feelings, genuinely spontaneous, and emotionally present - and as contact with Mae and the rest of her family grows, the protective shell which Calypso has, all unknowingly, built around herself begins to crumble. But still Calypso doesn’t realise how wrong her life has become, until she makes a discovery…

The range of issues covered in the book is enormous - young carers; mental health; emotional disconnection; friendship; bereavement; the list goes on - and in the hands of a less able writer, this could provide us with a catalogue of clichés. But A Library of Lemons is not an ‘issue’ book; it’s a story, a good one, which happens to deal with these issues, but which deals with them so deftly that all we really care about is Calypso’s unfolding: how she uncovers the reality of her broken life, and learns to connect with others, and discovers that the ‘inner strength’ her dad keeps telling her about only matters if you learn to share it.

A Library of Lemons is a brilliant book, heartily recommended for anyone who’s ever felt lonely, or who thinks they may have been, or who has the capacity to empathise with those who have. And for that matter, heartily recommended for everyone else as well.

Oh, and that rating? I give it twelve out of five.

John Dougherty.

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Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and the Quest for the Magic Porcupine, written by John Dougherty and illustrated by David Tazzyman: published by OUP

First of all, I have a complaint to make. This is the second book in the Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face series, and the next one isn't out till JANUARY! My grandson whisked the first one away before I got chance to review it. Now we’ve just read this one together – but we’ve got MONTHS to wait before the next. John Dougherty, I hope you’re hard at work on the fourth. And fifth, and sixth…

I had actually read the first one, Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers, before it disappeared, but that was several months ago and I've read a lot of books since and, in all honesty, I couldn’t remember all that much about it. But there was no need to worry. Oskar had loved it, and he remembered everything. So here goes. 

SB and his little sister KF live on the Isle of Kerfuffle, along with King Toothbrush Weasel and his army, which consists of Malcolm the Cat, and various other eccentric characters. (Their parents conveniently disappear when there’s a story going on.) If you noted the title, you will realise that the villains of the first book are a troop of exceedingly bad badgers. SB and KF triumph over them and they are cast into jail – but at the beginning of the second book, whilst playing Monopoly, the badgers discover a 'Get Out Of Jail' card, which they promptly use – so horrors! Once again, they are free to plan evil and wicked things, to do EVILLY and WICKEDLY.

SB and KF soon realise what has happened and determine that once again, they must defend Kerfuffle against the badgers. Fortunately, they meet a whole bunch of characters, brilliantly illustrated by David Tazzyman, who help them in their task. My favourite is the amazing Ninja Librarian, who has magic powers and also a very sharp sword, which she threatens to use to chop the heads off anyone who misbehaves in her library. She helps SB and KF to research what they must do to defeat the badgers: it involves catching a number 36 bus (which has an amiably dim – but very jolly – driver called Mr Jolly) which will take them on their quest to find the Magic Porcupine.

The story rollicks along – you never have a clue what’s going to happen next. But the best thing about it is that it’s so funny: Oskar was chortling out loud on every page. There are quirky, anarchic characters and excellent baddies. But there’s something else interesting going on: John Dougherty plays about with the conventions of a book. He does interesting things with typefaces. He tells you that SB and KF will have to wait till page 55 to find out what their quest will be – and then has the characters whiling away the time and the pages till they get there. He subverts expectations – notably with the arrival on the scene at the end of a chapter of a fearsome shark - who actually turns out to be a great help. And he reminds you all the time that this isn't real life, but a book. I’m sure there’s a proper term for this (meta-something?) but I don’t know what it is. I thought it might be a bit of a problem for a young reader, but far from it – Oskar was intrigued by and really enjoyed this aspect of the book.

So, a great hit. Right up at the top of Oskar’s personal chart, in fact. We can’t wait for the next one!

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The Boyhood of Burglar Bill, by Allan Ahlberg, reviewed by John Dougherty.

Allan Ahlberg, in my view, is a national treasure. No: a National Treasure, the honorific capitals fully and unequivocally deserved; let me, as a declaration of interest, make that clear right from the start. Burglar Bill, Happy Families, Each Peach Pear Plum, The Jolly Postman, Peepo, Woof, Please Mrs Butler… the list of his work goes on and on, each book a unique jewel in the rich treasury of British children’s literature. He’s just fab.

The Boyhood of Burglar Bill is likewise fab, but in many ways almost entirely unlike any other Ahlberg book I know. It’s a memoir, for one thing, not about Burglar Bill at all but about Ahlberg’s own childhood, or one particular part of it. The part, to be precise, when he formed a football team.

Before half of you sigh disappointedly and move on, let me say that this is not a book about football, any more than Animal Farm is a book about agriculture or The Diary of Anne Frank a book about attic-rooms.

In 1953, when an under-twelves tournament, the Coronation Cup, is organised, Ahlberg and his friends - clever, loyal, sickly Spencer, and Ronnie, the “Frankenstein of Frogs” - are not chosen for the official school teams, and decide to enter their own. The story of how they do it - the recruitment process, the unexpected hurdles, their progress against the odds - forms the backdrop for a much bigger story which manages to be funny, engaging, exciting, enthralling, entertaining, and ultimately moving. It’s a story of true friendship and brief alliances, authority and rebellion, love and betrayal; and a marvellously real depiction of childhood, told in a voice that’s warm and wise.

Above all, it’s heartbreakingly honest. Or is it? For it may not be a memoir at all. It reads like one; it should be one; and yet the publishers describe it as a work of fiction - but a work of fiction “in which Allan Ahlberg explores his own childhood”. I suspect it’s truer than that, an unreliable memoir at most; if it’s a fake, then Ahlberg is even more of a genius than I already believe.

Whatever the truth, you’ll love this story. And when you reach the end, and suddenly discover what the story was really about, it will stay with you for days.

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JOSH by Ivan Southall, reviewed by John Dougherty

Josh was published in 1971, and won that year’s Carnegie medal, but until I came upon a copy in a charity shop I’d never heard of it. And I really should have done - and so should you - because it is a terrific book.

Josh Plowman arrives to stay with his great-aunt in the little town of Ryan Creek - his ancestral home, in a sense, for the Plowman family is long-established and respected there, though Aunt Clara is the only one still resident. 

But the reputation of the Plowmans is to weigh on Josh in more ways than one as he finds himself unexpectedly drawn into conflict with some of the local kids, in particular the bullish Bill O’Connor, his sly brother Rex, Harry Jones, and Harry’s simple yet craftily manipulative sister Laura, all of whom in their own way expect the wrong things of Josh and then go out of their way to achieve those expectations. And then there’s Aunt Clara herself, who has expectations of her own.

Josh is in many ways a coming-of-age story; the story of a fourteen-year old who finds events entirely out of his control and in the hands of others, and who in the end has to assert himself regardless of the consequences. It’s beautifully and individually written, taking a close third-person view which plays with sentence structure to communicate the impressions of Josh’s senses as effectively as his thoughts and actions. And Josh himself feels like a real teenager; although the story is set, apparently, in the 1930s, there’s a real sense of the universal constants of the teen years in his character.

What’s most impressive about it, though, is the way that it draws you in. I have my copy here on my desk, and since re-reading it for this review, I keep finding myself pulled back to it; dipping into it; revisiting episodes as if in search of more. And each time there’s more to be found. 

 John Dougherty

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59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman, reviewed by John Dougherty

In my last Awfully Big Blogpost, I mentioned the truth about ‘visualization’ - the idea, prevalent in so many self-help books, that the first step to success is to imagine it.

Examined under experimental conditions, visualization turns out to be rubbish. It doesn’t only not do what its proponents claim for it; it has the opposite effect. This is just one of the fascinating facts in 59 Seconds.

59 Seconds is a self-help book with a difference. Written by “Britain’s only professor for  the Public Understanding of Psychology”, it challenges some of the prevalent self-help myths, and offers alternatives grounded in proper peer-reviewed scientific research and presented for the reader in an accessible

and entertaining way.

The book is divided into 10 sections - happiness, persuasion, motivation, creativity, attraction, stress, relationships, decision-making, parenting & personality. In each section, you’ll learn of some fascinating studies - did you know, for instance, that it’s possible to fool someone into thinking they’re drunk when they are in fact completely sober? That people are more likely to do you a big favour if they’ve already done you a small one? Or that you can accurately make predictions about a child’s future using only 3 marshmallows and a bell?

I’ve always been fascinated by this sort of thing, and if the book was just a collection of interesting facts gleaned from psychological research it would have kept me entertained. It’s more than that, though - you’re quite likely to find something in here that you want to try. One of my aims for this summer, taken from the chapter on creativity, is to work with my kids to produce a piece of art that will help with my writing. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Actually, the creativity chapter is probably my major reason for reviewing the book here - I know a lot of ABBA readers are creative types, and the chapter contains a number of quick and easy tips for getting that creativity going. I intend to give some of them a go myself, just as soon as I’ve worked through the tips on procrastination in the ‘motivation’ chapter.

Oh, and the title? It comes from a realisation that self-help books attract people because they offer quick & easy solutions to real-life issues, whereas academic psychology is often seen as either avoiding these issues or presenting answers that take years. Some of the ideas in this book, by contrast, can be put into practice in less than a minute.

You’ll find this a fascinating and enjoyable read; and who knows? It may just, dare I say it, change your life.

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Dragons & Monsters, by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda. Reviewed by John Dougherty

Dragons & Monsters is the third and final part of Reinhart's and Sabuda's Encyclopedia Mythologica series, and I don't mind admitting it's difficult for me to know exactly how to review this book. Do I approach it as an information text, a pop-up book, a work of art, or a feat of engineering?

In truth, I could describe it as any of those. It's certainly informative; each page is packed with information about monsters from legend - classical; European; Eastern: it's all here. It's interesting, and comes in bite-sized chunks so you can dip into it or read through, whichever takes your fancy.

Or, come to that, you can ignore the informative text - I wouldn't, but it won't be what catches your eye immediately. What you'll notice first is the pop-ups. Well - I say 'pop-ups', but that's a little like calling the Taj Mahal 'a building'. Each double-page is dominated by a spectacularly unfolding monster that appears too big to have fitted into the book. 

And this is where both 'work of art' and 'feat of engineering' come into the equation, because I'm not exaggerating when I call the monsters spectacular. They really are. As the book opens, so does Medusa's mouth, displaying her fearsome fangs. On other pages, a great dragon rears up, unfurling its wings; a coffin lid rises to reveal an emerging vampire; an enormous yeti stands tall, towering over the page, and lifts its fists threateningly. They are - as my daughter says - amazing. And if that was all the pop-uppery on display, that would be sufficient such amazement for one book. However, on each double-page at least one and sometimes as many as three of the text boxes are in fact little pop-up leaflets hiding another monster or two, each one skilfully engineered to make children & adults alike say, "Wow!"

Seriously, if you get the chance, grab a copy of this book. It's not cheap - £19.99 in hardback - but considering the craft that's gone into it and the pleasure you'll get from it, not to mention its value as a talking point, you'll consider it well worth it.

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The No.1 Car Spotter, by Atinuke - reviewed by John Dougherty

Most of the books I read when I was a child were about middle-class English children. When a child from another culture appeared it was generally their otherness rather than their childness that was the issue - except, of course when they were notionally children from another culture but behaved pretty much like middle-class English children with funny names. Similarly, those other cultures - when they appeared - were normally reduced to their differences from British culture.

That’s just one reason to celebrate Atinuke, who in Oluwase Babatunde Benson (better known as No. 1, the No.1 car spotter in the village) has created a character who is very much a real boy first and foremost, but who is also an authentic African child, living in a modern African village, and is therefore - to the best of my knowledge - pretty much unique in children’s literature.

The young European reader will be intrigued by some of the facts of life which No.1 takes for granted. Whilst he and his mother and sister and grandmother live together in the village, “my father, of course, lives in the city” like all the other men of working age. When Grandmother falls ill, she needs money before the doctor will see her. The entire village travels to market together to sell their home-grown produce.

Yet what makes this lovely little book really special is not the insight into life in semi-rural Africa, but No.1 himself. He’s enthusiastic, affectionate, creative, independent, dependable - the sort of child everyone would like to have as a friend - and readers will identify with him at least as much as they’ll be intrigued by his lifestyle.

The book is made up of 4 short stories about No.1’s life and family. In the first, the village cart breaks just as it’s due to be loaded for market, and only No.1’s quick thinking saves the day. In the second, Auntie Fine-Fine puts No.1 in an embarrassing position when she sends him to buy lipstick for her. The third story tells of how No.1 almost loses his prized nickname when greed for his friend Coca-Cola’s mother’s cooking leads him to desert his chores; whilst the fourth poses an interesting moral dilemma for No.1 when a way of finding the money for the doctor presents itself.

These are great little stories, told in a distinctive voice, perfect for reading aloud or alone. Yes, they’re educational, insofar as they’ll challenge the reader to think beyond his or her own culture and living conditions, but most importantly, they’re a lot of fun. And from the look of this video of Atinuke reading from the book, so is their author. It's thoroughly recommended, and I'm hoping there'll be more to follow this and its recently-published sequel, The No.1 Car Spotter and the Firebird.



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

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.

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

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.

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And Rocky Too by Jayne Woodhouse, reviewed by John Dougherty

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

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

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

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