Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Reviewed by Jackie Marchant

It’s the Second World War and a young SOE agent is about to make a written confession to the Gestapo, because she can’t bear the thought of another interrogation by SS-Hauptsturmfurher von Linden.  She has two weeks and then they will shoot her, but that is preferable to her fate if she does not confess.  She calls herself a coward.

But read on and you will see that she is anything but.  She is brave and clever in equal measure, running rings round her captors despite her predicament.  She uses her long confession as a tribute to her best friend Maddie, who lost her life trying to land the plane that secretly brought her to France.   At the same time, she manages to riddle her confession with code that will ensure that her mission will not fail.  She even works out a way to get her notes out there.

This book is about a strong female friendship, it is about plucky young women and their determined war effort and it is about triumph in the most difficult of circumstances.  It is both happy and sad,  with two strong main characters that have you cheering and crying in equal measure.  The scenes of cruelty at the hands of the Gestapo are handled with such sensitivity that the full horror comes over without the need for any graphic detail.  The relationship between Linden and Verity is so well drawn as Verity manages to creep under his skin and turn the tables on him, that you almost feel sorry for him.  Almost.   

Then there is betrayal, danger and plenty of action, as the resistance try and carry out their task without their key player.   All this makes Code Name Verity a book that will engage right from start to finish, quite deservedly earning its place on the Carnegie shortlist.   

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THE WALL, by William Sutcliffe: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

This novel is set in a town called Amarias, which is divided in half by a high wall. Joshua lives on one side with his mother and his hated stepfather, Liev. He has no notion of what life is like on the other side, until one day his friend kicks a precious football into a derelict building site, which is out of bounds to the public. Joshua decides to climb over the gates and retrieve the ball, and discovers a tunnel which is heading in the direction of the wall - and the other side. He knows what he should do, and he knows what every other boy in Amarias would do - they'd walk away. 'But as I see it, those are the two best reasons there could possibly be for doing the opposite.'

So that's exactly what he does. And that choice - to go through the tunnel - triggers a terrible chain of events. It's classic tragic hero stuff - his intentions are good; he does what he believes to be right, even though it would be easier to do the opposite. (Though he is also motivated by the desire to defy his stepfather.) But his actions bring misfortune and worse to himself and to the people he comes to admire and care about.

The book is published in two editions, one for adults and one for young adults. Sutcliffe explains why in an interview for Armadillo Magazine, which you can read here. The setting is actually the Israeli occupied West Bank, but this is not made explicit, and certainly to begin with, teenage readers might assume that the setting is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic one. I'm not sure if this is necessary. I think I'd rather it was nailed to a time and place - we all need to know more about the world we live in, and I don't think there's any need to blur the edges of the intent to do this.

I would have liked a bit more context, about the historical background which has created the present situation and about some of the characters. The people on Joshua's side of the wall - the Israeli side - are a little two-dimensional: Liev in particular: he's dreadful, but why? What's made him like that? The people on the other side are much more complex - and much nicer; it's a little too clear which side you're supposed to be on.

That said, this is a brave and powerful book. It's bleak: you long for everything to turn out all right, but in this flawed, horrendously difficult situation, you know that it's unlikely that it will. But there is a partial redemption, and a glimmer of hope that through goodwill and the meeting of minds, a solution will eventually be found.

The book is published by Bloomsbury, and the first image shows the YA cover. (Would you have known which was which? I had to look it up. I prefer the first one...)

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A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge, reviewed by Cecilia Busby

The heroine of Frances Hardinge's new book, A Face Like Glass, actually has quite a normal face - it's everyone else who is odd. Discovered in his cheese tunnels by the cantankerous old cheese master, Grandible, the child Neverfell has something no one else in the underground city-world of Caverna has: a face that displays its emotions quite naturally. When Grandible first finds her, half drowned after falling into his vat of Neverfell curds, he expects a Face - a 'learned expression' - to be pasted onto her otherwise immobile features, just at it would be with any other denizen of Caverna. "I wonder which Face it will be?" he thinks. "No. 29 - Uncomprehending Fawn before Hound? No. 64 - Violet Trembling in Sudden Shower?" But the truth is that Neverfell is an outsider - she had fallen down somehow into the underground world from 'up above', where the legend has it that the relentless sun shrivels you up and peels off your skin. And her face displays a bewildering array of emotions that you can see right through to her thoughts and feelings - hence a face like glass.

Hardinge's worlds are always wildly inventive and fantastically described, and her heroines have a wonderfully feisty ability to turn them upside down and inside out. Mosca Mye, in Hardinge's debut, Fly By Night, reminded me strongly of Dido Twite, and Hardinge's writing in general is reminiscent of Joan Aiken's - the same kind of adventurous romp, the great cast of secondary characters, the sense that you're never quite sure what disaster is going to happen next, but you know somehow the heroine will survive it in grand style. This one though, has to do a lot of work to carry the central conceit about Faces, and I found myself wondering what this idea had enabled Hardinge to do, and where it had hindered her.

In the acknowledgements for A Face Like Glass, Hardinge thanks her editors for letting her write a book "that sounds crazy even to me". It sounded crazy to me, too, and I have to admit, the premise very slightly put me off reading this one, even though I'd really enjoyed Hardinge's previous books. When I did read it, I found myself utterly gripped by the story, the writing, and the characters, and yet not totally convinced by the logic of the world she'd developed.

The inhabitants of Caverna display no emotions on their faces, yet they crave the ability to display them, and pay large sums to learn new expressions from Facesmiths, who teach them the appropriate facial positions for, say 'Contemplation of Verdigris' or 'An apprehension of Apple Boughs', as well as more complex emotions such as 'World Weary with a Hint of Sadness and a Core of Basic Integrity'.  They can choose appropriate Faces to let others know what they are feeling, or to influence them - what they cannot do is ever be sure the Face another person is displaying has anything to do with their true emotions.

This set-up works in numerous ways to enhance the book. It really allows Hardinge to have fun with the social structure of Caverna: the richer you are, the more Faces you can afford, while the drudges - the poor, the servants - have only one Face, of respectfully waiting for orders, or at the most, can add an extra eager-to-please smile. It doesn't matter how angry, upset, resentful, hungry or sad they feel, they can only ever offer their masters a Face of respect and readiness for work. Meanwhile, the rich at court play endless games of power - using their Faces to display their wealth and power, to influence others or to indicate particularly chosen emotions in the same way that an expert card player uses his aces and trumps to dominate the game.

Neverfell has the useful role of the innocent, who naively trusts everyone - who takes them completely at face value, and cannot see the hidden calculations going on behind the Faces. Much as a young child gradually learns to discern false emotions from true ones, Neverfell gradually learns to see the signs that all is not as it seems - people's deeds, in the end, don't match their Faces. But in turn, her innocent, puppyish friendliness and trust disturbs the careful balance of suspicion and mistrust that fuels these political games - and one of my favourite characters is actually the very political young aristocrat, Zouelle Childersin, who is most affected by Neverfell's blundering appearance in the middle of her plots.

Despite the ways the Faces conceit fuels the plot and the wonderful strangeness of this world, I still felt slightly unconvinced by the central idea. Wouldn't the inhabitants of Caverna have learnt to judge people by voice and body language, rather than these paid-for Faces? In which case, the faces would have become redundant - mere toys, soon discarded. Wouldn't the drudges have expressed their emotions by voice and word, or by gesture, rather than taking their fellow drudge's Face of acquiescence as some kind of real expression of their acceptance, which Hardinge suggests has prevented the spread of resistance or revolution? Why did the inhabitants even value or attempt to learn Faces linked to emotions, when there was effectively no one who displayed real emotions via their face in that world? The outsiders, who did so, were traded with but generally kept at very long arm's length. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't really see this particular aspect of the world Hardinge has created as anything but implausible, and yet without it, much of the driving force of the book is lost.

However, in the end, I was prepared to put aside my doubts about the Faces, and just enjoy the exuberant invention that makes the book such a delight - who could resist the 500-year-old ruler of Caverna, who only lets half of his mind sleep at a time, and rules non-stop as either Left -Eye (non-verbal, intuitive, slightly random) or Right-Eye (verbal, logical, scrupulously organised). Or the idea of a cheese that, if not turned and fed in exactly the right way, will explode with the force of dynamite. Or the Cartographers, the map-makers of Caverna, to whom you can only speak for a limit of five minutes before they twist your mind into the same warped madness as their own.

Read it - see what you think for yourselves. It's a romp.



Cecilia Busby is the author (as C.J. Busby) of Frogspell, Cauldron Spells, Icespell and Sword Spell (Templar).

www.frogspell.co.uk



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SMUGGLER'S KISS by Marie-Louise Jensen. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull.

A runaway teenage girl, smugglers, romance, humour and secrets - Marie-Louise Jensen's latest novel has them all.  Her story is set around the windswept coastline of Dorset, which she describes so well that the narrative seems borne along on the movement of wind and waves.

The story begins in 1720, when fifteen-year-old Isabelle tries to drown herself and is rescued by the crew of a smugglers' ship, The Invisible.  The smugglers are forced to keep her on board for fear of being betrayed to the Revenue men.  But Isabelle is a lady, accustomed to being looked after by servants.  Spoilt and arrogant, she infuriates nearly everyone - and in particular Will, a mysterious young man who has the bearing of a gentleman, yet dresses like the other rough men and is clearly a key member of the crew.  Gradually Isabelle grows stronger and more self-reliant as Will and the captain involve her in helping with their dangerous trade; and she develops more sympathy for the harsh lives of the men, who turn to smuggling in the winter season to keep their families from starvation.  She also discovers a kinder side to Will - but their burgeoning romance still involves plenty of sparring.

The story is full of social detail from the 18th Century.  Cross-dressing girls are common in fiction, but few are as shocked and ashamed as Isabelle when she's obliged to wear men's breeches - not only used and unwashed, but in a working-man's style far below her social station.  Realistic, too, is Will's response to being 'winged' by a bullet while escaping from the Revenue officers.  Like all heroes, he says it's "only a nick" - but he bleeds heavily, turns faint, and has to lie low for a day to recover.

The secrets carried by Will and Isabelle reveal the unsavoury side of Georgian high society, in which rich men might be venturers in the contraband trade and women were chattels.  Although it touches on some very dark issues, there is nothing unsuitable here for readers of eleven or twelve upwards, and the romance is exciting but chaste.

The gradual revelation of secrets, combined with the smuggling drama, made me unwilling to put this story down, and nothing much got done around the house until I'd finished it.

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Sleuth On Skates by Clementine Beauvais, illustrated by Sarah Horne, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

This is an absolute treat of a book! 

Even before you read a word of text, the physical book is a pleasure.  It has a cover that feels velvety soft, and glints in places.  That cover has tucked-in ends as if it was a wrap-around.  Inside are full-colour decorated end-papers.  It is bright and enticing, with quotes from real child readers rather than the usual suspect rent-a-quote other authors.  The text is printed in a particularly pleasing font, and it is all lavishly illustrated with funny Sarah Horne pictures.  The whole book looks and feels fresh and special … which is just right because what you find inside that cover IS fresh and special.

I read quite a lot of ‘funny’ children’s books, and can often get right through such books without a single outward chuckle, and hardly a mouth twitch towards a smile, even when I can appreciate that funny things are being portrayed.  This book genuinely had me laughing out loud, and annoying my family by reading bits out to them when they were trying to concentrate on other things.  The result is a queue of family members now wanting to get their hands on the book. 

 What’s so funny?  Genuine clever wit and observation is what’s so funny. 

Sophie Margaret Catriona Seade (better known as Sesame) suffers from having a professor Master of Christ’s College Cambridge for her mother, and the college chaplain for her father.  Those parents might be clever, but so too is our Sesame.  She tells her own tale of daring sleuthing discovery of dastardly deeds in her own, inimitable, fresh and observant voice.  She says things such as –

‘I try not to get too attached to them (students) because, like rabbits, they only last three or four years and then they’re gone.’

‘…I had to flatten myself like a plaice against the wall…’

‘On the banks of the river, the grass grew thick and tangled, and croaked ‘ribbit ribbit’ when the glistening ripples of water reached it.’

The story revolves around a mysteriously missing student who should have been performing in Swan Lake.  “What part?” asks Sesame’s friend.

“The Lead.  I don’t know the story, so I’m assuming it’s either the swan or the lake.”

When Sesame, who hates anything tutu-related, has to sit through the whole balletic performance, she takes her seat and... 'quickly went into power-saving mode…’

I mustn’t go on quoting bits that particularly tickled me, or struck me as true, because we could be here all day.  What I want to convey is quite what an excitingly fresh storytelling voice Clementine Beauvais has.   This is a cracking good story too, full of excitements and surprises, and very nearly believable. 

As somebody who grew-up with a professor father based at Jesus College in Cambridge, and a mother who had been a college secretary, and who now lives in the village where the missing girl in the story is found, I particularly enjoyed the Cambridgeness of the book, even if the geography is played with a bit.  I hope that Clementine Beauvais gets free blueberry cheesecake in Auntie’s Tea Shop from now on!  And I am quite sure that her ‘Maman cherie’ to whom the book is dedicated is, rightly, extremely proud. 

Hats off to Clementine, to Sarah Horne, and to Hodder for producing an exceptional book for children …. and I see that a second book in the series is coming out in October.  This book has my vote to be winner of the next Roald Dahl Funny Prize.

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Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn reviewed by Lynda Waterhouse

‘If you like those kinds of stories, stories where the lead characters seem to blunder through life, much as you do through your own, then you might like this one.’

I loved this biography of how Tracey Thorn grew up and tried to be a pop star. It is a self-effacing, funny and moving description of the music business from the 1980’s onwards.

Reading Tracey’s account of her life  took me straight back to my own student days in 1980’s with my big hair, flowery Oxfam dress (vintage didn’t exist then) and my precious ‘I get no love’ Buzzocks badge.

Tracey describes her experiences as a 16 year old joining a band and then forming her own all-girl band , The Marine Girls. We follow Tracey to Hull University where she meets up with Ben Watt and together they form the band Everything But The Girl and their lives change.

Each chapter is rounded off with the lyrics of one of Tracey’s songs from that period.

Tracey’s experience of pop stardom is full of high and lows. The book is also about the relationship between Ben and Tracey and how it is affected by the pressures of fame, by Ben’s illness and by having children.

Tracey does not tell us everything. It is a thoughtful account and she is a great role model for women who want to create music on their own terms.

Bedsit Disco Queen is published by Virago

ISBN 978-1-844088669

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Eleanor's Eyebrows by Timothy Knapman and David Tazzyman, Reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

I'll be honest, I didn't intend to review Eleanor's Eyebrows at all today. But from the moment I saw the cover, complete with some of the most amazing eyebrows I've ever seen, I was sold.

The eponymous Eleanor knows what all the parts of her face are for. But her eyebrows bother her - they're just 'silly, scruffy, hairy, little bits of fluff'. Affronted by her lack of faith in their abilities, the eyebrows high-tail it off into the world, where they try out various new and often dangerous careers.

Eleanor, meanwhile, has realised that a face isn't quite the same without eyebrows and starts noticing them everywhere. She tries a range of hilarious replacements before deciding that she might have been a little hasty in dismissing her little bits of fluff and launches a campaign to bring them back.

Timothy Knapman's text is delightfully silly and even without the pictures, I could imagine Eleanor re-drawing her eyebrows. The story is cute and funny and skillfully weaves in a message about accepting yourself (and your eyebrows) for who you are. David Tazzyman's illustrations are everything you'd expect from the man responsible for bringing us the face of Mr Gum and they made me giggle just as much as the text.

Eleanor's Eyebrows has something for everyone because, as I commented on Twitter the other day, who hasn't fallen out with their eyebrows at some point? Just make sure you keep the Sharpies out of reach of small children once you've read it to them.

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Vampire Dawn by Anne Rooney: reviewed by Gillian Philip

Real Vampires - as the ageless Spike would tell you in many a fetching internet meme - Don't Sparkle. Anne Rooney's don't, that's for sure. Nor do they disappoint.

icanhascheezburger.com

The Vampire Dawn saga is a cleverly constructed series of short novels in the hi-lo style, ideal for the reluctant reader but no small fun for the enthusiastic one, either. The stories are compact and bijou - ideal for devouring on a bus journey to school, say - but packed with incident and character, not to mention blood and guts. If you know a teen or a slightly-pre-teen who isn't particularly keen on romance but likes a decent bloodsucker, point them in the direction of Vampire Dawn.

The books are readable in any order, but it would undoubtedly help to start with Die Now Or Live Forever. The whole story begins here - in the fine tradition of horror movies, with a group of mildly bickering friends on a hike in the woods. In this case it's the Hungarian woods, which seem to be populated by especially big and Hungary mosquitoes (boom boom).

This is the lonely spot where Juliette, Omar, Finn, Ruby and Alistair stumble across a dead body that doesn't stay dead for long. They also run into the (temporary) murderer: a downright panicky Australian called Ava, who doesn't understand why she's just had to stick a tent peg through the heart of her beloved boyfriend.

And in the morning the appeal of sandwiches and ginger beer seems mysteriously to fade, and the group begins to look peckishly upon the bewildered Ava...

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The other books in the Vampire Dawn series focus on each individual member of the group, and what happens to them in the aftermath of their ill-fated camping trip: Juliette (Drop Dead, Gorgeous), Finn (Life Sucks), Omar (Every Drop Of Your Blood), Alistair and Ruby (Dead On Arrival) and Ava herself (In Cold Blood). Pretty much at random I chose Ava's story: some time after the events of Die Now Or Live Forever, the bewildered Australian girl is stumbling around Kosovo in a borrowed fur coat, with no memory of how she got there. All she knows is that she's hungry, and that she doesn't feel as jittery around a creepy and dilapidated circus as she normally would. In fact it could be a source of raw meat of several kinds...

Given the tightly restricted word count of each book (around 6,000?), the various characters and their relationships are briskly and efficiently drawn. Alistair, my particular favourite, is an OCD boy who likes to count things.

bbc.co.uk

For the teen who's especially keen on traditional vampires, there's even a guide book: Bloodsucking For Beginners. Like the mysterious Ignace, a handsome stranger who seems to have strolled into the group's lives out of a 1930s black-and-white horror movie, it's full of advice for perplexed immortal newbies...

These books are terrific fun, and they're a great, snappy read. I adore the device of giving a book to every character, and Anne Rooney (who apparently doesn't eat meat in case she gets too much of a taste for blood) has clearly had a lot of fun with the genre's tropes and traditions. Yet she never loses respect for the primal, terrifying ferocity of vampires. There's romance and teen angst here, and the delights and agonies of friendship, but there's plenty of blood too - just as there should be.

I can't imagine many teens who wouldn't love a brief trip to the world of Vampire Dawn. I had a great time. (Also, the covers are fabulous.)


Die Now Or Live Forever
Dead on Arrival
Life Sucks
Every Drop Of Your Blood
Drop Dead, Gorgeous
In Cold Blood
Bloodsucking For Beginners

By Anne Rooney; published by Ransom Publishing, April 2012

I mean, that guy's scary. He just IS.

www. gillianphilip.com

growingguides.com

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JINX, THE WIZARD'S APPRENTICE by Sage Blackwood. Reviewed by Penny Dolan.

(Warning. This review contains plot spoilers.)

Looking through a pile of children’s books, I opened up Jinx and was immediately drawn in to the fantasy. Sage Blackwood’s writing has an attractive openness and confidence. Familiar folk tale tropes appear in a nicely simple, matter-of-fact manner that makes them perfectly acceptably to the intended mid-junior fantasy reader.

The novel starts as young Jinx is led, Hansel-like, by his stepfather away from the village and into the Urwald, the dangerous forest that is almost a character in the book. Just as he is about to abandon Jinx to the trolls and werewolves, Simon Magus appears on the path. After some cunning trading, the wizard claims Jinx as his apprentice.

Jinx’s life as a servant in the wizard’s strange cottage.is safer, better-fed and more interesting but it is also full of contradictions. Is the short-tempered, self-centred magician good or evil? What does Simon really want from young Jinx?

Grumpy and bad-tempered, Simon insists the boy is too stupid to instruct in any magic or - at first - allow into his secret workroom. Jinx tries to match what he sees, feels and knows with the evidence around him, including Simon’s mysterious room. Naturally, as time goes on, Jinx becomes curious, especially when he feels that Simon is somehow travelling to other places and receiving visitors in his room, and curiosity always causes trouble.

The book has an interesting range of characters, all strongly depicted and often eccentric. Jinx ends up with two young companions. The heroine is young Elfywn, a girl in a red hood. Suffering from the curse of truthfulness, Elfwyn is trying to find her grandmother so the curse can be removed. The other boy – and often the source of Jinx’s jealousy - is Reven, the self-styled “king’s son” who speaks and acts like a hero learned from a book. Reven has his own secret curse too, one that brings fear to the forest.

There are magical adult characters too. Jinx is partly terrified by Dame Glammer, a lively sharp-tongued witch with her own morality and travelling butter churn. On the other hand, he grows fond of the good wizard, Sophie, who arrives from a land where magic is forbidden, even though her meetings with Simon often end up in wrangling. I feel that many children will half-recognise this pair as two adults who care for each other but who are unable to live together: the couple’s squabbles are very convincing. Finally, the plot includes the most powerful wizard of all - the evil Bonemaster – the enemy that Simon Magus warns Jinx about, even though Jinx gradually discovers the two have a far more complex relationship.

Simon is so busy with his own plans and projects that he does not recognise Jinx’s own supernatural gifts. The first is an ability to see the true feelings of people as swirls of coloured light, as auras that help him know how they are feeling. Jinx imagines everyone has this; he never thinks of it as just his power. However, when Simon casts a power spell on Jinx, he removes this gift. Bereft of this extra sense, Jinx’s faith in Simon’s intentions crumbles.

Jinx still has one secret skill left. Jinx is the Listener, the one able to hear the conversation between the trees, the one who can understand the voice of the vast Urwald, even if the meanings are not always clear.

Eventually, trying to get free of their curses, the three children are imprisoned in the Bonemaster’s towering castle and the wizard decides to use Jinx to lure Simon into his power. When Simon does not come, Jinx becomes convinced his old master is as evil and uncaring as the Bonemaster, and enters his own world of sadness. Were his worst fears right?

Nevertheless, the trio try to get free. While Reven tries to find an escape route, Jinx and Elfwyn search for the Bonemaster’s souce of power. Under the castle, in a hidden cellar, they find rows of bottles. Each contains a small, silently screaming, human figure: the Bonemaster uses these captive deaths as an energy source. Then, within a second chamber, Jinx finds an even greater magical source, an object that makes him feel even more confused about Simon’s possibly wicked intentions. But the way out has been discovered!

Here comes the spoiler. Trying to protect Elfwyn while she climbs down the Ladder of Bones, Jinx falls to his death. His spirit floats above his body, floating over above the whole Urwald. From high up, he witnesses the arrival of Dame Glammer and Simon Magus. Eventually, with his power source gone, the wicked Bonemaster is imprisoned.

The grieving Simon makes sure that Jinx’s body is carried to safety. There by a reversal of the big mysterious spell, Simon returns Jinx to life again. One by one, the major conflicts are resolved, especially between the wizard and his pupil, for as Elfwyn points out, being rude and ill-mannered isn’t the same as being evil.

Personally, although I really enjoyed the early part of the story, I rather feel that the hero’s death and apparent restoration to life after sleeping for three days means that Jinx may not be a book for children who have recently had a sudden death in the family, even if the storyline is echoing the classic hero’s mythical journey structure. Maybe my reaction was because the characters had felt so very believable until that turn in the plot? And maybe top juniors are less sensitive and much tougher than I am?

To conclude, I really liked the brave and compelling young hero at the heart of this novel. I enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the magical world described within these pages, as well as the many twists and turns not yet mentioned. The ending suggests “Jinx” is intended to re-appear in more books so here’s a few good wishes to this particular wizard’s apprentice.

JINX, THE WIZARD’S APPRENTICE by Sage Blackwood.

Published in 2013 by Harper Collins (USA) and Quercus (UK)

Review by Penny Dolan

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TORN by David Massey. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

This novel by David Massey has won the 2103 Lancashire Book of the Year Award. The prize is almost unique in being judged by Year 9 pupils chosen from schools in Lancashire. Adults are part of the process, of course. The librarians in the county distribute the books to the schools taking part; the teachers give the books to the pupils who then read them and by a very complicated system that I don't quite understand, a short list emerges. Then there's a meeting where much debating and discussion goes on and a winner is chosen. All the shortlisted writers are invited by UCLAN, the sponsors of the prlze, to a slap-up meal and next day the award is made (£1000 and a very handsome trophy) at a ceremony in County Hall in Preston.

I've been the Chair of the Judges for 6 years but this time I've had to cede my place at the debating table to Helen Day, a lecturer at UCLAN and someone whose knowledge and love of Young Adult novels is second to none. She and her students read such texts all the time and I was very lucky that she was able to stand in for me. I had to withdraw from my position this year because of the ill-health of my husband, who is undergoing a series of treatments for cancer, and I'm very grateful to Helen. Her willingness to step in at short notice means a great deal to me. I also know she'll have chaired the meeting in the best possible way and will be a wonderful speaker at the Award Ceremony itself.

I didn't have time to read all the books, but I did read TORN, by David Massey. He's not a writer I know, but on the internet I found out that he has had a much more adventurous life and background than many writers. He actually sounds like someone who knows something about war zones of one kind and another.

TORN is told in the voice of a young female squaddie in Afghanistan. Ellie, known as Buffy since the day she was observed in the shower by some young men on the base, is a sympathetic and brave heroine and it's easy for a teenage audience to identify with her. The book follows her adventures and is a marvellously wide-ranging and immediate glimpse into life in a war zone. I liked it because the voices seemed authentic and Massey is careful to describe the truth of such hard and desperate situations in a way that's honest without at any time being gratuitously violent. the whole novel is in Buffy's voice, in the first person and it sounds convincing at all times. She's both sensible and sensitive and the element of the supernatural that's included in the book is perfectly believable.

Above all for me, Massey succeeds in the most important thing a writer has to do: create a whole world for the reader.Thankfully, turning the pages of this novel is the nearest thing many teenagers will get to actual service in the Armed Forces and I particularly appreciated the way the landscape comes to life: dust, heat, sand and the day to day conditions of camp life are recreated in a most economical way, with not too much description but more through an accumulation of telling details.

Buffy's comrades-in-arms and the young man she falls for leap off the page. It's easy to see why modern teenagers in Lancashire responded to this story of young men and women not much older than they are living through difficult and dangerous times and coming out triumphant. The ending is all you could wish for, even though there are tears on the way there.

I'm very sorry I won't be meeting David Massey at the Award Ceremony in June, but I'm sure it'll be a grand occasion. It always is. Meanwhile congratulations to the young judges for picking another winner.

Publisher: THE CHICKEN HOUSE pbk.

Price: £6.99

ISBN: 9781908435170

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AT YELLOW LAKE - by Jane McLloughlin

Review by Jackie Marchant

A debut that was longlisted for the Carnegie, and rightly so.  Set in the US, three completely different teenagers find themselves on the run, heading for Yellow Lake – Peter is secretly heading to his mother’s log cabin to fulfil her dying wish and bury a lock of hair, Jonah has run away to find his Native American roots and Etta is fleeing from her mother’s latest abusive boyfriend.

What they don’t know is that the log cabin where they all end up hasn’t been used by Peter’s family for a very long time – and an abandoned cabin is the perfect place to commit all sorts of atrocities without anyone knowing.

As the danger become clearer, you’d expect the teens to stick together.  But they each have their own agenda and they don’t.  Instead they allow misunderstandings to become major issues, detracting from the real danger they are in, until it’s too late.  And that’s what I love about this book.  The way the characters fail to cope makes it so real – and all the more chilling.  There are no gimmicks here, just a believable tale of what really could happen.  That’s what makes you keep turning the pages.

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Christopher Uptake by Susan Price

Reviewed by Cecilia Busby

Available on Kindle

"Christopher Uptake" is a curious book. I have an original copy of it, illustrated with a picture of a rather serious young Elizabethan man, bending over some writing in a dark room, illuminated only by a candle. The newly issued Kindle cover has an immediately recognisable portrait of an altogether more confident character, gazing at the viewer with a hint of challenge in his eyes.

The motto on the original portrait (below) is "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - that which nourishes me also destroys me. In Elizabethan times the motto was associated with a torch or candle held upside down - the falling wax causing the candle to burn more brilliantly but also eventually extinguishing the flame. The image reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night; But ah my friends and oh my foes - it gives a lovely light!" The lovely light, was, of course, the short but brilliant career of Christopher Marlowe, poet, dramatist, atheist and spy, whose wild living and controversial opinions may have led to his murder at the age of 29.

Christopher Uptake is clearly based on Marlowe - yet strangely that link is not made in the blurb for either the original or the re-issued book, despite the portrait on the front. Nor do any of the Amazon reviews mention it. It seems odd. Uptake, like Marlowe, is the son of a tradesman, a grammar-school boy who wins a scholarship to Cambridge, an atheist who takes to writing plays, and who gets mixed up in the Elizabethan secret service, spying on the equivalent of Second World War fifth columnists: the English Catholics. Yet Uptake is not Marlowe; his trajectory is, finally, very different. Rather than taking to the business of spying with gusto, Uptake is riven with doubts. He suffers from stabs of conscience and from guilt at the thought of what his spying may lead to for the Catholics taken and tortured by the Elizabethan secret police. Uptake is a reluctant spy, caught in a net where his cooperation is ensured by threats to himself and his family. He is represented as a miserable collaborator with a harshly repressive state regime.

It's a long way from the swashbuckling image of Marlowe the dramatist, with the "high astounding terms" of his bravura verse, his reputed love of "tobacco and boys", and the boast that "he had as good a right to coin as the Queen of England and ... meant through help of a cunning stamp-maker to coin French crowns, pistolets and English shillings". I have to confess to having fallen half in love with this version of Marlowe when I was sixteen and first discovered Tamberlaine the Great. In the preface to my secondhand copy of his Collected Works was a reproduction of the infamous Baines Note, detailing Marlowe's supposed blasphemies. That, for example, "all Protestants are hypocritical asses", and "if he were put to write a new religion he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method" as "all the New Testament if filthily written". Like the later Marx, he argued that "the beginnings of religion was only to keep men in awe", and that "Moses was a juggler". Doubts have been cast on how much of this was really Marlowe's opinions and how much was malicious slander - but I was hooked: by the poetry, the drama, and the blasphemies.

Reading "Christopher Uptake", I wondered whether Susan Price had set out to write about Marlowe and then found that she couldn't make it work. Simply couldn't find a way "in" to a character who was so obviously intelligent and free-thinking and yet came to work as a spy for the government, betrayed those he had feigned friendship with, professed a Catholic faith only to entrap and incriminate others. Perhaps she just couldn't prevent the guilt and the doubt overwhelming her Christopher, unlike the historical one, to the point where he had to become Uptake rather than Marlowe.  It seems curious, otherwise, to stick so closely to the original and yet give her character's story such a different resolution. Certainly the book made me think much more deeply than I have before about what it would have been like to live in the time of Elizabeth I, what it really meant to be surrounded by such a strong network of spies and agents provocateurs, to live in the middle of rumour, plots, counterplots, agents and double-agents. It would have been, I think, a little like living in Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Uptake is a young man who wants to be left alone, doesn't want to do anyone any harm; yet in such times it's hard to stay neutral, and Christopher struggles in the sticky webs laid by the Queen's spymasters.

I was really gripped by Christopher's predicament, by his moral dilemmas and justifications, as well as his attempts to limit the damage he has done. Price does an excellent job of making his world believable, making us care about Christopher, making us desperate for him to escape the clutches of the sinister spy, Bagthorpe. It's a book that lives on in the imagination after it's read, and it certainly made me think again about the real Christopher Marlowe and what he may or may not have done in the service of the unscrupulous Sir Francis Walsingham (pictured).

I think there are ways to understand Marlowe's role as a spy, particularly when you remember that England at the time was a small and insecure island, surrounded by great Catholic powers simply waiting for a chance to invade. It was a crueller time, life was more fragile and more contingent. But Susan Price's Christopher is a fine creation that certainly serves as a challenge to anyone who admires the playwright: what made Marlowe choose differently from Uptake?


Cecilia Busby writes as C.J. Busby
She is the author of Frogspell, Cauldron Spells, Ice Spell and Swordspell
www.frogspell.co.uk

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A World Between Us by Lydia Syson. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

Among other inspiring stories of left-wing solidarity, my father used to tell me about the Battle of Cable Street, when Mosley tried to march his Blackshirts through London's East End, and the people who lived there stood shoulder to shoulder and decided "they shall not pass".  So when I heard that Lydia Syson's novel begins with that confrontation I immediately wanted to read it - and I was not disappointed.  It's a lovely, satisfying story, both romantic and realistic.

Trainee nurse Felix (Felicity) gets caught up by chance in the Cable Street turmoil, and encounters Nat, a young Jewish man who has just signed up to join the International Brigade and go off to fight in the Spanish Civil War.  In the course of a few brief meetings they fall in love, their emotions heightened by imminent parting and the prospect of war.

Nat is a working-class boy, Felix a middle-class girl with a stuffy brother and safe background and a nice but seemingly dull would-be suitor, George.  Her life seems predictable, and she makes a dramatic move to escape it: she volunteers as a nurse and follows Nat to Spain.  George goes after her in hopes of bringing her home to her family - but he too is changed by events and ends up joining the International Brigade.  These are idealistic young people who see clearly how the plight of the Spanish people is connected to wider struggles for freedom and democracy.

Lydia Syson creates a moving and detailed picture of the privations endured by the medical staff in Spain, the suffering of the wounded, the horror of battle, the despair, and the wrongs committed by both sides.  In particular she conveys well the chronic exhaustion and the moments of snatched joy.  Her main characters are engaging, and all three are faced with difficult choices which keep the reader involved.

The Spanish Civil War is a period of history that few people now seem to know about, and this story is the perfect way to learn more.  And although the story was written for teenagers, I think adults would enjoy it just as much.

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The Fate in the Box, by Michelle Lovric: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

The D’Agos’ house was surrounded by the homes and workshops of Venice’s cloth-dyers, whose sheets of crimson, emerald and saffron-coloured fabric hung like glorious mediaeval pennants from the rooftops and windows. Although the sun had barely risen, it was warm in the workroom. The pungent smells from the dyers’ vats were stealing through the air, along with the sleepy voices of the girl orphans warbling their morning hymns at the grand almshouse of the Mendicanti.

This is a fairly random extract from Michelle Lovric’s new children’s book, The Fate in the Box; I could choose a couple of sentences from almost anywhere, and in the same way, they would reflect the delight in a place (Venice) and the delight in language which are hallmarks of Michelle’s work. You can see, so clearly, the vivid colours of the lengths of fabric; you can feel the warmth in the workroom, smell the dyes, hear the voices of the orphans – and just in that passing reference, you are given a sense of the kind of life those girls are leading, in the strict regime of the cloister. In just the same way as this short extract, the book is full of rich detail and exuberantly imagined places and people. It’s not just the circumstantial detail either; the characters are all utterly individual, each with their own, very special voice, and the story twists and leaps and dives like one of the mermaids who helps to protect the city.

Michelle has already written three other book for children set in this alternative Venice. She’s going backward in time: this one precedes the other three. Some of the characters are familiar – those mermaids, for instance, beautiful and graceful but also greedy and earthy, with a ripe turn of phrase learned from pirates. Some of the family names are recognisable from earlier books too, and so is the general set-up: Venice is in thrall to a selfish and brutal dictator, in this case Fogfinger, and only a small group of children – with the help of cats and various other creatures – can defeat him and save the city.

The Fate in the Box is not for the faint-hearted; in the very first chapter, it seems that Amneris is to be sacrificed at the whim of Fogfinger; she is forced to climb a tall tower, where the Fate in the Box will decide whether she will walk back down again or whether the trapdoor beneath her feet will open, catapulting her into the deep lagoon hundreds of feet below where a terrible sea monster is said to lurk. There are far more edge-of-the-seat moments to follow. But the way the story is told is so affirmative that, even as you seriously consider taking shelter behind the sofa, you know that ultimately good – and the children – will triumph.

I’d recommend this to boys and girls who enjoy adventure, humour, fantasy, and a good story phenomenally well told. It's published by Orion.

Incidentally, over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, Michelle has written a post about the window displays she has put together about The Fate in the Box - it's here, and it's fascinating.

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TWO NESTS, by Laurence Anholt and Jim Coplestone - reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title: TWO NESTS
Author: Laurence Anholt
Illustrator Jim Coplestone
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Pub date: 7 March 2013
ISBN:

Family separation is always a traumatic issue for kids and we can never have enough books that deal with the subject in a sensitive and positive way.

Laurence Arnholt's latest collaboration with illustrator Jim Coplestone is one of the best, and funniest, I have seen dealing with this subject. Told in bouncy, fast-flowing rhyme, it's the story of Betty and Paul, two birds who fall in love and build a nest together in a cherry tree.   Betty lays an egg and they have a baby. The happy occasion leads to a respectful status in the local animal community as well as a delightful social life with lots of creatures from the surrounding countryside coming to visit.  But the nest proves too small for all three birds and before long they start squabbling.  Paul decides to move out and set up home on another branch of the cherry tree.

This turn of events leaves all three members of the family sad, especially Baby Bird who misses his/her dad [the baby's gender is never revealed]. Betty assures him/her that both parents still love their little baby very much and - before long - Baby Bird has sprouted wings and discovered the advantages of having two homes to share.

This book not only deals with an important issue in an understanding and perceptive way, it's also a jolly good read. The gentle illustrations, suffused with light blues and pinks, give it a cosy, whimsical look.  The toddler I tired it out on was shouting 'again' before we'd come to the last spread and I'm sure lots of other kids will be doing the same everywhere this book is read.

Saviour Pirotta
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The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan review by Lynda Waterhouse

Ever since I read Vikram Seth’s ‘Golden Gate’ and Ellen Hopkins’s ‘Crank’ I have enjoyed reading novels in verse. Part of my YA novel, ‘Cut Off’ was written in blank verse .This poetic medium is ideal for the expressing Kasienka’s emotional turmoil. Sarah says ‘each word in a poem holds so much power.’

The book is beautifully packaged with a striking cover designed by Oliver Jeffers and has a quote from Cathy Cassidy on the cover which is guaranteed to draw the eye of the early teen reader for whom this novel would be perfect.

 It tells the story of Kasienka and her mother who leave their home in Poland and head for England in search of their father. He has abandoned them and Mama is desperate to find him. They are forced to live in a studio flat

There are a lot of feelings packed into the taut verse. Kasienka has to settle in a new school and find her place amongst the mean girls and their petty unwritten rules. She finds herself falling for William. She has deal with her conflicted feelings about her father and his new life in Coventry alongside managing her mother’s pain. Her talent for swimming literally pulls her through,

At the pool’s edge I might be ugly,

But when I speak strokes

I am beautiful.

 Despite its title I found that it did skim the surface of some characters and situations which was a little frustrating but there is so much to admire in this debut novel. It has already been short listed for The CILIP Carnegie Medal and The CLPE Poetry Award.

The Weight of Water is published by Bloomsbury

ISBN 978-1-4088-3023-9

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THE BATTLES OF BEN KINGDOM: THE CLAWS OF EVIL by Andrew Beasley, reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

It's 1891 and, behind the exclusive doors of London's Sinistra Club, evil is gathering its forces. The Council of Seven, rulers of a shadowy society known as the Legion whose hand stretches back over two thousand years, are readying themselves for action and control of the city of London is their goal.

Standing in their way are the Watchers. Living on the city's rooftops, their vigilance has protected London for thousands of years. They believe in an ancient prophecy which predicts a saviour will help them finally defeat the Legion.

When a vital ingredient of the Legion's plan falls into the hands of a cocky street urchin named Ben Kingdom, he finds himself thrust into the midst of a deadly battle and struggles to know who to trust. Ultimately, he has to chose a side - good or evil - and it's by no means certain which way he will decide to go.

This accomplished debut novel, aimed at readers aged 9+ , is jam packed with danger and excitement. The story races along at breakneck speed, introducing and dispensing with a brilliant array of well-drawn characters as it goes. I loved the ambivalence of Ben - his brash exterior conceals an uncertain naivety which I found very appealing. I also liked Lucy Lambert, whose thankless task it is to watch over Ben and try to keep him out of trouble. But really, it's hard to pick out one or two characters because they are all intriguing, even the sickeningly evil ones.

I especially adored the design and feel of this book. The cover in particular encapsulates the Heaven v Hell theme of the story, with Ben caught between the two and leaves a potential reader in no doubt about what they are getting; an urban steampunk fantasy. Inside, there's a map showing Victorian London, with key locations picked out in greater detail and I must admit, I am a sucker for a beautifully designed map. The action is split over five days and each section (comprising a day) has a gorgeous line illustration to accompany it, giving a rich feel for the fantastical characters and creatures of the book.

I can't wait to discover what battles Ben Kingdom faces next. Bring on the second adventure!

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The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos: reviewed by Gillian Philip

I have been a sucker for space adventure ever since Star Wars caught me at an impressionable age. (I mean the first three. Let us never speak of the prequels.*) How we marvelled at the groundbreaking special effects of 1977. Some of them look a teeny bit ropey now (really, they’ve held up remarkably well), but the movies endure, because, well - it wasn’t about the special effects. Not entirely, anyway. The first Star Wars, an unexpected hit, was a mash-up of westerns, Robin Hood and Saturday morning serials. The story was the thing, and the thrills and the adventure and the romance and the cliffhangers...

Which is where Dan Krokos comes in. The Planet Thieves is the first in a middle grade series following the adventures of Mason Stark, his bitter frenemy Tom Renner and the violet-haired, eerily beautiful but mysterious Merrin Solace. I liked that Mason from the get-go: when we first meet him, hiding behind the pilot console of the SS Egypt, he’s just played a prank on his sister, a Lieutenant Commander of the fleet, by removing all the bolts from her chair. Well, he’s bored; he’s only a thirteen-year-old cadet logging space time, and he and the other cadets have done nothing but kick their heels, squabble and get in the way of the crew. (I couldn’t help picturing a much younger James T Kirk from the rebooted Star Trek movies.) 

Anyway, he knows how to pick his moments, does Mason. Earth is at war with the Tremist (a war sparked ‘because two races were really bad at taking care of what they had’) and the SS Egypt comes under enemy attack just as Mason’s removing the last bolt. 

See, that’s what I like in a book. Straight in at the deep and dangerous end, and then let’s see how much worse it can get.

Of course, it’s the irritating ‘cargo’ of cadets who escape notice and capture when the crew and senior officers are overwhelmed, and it’s down to them to save the day. There follows a properly action-packed thrill-ride, full of swashbuckles and narrow escapes, but it’s not all smash-bang-wallop; with Mason, Tom, Merrin and their fellow cadets forced into the role of heroes, all their faults and foibles are exposed. They all have histories and they all have secrets. and things are going to get hairy on the personal as well as the combat front. And the stakes are higher even than they thought, because the Egypt turns out to be carrying a weapon that could change the course of the war...

I mentioned movies because that’s how the book feels in your head. It’s kinetic and very visual, and any kid who loves science fiction or superheroes is going to adore it. Mason and his friends are heroes to root for, and the Tremist are magnificent villains, sinister but complex - not least because despite 60 years of war, nobody knows what they are. 

Oh, and the special effects are fabulous.

The Planet Thieves is published on May 21st in the States; this side of the Atlantic it’s currently available only as an audiobook, but keep your goggles peeled because I’m certain it’ll cross over here at warp speed - not least because there is word of an ACTUAL Warner Brothers movie.  

The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos; published 21st May by Starscape Books

www.gillianphilip.com

*PS Nor shall we ever speak of the Ewoks. 

Dan Krokos has a bit of a Matt Smith look going on, doesn't he?
This had no bearing on my review but I thought I'd mention it.

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DON'T JUDGE ME by Linda Strachan, Reviewed by Penny Dolan.

This novel's stunning cover blazes with flames, reminding us that arson is, in writing terms, already an interesting focus for a book for older teens and young adult readers. 

However, in “Don’t Judge Me” award-winning author Linda Strachan has also created a very clever novel. We are offered four – or maybe five – protagonists, each of whom could have set the fire, but the plot takes one twist after another, making the reader suspend judgement.

The book is written in a simple style and the different viewpoints are clearly indicated so the novel feels accessible for most teen readers.   

Chapter by interwoven chapter, a loose gang of four teenage friends reveal more about themselves, their backgrounds and their conflicts..

The novel begins strongly, with stroppy, half-drunk Suzie, a rebel in foster care, catching a baby tumbling from one of the burning flats on the estate. Another fire blazes in the home of Jenna and her loving Indian family.  Unlike Suzie, Jenna gets almost everything she wants - except the freedom to be an individual. Now, forced to move into her aunty’s home, Jenna will be even more closely watched. And was the fire a racist attack?  Jenna and her family face troubling threats.

The pair of boys are Malky and Jack. Troubled Malky is someone Suzie has known since they were in care together, but now he brings his own problems and solutions to the mix. Jack, Malky’s friend, seems to be the most stable of the group – but is he? Jack lives with his frail grandmother. His journalist mother is more interested in her assignments abroad than in her own son and he is full of hidden anger and bitterness.

A local police officer, DI Larkin,  has the task of trying to untangle the case and the conflicting clues - as well as working out what the anonymous witness saw on that night when the fire took hold – and how her terrified account fits in with the statements on his desk.

At first, the four teenage friends seem to have little in common beyond their love of hanging about together. They are full of the usual teenage jealousies, insecurities and bravado. They get annoyed by each other and indulge in tantrums and games, especially games that can go wrong. Nevertheless,during the novel, the experiences they share force them to decide on where their loyalties lie and the importance of truth. 

Meanwhile, the reader is forced to wait and suspend judgement until they have heard each part of the story in full.

As author Keith Gray says, “Don’t Judge Me” is “a tricksy whodunit” and a great contemporary read for teenagers.

Penny Dolan.

Don't Judge Me was published in 2012 by Strident Publishing.

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Rafi Brown and the Candy Floss Kid by Sue Stern. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Once again, I have to start a review with the admission that I know the writer of this book. In fact, I feel as though I'm a kind of godmother to the story, as Sue showed me an early version ages ago and I liked it then. I like it even better now in its new manifestation as a well-produced paperback with excellent illustrations by Heather Dickinson and I applaud Sue's decision to publish the book herself and try and get it to as many children as possible. I'm happy to help in this process as I think there are lots of boys, especially, out there who would both identify with and enjoy this book.

It's about what happens when Rafi, (who has problems with reading and writing and even worse problems with his teacher Horrible Hegarty) meets a girl in the park. She has pink hair and she's the Candy Floss Kid. She shakes up Rafi's thoughts and opinions about everything. She has even worse problems than Rafi, and the two of them have a series of adventures which not only take them round various parts of Manchester (all of which was very nostalgic for me!) but also teach them much about subjects as disparate as the Russian Revolution, cartoons,voodoo, and the way the Social Services work.

Stern is good at dialogue. The boys and girls you'll meet here sound normal and unbookish. She's also good at conveying the many different relationships that exist in young people's lives: with parents, siblings, teachers, friends, enemies and so forth. The place comes to life very well and I can vouch for the accuracy of many of the descriptions, especially that of the park where Rafi and the Candy Floss Kid meet. The horrible teacher is well done and we get a reason for her horribleness towards the end of the book which doesn't quite excuse the way she acts towards Rafi but which at least explains it.

I think this would be a good addition to any school bookshelf and I would urge anyone who has what's called "a reluctant reader' in their family to buy it too. It's enjoyable, well-written, entertaining and about serious things that matter. I'm happy to be able to recommend it in this review.

Published in paperback by RED BANK BOOKS. From Amazon or from the publisher (80 Fog Lane, Didsbury, Manchester M20 6AG) Price: £5.99 ISBN: 9780957400 The book is also available on Kindle.

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