Why? by Tracey Corderoy and Tim Warnes - reviewed by Damian Harvey

If you haven't met Archie, the little rhino, before then you've missed a treat. Following on from "No!" this is Archie's second outing, and very welcome it is too.

"Archie [is] a rhino with a LOT of questions," and he's very keen to find out all the answers - much to the exasperation of his parents.

Why do some things smash when you drop them? Why are some things sticky, 'splashy', messy... In his quest to find the answers, Archie makes a lot of mess.

Mum and Dad decide that the best thing for them all would be a trip to the museum. There are so many wonderful things to see at the museum and so many questions to ask - some of which Mum and Dad can answer easily like "why aren't there any dinosaurs now?" Others aren't so easy, like "why does that man have such big ears?" After a long day Archie is worn out and has finally run out of questions. But of course tomorrow's another day...

This is a lovely picture book to read aloud and share. Children will delight in Archie's inquisitive nature and parents will sympathise with Mum and Dad. Tracey Corderoy's text, mostly written as dialogue which perfectly suits the narrative style of this story, is perfectly complimented by Tim Warne's beautiful illustrations. A joy from beginning to end.  

Published by Little Tiger Press

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Dragon Gold by Shoo Rayner, reviewed by Cavan Scott

Harri has a problem. Every time the school runs a competition, his friend Ryan wins. Why? Because Ryan's dad always does the work for him.

So when Harri's teacher sets a challenge to create a flying dragon for St. David's Day, he sets out to beat Ryan no-matter what. He starts sketching designs immediately - and then a real-life witch walks into his mum's shop. She gives Harri a magic egg, that contains a real life dragon!

Shoo Rayner's delightful story of school rivalry and welsh mythology is the first publication from new independent Firefly Press. It's funny, engaging and feels very of the minute. There's also a healthy dollop of Welsh folklore, largely delivered by Harri's teacher and yet avoids any sense of being an infodump thanks to likeable characters and a good sense of humour.

The story is helped along by Shoo's own lively illustrations, including handy little portraits of the POV character whenever the narrative shifts from one viewpoint to the other.

My only gripe would be that Harri's adventures with his new fiery pet end rather abruptly. I can only hope that this means we haven't seen the end of Harri and Tan the red dragon.

Reviewed by Cavan Scott

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PLAYING WITH MY HEART by Valerie Wilding. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull.

'I am so angry, and it is all Miranda's fault. She is the most stupid, loose-tongued friend it is possible to have.'

So begins Valerie Wilding's story - a historical romance for young teens, based around the Globe Theatre in 1599.

When Patience's father, a carpenter, starts doing some work for the theatre company, she and her sister Dippity also find employment there - Dippity as a skilled needlewoman and Patience copying scripts for the players. Their father has a new apprentice, Kit - a thoroughly nice, hardworking boy - and soon Patience and Kit become attracted to one another and everyone is pleased.

But the playhouse brings trouble. Patience meets the handsome and seductive Jeremy de la Motte, a boy player who takes female roles. At once she has eyes for no one else. Her risky pursuit of this young man has dangerous repercussions for the whole family.

I liked the way this story showed a real family busy with everyday work, running a home, worrying about money and helping out neighbours and friends in their small riverside community. This close-packed community complicates life for Patience as she is watched by a nosy neighbour and pestered by the devious Miranda. The story is told in first person in diary form. This makes for short sections and lively, natural story-telling.

Patience - wilful, silly, often self-centred but essentially sound - is a heroine that young readers will be able to relate to. The story is easy to read and subtly conveys a lot of information about the Globe Theatre. There is also a historical note and a timeline at the back.

Published by Scholastic, 2014.





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Everything is Fine by Cathy Brett reveiw by Lynda Waterhouse

Everything is fine is an illustrated novel as opposed to a novel with illustrations. The visuals give the story the immediacy and intensity of a graphic novel. There is also fluidity to the page layout which perfectly matches the voice of the narrator, fifteen year old Esther Armstrong. Words literally swirl and dance off the page.

Everything is not fine for Esther. She is missing her brother Max, her parents are constantly arguing and money is in short supply. She feels trapped in the small seaside town of Pebbleton.

Things start to change when Esther finds some letters hidden in her room. They have been sent by a soldier, Freddie, to his sweetheart from the trenches of the WW1. Esther is consumed with a desire to find out if Freddie survived.

At the same time a film crew moves in to her home including the handsome and self-centred Byron. As they begin filming a storm is literally brewing and Esther is forced to stop lying to herself and face some painful truths.

This is a powerful novel of love and loss. There are no easy answers, or tidy happy endings, for either Freddie or Esther.

ISBN 9780755379491

Published by Headline

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WILD WOOD by Jan Needle. Reviewed by Dennis Hamley.

The reissue of this marvellous novel must rank as a Literary Event. First published in 1981 by Andre Deutsch with unforgettably brilliant illustrations by Wiiliam Rushton, Wild Wood should have been widely recognised for the classic book it undoubtedly is instead of going out of print early.

Well, to some of us, it always has been a classic and its reissue, revised and even improved, after nearly forty-five years, is an occasion to celebrate.

It’s not a sequel to The Wind in the Willows. It’s not a retelling in any but the vaguest sense. It’s a complete re-imagining, a companion piece, almost a concordance to the original, as Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is to Hamlet. 

Oh, in Wind in the Willows, how disturbed Ratty, Mole and even Mr Badger are by the Wild Wood. It’s a place of evil, fear, intimidation and danger which we as readers, feel tangibly with Mole as he nervously traverses it. Stoats and weasels are threatening, nightmare creatures who disturb dreams. They are, if you’ll excuse the word, oiks. The privileged upper class Riverbankers never think that the wild Wood may contain a viable, relatively comfortable and unthreatening society – unthreatening unless they themselves feel threatened. Well, they do feel threatened. We’re seeing Wind in the Willows from the Wildwooders’ point of view and it’s not hard to realise that this is a novel about class and revolution and a valuable social document about Edwardian society.

The tale is told by Baxter Ferret, an unassuming animal, a sort of wide-eyed Everyman who stands slightly apart from the main action with an engagingly critical semi-detachment. He loves his cars, his machinery, his family and his beer. Old cars and home brewing are among the novel’s main preoccupations and part of the warm, protective, though often cold and hungry world of the Wood. 

Concealed beer jokes abound. For example, the professional agitator who arrives to spark the Wildwooders into revolution is Boddington Stoat, who is ‘peculiarly yellow, a little lacking in body, extremely bitter but one of the best.’ Anyone who has spent time in a Manchester pub will know exactly what Jan Needle is talking about. Baxter’s first ‘gaffer’ on the farm has a petrol wagon, a Throckmorton Squeezer ‘with …six cylinders each big enough to boil Cider in.” Cedric Willoughby, the ancient journalist, drives an ‘Armstrong Hardcastle Mouton Special Eight. 1907 with the whirling poppets…’ Such madly exaggerated machines populate the story. Yes, it’s full of loving detail of a tightly-knit working class society. Yet the Riverbankers are not entirely excoriated. Baxter may dismiss Ratty as a poetic sort of dreamer but there’s a measure of affection there. 

 

However, it’s much more than that. As a satire, Wild Wood is on a par with Animal Farm. Both recount flawed revolutions. Yes, the Wildwooders do take over Toad Hall, rename it Brotherhood Hall, and the egregious Toad - a creation as gross as the Toad Grahame creates, still funny but also a symbol of repression - is driven out. But, unlike Orwell’s revolution, this is one is not entirely successful. Grahame’s narrative cannot be tampered with. The revolutionaries settle for less than domination. Boddington’s fanaticism is tempered as he marries Baxter’s sister Dolly. We know that Mr Toad will return. The revolution peters out rather good-naturedly with a sort of rapprochement between Riverbankers and the Wildwooders, the upper class and the working class. We can look round us nowadays and say ‘If only it had lasted!’ 

 

Funny, profound, superbly written, deeply satisfying: Wild Wood has so many qualities. Perhaps the book didn’t make the impact it should in 1981 because staunch Grahame supporters thought it disrespectful. Far from it. As with all good satires, there is a strong element of homage to the original. The Wind in the Willows is a quintessentially British book. 

Even though it springs from a radically different social and political perspective, so is Wild Wood. Read it, cry with laughter and close it knowing that the two books together have provided you with a conspectus of a whole society in a particular age but still relevant for all of time.

Wild Wood by Jan Needle. Published by Golden Duck 2014. ISBN 978 189926221 2 £9.99

Thanks to Authors Electric for this portrait of Jan Needle. Another excellent blog to visit!

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Go Green! A Young Person's Guide to the Blue Planet by Claudia Myatt, reviewed by Julia Jones

Go Green! is published by the Royal Yachting Association as part of a series of instructional books by the illustrator / sailor Claudia Myatt . The series began with Go Sailing! an introduction to dinghy sailing that has been a world wide success and is as wonderfully clear for adult beginners as it is for the children who are its primary audience. Then came Go Cruising! Go Inland! Go Windsurfing! + various associated activity books. 

Go Green! is the odd one out in this energetic company.  It's a plea for the Blue Planet: an environmental book which will be accessible to the youngest readers and yet includes memorable facts and clear explanations that will do no harm at all to older members of the family. I believe it should find a space in all primary school libraries and holidaymakers off for their annual seaside jolly or luxury cruise should make sure they pack a copy. In fact, if Go Green!'s message is fully taken on board (pun intentional) a copy should be placed beside every lavatory in the land.

“What do the oceans do for us?” asks Go Green! – “and what do we need to do for the oceans?” It begins at the beginning with the earth as a hot waterless lump of rock covered by a cloud of dust and gases and ultimately, I suppose, its mission is to stop us returning to some similar state. I've never been good with geology so I felt clarified rather than patronised when I looked at a drawing of those early continents, Panthalassa and Pangea, and read Myatt's description of the land as being “like bits of toast floating on a bowl of thick molten rock soup”. Did you know that America and Europe are still drifting apart at the rate of 2cm per year? I didn't.

The scientific basis for Go Green! comes from Dr Susie Tomson who was inspired to become an environmentalist by the seaside holidays of her childhood. The lively drawings, bad jokes and memorably clear explanations are all Claudia Myatt's. They make the book palatable and pleasureable without diluting the main message. A cheery heading such as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Squid”, for instance, helps a word like bioluminescnce to trip off the tongue with no trouble at all. Go Green! is a little like the Horrible Geography series but it's accessible to a far younger age group. My five-year-old grandchildren have been composing letters to Greenpeace in school this term. Go Green! could have been written for them – while at the same time offering me the chance to field such innocently tricky questions such as “why does seawater taste salty?”

Claudia Myatt is the daughter of a meteorologist. Her colourful diagrams of trade winds and ocean currents leads convincingly into an understanding of the Great Pacific Garbage patch which in 2010 "was thought to be almost as big as Western Europe.” Plastic is the major villain of Go Green!   “Bodies of dead sea birds are found full of plastic, baby birds are fed pieces of plastic by their parents and then die of starvation.” 

Glass and some types of plastic may take as long as 500 years to degrade but there's nothing reassuring about this. The long process begins as soon as the plastic finds its way into the sea “until it becomes tiny particles suspended in the water – a kind of plastic chemical soup. It's now possible that there is more plastic in the sea than plankton. Some of that chemical soup ends up inside fish of course and gets into the food chain. And guess who eats some of that fish? That's right – you and me.”

The obvious temptation is to blame sailors for polluting the oceans. Go Green! is firm about the Marine Code of Conduct that sailing children should make their parents follow.  “We do not throw anything overboard” is Number One. However the vast majority of the rubbish in the sea has arrived there from the land. Don't throw it away, says Go Green! Reduce, reuse, recycle. Even landfill is better than allowing litter to reach the sea. THERE IS NO SUCH PLACE AS 'AWAY'.

Go Green! is a crusading book but it also including some charming pages of birds and shells and other “beach treasures”. Myatt wants children to waggle their toes in rockpools or blag their way onto square-rigged ships. She also wants them (and us) to treat the watery world with care and respect. The final fact I'll take away from Go Green! is that there is NO NEW WATER. It changes its form – vapour, liquid, solid – and may also change its distribution pattern but the total quantity remains the same. 97% of (liquid) water is in the sea. Round-the-world racer Mike Golding endorses Go Green's message "We need to learn to understand how to change our behaviour on-shore, thousands of miles away, to keep the oceans safe and clean up the planet. This, truly, is a book "for gulls and buoys everywhere".

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THE DEVIL IN THE CORNER by Patricia Elliott. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Over the years, at both Arvon and Ty Newydd, I've taught courses where I met writers who were very talented.  There were a few who, I could see, would be published sooner or later. I'm very happy to be part of the beginning of their writing lives, and every time one of them brings out a new book, I feel pleased all over again. I'm talking about writers like Lynda Waterhouse, Gill Vickery, Caroline Pitcher and in this review, most particularly, Patricia Elliott.  I often review books by novelists I know and I've stopped explaining and sort of apologising... You'll have to take it on trust that I wouldn't review a book I didn't genuinely think was worth drawing to people's attention. 

Patricia has written historical novels, and fantasies and whatever she publishes is always both stylish and interesting. She's good at slightly fantastical tales set in the past, like one of my favourites,  Murkmere.  In The Devil in the Corner, she's produced a book that will be enjoyed by all lovers of Victorian Gothic. It's a YA novel, and perfectly suited to that age group, but I don't think an adult reading it would feel in any way short-changed. There's enough plot to keep everyone who picks it up turning the pages, anxious to see what will happen next.

Maud, an orphan, is summoned to Windward House in Suffolk by her cousin Juliana. It's an old house, with all the appropriate shivery elements in place: slightly sinister servants, a very disabled young man called Sly who might or might not be the Devil of the title.  Then there's Edie, a fourteen year old girl whose cunning and mischief is driven by thwarted passion and whose actions and feelings constantly surprise both Maud and the reader. Then there's a painter called John, who's been commissioned by Juliana to restore the Doom Painting in the local village church.  (The painting is based, we are told by the author, on the Doom in St Peter's at Wenhaston in Suffolk. I am keen to see it.)  John and Maud meet on a train and the scene is set for a story of whispers, glances, poison, guilt, sexual assaults, drug addiction and murder. 

Many themes run through the novel, but it is mainly a love story and love wins through in the end. There is no slapdash element in Elliott's style. It is the very opposite of casual and colloquial.  Every word is both carefully chosen and appropriate. Nothing, anywhere, jars.  Elliott can also set a scene and take us into  someone's emotional turmoil better than many more well-known writers.

If you're an adult and enjoy novels like those by Essie Fox, for instance, this book is one you'd like. And any young person who relishes a spooky and  emotionally charged story will love it. Hodder Children's are to be congratulated for producing a very attractive paperback original with a cover that has more significance for the novel than you might realise at first. 

THE DEVIL IN THE CORNER: a paperback original.
published by Hodder Children's  £6.99
ISBN: 9780340956786





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Helen's Daugther - by Frances Thomas

Reviewed by Jackie Marchant

The first thing I’m going to say about this book is that it is self-published.  That’s one of those expressions that used to get me wondering – why hasn’t this book been picked up by a traditional publisher?  I have to be honest, the term  ‘self-published’ used to set alarm bells ringing.  I expected something amateurish which immediately answered my question – it wasn’t good enough, the poor author deluded into thinking publishers were wrong not to take it on, etc, etc.  It used to be normal for self-published books to be very much second rate.

But there is a new breed of self-publishers emerging.  Those who are already published, who have proven themselves capable of writing good books, but find themselves at the mercy of publishers who feel their work is not ‘commercial enough’.  These are books that would probably sell well, but now that publishers have to shift  ever increasing numbers to make a profit, that is no longer enough.  The result is a whole lot of wonderful books that are not being traditionally published.  This is one of them.

Helen’s Daughter  is the first in a three part Girls of Troy series.  It is written from the viewpoint of Helen’s daughter Hermione, who is whisked away to live with her uncle Agamemnon, after her furious father Menelaus learns that his wife Helen has absconded to Troy with her lover, Paris.   While the fascinating story of Helen and Paris and her furious husband’s resolve is all there, the focus stays with Hermione and the effects these events have on her.   This gives the story a delightful blend of myth and reality, where the world of ancient Greece is depicted so well that you feel like you are living the story with Hermione.

The story starts with a frightened young girl in the back of a cart, being taken away from everything she knows.  It deals with growing up in a world that is very limiting to girls, while the events happening around can be terrifying.  It is also a coming of age story and deals with friendship and first love.   Bearing in mind the events that were going on at the time, there are some shocking moments in this, but they are beautifully handled.  It is a well-written book told through a heroine who might not be gung-ho and kick-ass, but has a subtle inner strength that makes her all the more likeable. 

This is a book that deserves publication and I hope the self-published venture pays off.

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'All In One Piece' by Jill Murphy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

Today my youngest child is twenty-one.  It seems a good moment to look back on childhood, so I put Susie on the spot, asking her to name a favourite childhood book. 

“That elephant one where the mum gets paint on her bottom,” she said. 

I knew exactly what that was; All In One Piece by Jill Murphy, first published in 1987 and still very much in print and selling well.  It’s lasted the test of time for very good reason.  Both text and pictures are absolutely wonderful.

 

                                                                                       

Jill Murphy knows real families, and her observational humour is spot-on, albeit that the family happen to be elephants leading human lives.  The drama here is on a domestic level, but none the less exciting or funny for that.  Mrs Large has been looking forward to the annual dinner dance all year, and she wants to look nice for it.  Granny is coming to babysit, and she gives the four children painting to do so that Mr and Mrs Large can get ready in peace.  But of course that’s now how it works out.  Luke wants to play with Mr Large’s shaving cream.  The baby plays with Mrs Large’s make-up, and Mrs Large doesn’t notice ‘until it was too late’.  (We, of course, have, noticed what Baby was up to because we can see in the pictures what’s happening the other side of Mrs Large’s mirror).  Laura is clomping about in her mum’s shoes, and Lester and Luke are seeing how many toys they can stuff into mum’s tights.  And suddenly it’s all too much for Mrs Large.

“Downstairs at once!” bellowed Mrs Large.  “Can’t I have just one night in the whole year to myself?  One night when I am not covered in jam and poster-paint?  One night when I can put on my new dress and walk through the front door all in one piece?”  And, oh, we can see in the picture how very sorry the four little elephants are!  But then Mrs Large does sort herself out, and goes off with Mr Large being told that she looks ‘like a film star’.  Mr Large gallantly tells her that she’d look wonderful to him, even if she was covered with paint.  ‘Which was perfectly true, and just as well really’ … because we can see that she’s sat on the paintbox and the bum area of the back of her dress is a patchwork of paint colours!

One Amazon reviewer feels that Mrs Large telling off her children is a terrible message about squashing children’s creativity.  Not a bit of it!  It is recognising, and smiling at, the real dramas and tensions in real families, where love is never in doubt even when people get, understandably, cross.  It is a funny book that gives the child audience the upper hand in knowing what’s really going on.  And I think it’s a romantic book that celebrates parental love for each other in midst of family chaos.    

It’s also a book that for us will be forever associated with repeated holidays in a particularly lovely spot of the Lake District, where that book lived and was brought out at bedtime many many times.  Place and people associated with books has a strong influence on how fondly they are remembered. 

Happy birthday, Susie! 

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Two Perfect Picture Books: ‘Snowy’ by Berlie Doherty and ‘Lord of the Forest’ by Caroline Pitcher, reviewed by Pauline Chandler

I love picture books, but there are so many these days that it is hard to choose which to add to my collection. The two I've chosen here are superlative examples, very different from each other, but both sharing that loving attention to the needs of children, which the best children's writers share. 

Both books are out in new editions for 2014: ‘Snowy’ is out now and ‘Lord of the Forest will be available in a mini version, from August 7^th.  

‘Snowy’  by Berlie Doherty, illustrated by Keith Bowen

Rachel lives with her mum and dad on a narrowboat, on the canal. She loves living on the boat, but what Rachel loves most is Snowy, the boat horse. When her teacher invites the children to take their pets to school, Rachel is distraught when Mum says no, she may not take Snowy. Snowy has to work, pulling the barge along the canal. Rachel is miserable when she tries to tell her classmates about Snowy. They laugh at her descriptions and don’t believe in her beautiful pet.

In a happy turnabout, Rachel’s teacher organises a school visit to the canal, where the children can see Rachel’s home, the narrowboat, and meet Snowy for themselves.

There is so much to enjoy in this outstanding picture book. First, it’s a story about real children, delightfully observed, who might wobble a loose tooth or poke a finger through a button hole, and sometimes cruelly tease a classmate, whom they think is telling a tall tale. As you might expect from Berlie Doherty, a supreme storyteller, the text is made to work hard, painting the rich details of barge life, in clear but lyrical language, and not shying away from the challenge of some hard words, the boat’s name for instance, Betelgeuse, with the pronunciation kindly explained as Beetle Juice, or ‘swingle tree’, the name for the stick used to attach the horse to the long barge rope.

This is a gem of a picture book, though, because of the story. It has all the elements of the best stories: a hero wronged, who is finally redeemed and justified, an unusual  setting, full of interest, and characters who behave as real people do. Writing a picture book of this quality is difficult. It’s a pleasure to see it so perfectly realised. 

Highly recommended for children aged 6+

‘Lord of the Forest’ by Caroline Pitcher, illustrated by Jackie Morris

Tiger has his eyes tight shut when he’s just born, but he can hear all the sounds of the forest: the slither of snakes and the whooping of monkeys. His mother says, ‘When you can’t hear the sounds, be ready. The Lord of the Forest is on his way.’

As Tiger grows up, he plays and explores, and still hears every sound: the creep of crabs, the flip of fish: then as an adult, seeing everything, his eyes are ‘worlds of wildness’.

Still he waits for the Lord of the Forest to come. Peacock, Rhino and Elephant all make their claim, but Tiger knows it is none of them.

When he meets his mate and raises his own cubs, he climbs to the highest ridge and roars his name across the forest: TIGER!  And finally he hears – SILENCE.

It’s his mate who shows him the truth, by inviting him to look at his reflection in the lake: ‘The Lord of the Forest is here.’  

As we’ve come to expect from Caroline Pitcher’s magical picture books, this is a superlative story, beautifully unfolded, at a pace that suits young children. ‘Lord of the Forest’ is a feast for the ears and eyes, and could be described as a poem in honour of tigers, with a wonderfully spare and lyrical text, powerfully illustrated by Jackie Morris.

Highly recommended for children aged 6+  

Pauline Chandler 

www.paulinechandler.com       

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THE TRIBUTE BRIDE by THERESA TOMLINSON. Reviewed by Penny Dolan.

This fascinating historical novel, by a twice Carnegie-nominated author,  allowed me to spend my weekend back in seventh century Britain. I loved the experience, even though it made me appreciate my own life and freedoms.

THE TRIBUTE BRIDE could be a book for older teens who love history, for young adults interested in the role of women in past and present societies, and is also a fine read for grownups. This is a novel about power and resilience, courage and survival, and about the possibilities of friendship.

I am slightly biased, as the story is set in the north of Britain, among landscapes I love, so there was a pleasure in matching the journeys and places against modern maps. 

The book had clearly been well researched; every page offers glimpses of everyday life: the cycle of the months and years, the power and role of dress and ornament, the importance of the rituals of court feasts and religious rites as well as the dangers of battle, the fear of famine and the anxiety of childbirth.

More than that, THE TRIBUTE BRIDE is a dramatic story. When Aelle’s kingdom of Deira is devasted by floods , he has no grain to pay his tribute to Athelfrid, the powerful war-lord of Bernicia. So King Aelle sends his sixteen year old daughter north, hoping she will be accepted as tribute instead, and be a peace-weaver bride between the kingdoms.

Acha, young enough at sixteen to give the warrior Athelfrid the sons he wants, is accepted, although she too must accept being in second place. Athelfrid already has a wife, the beautiful Queen Bebba.

For a short while, Acha is won over by her husband’s charm and glamour, but soon his attention shifts back to battles and to Bebba. Acha soon learns how true he is to his nickname and his personal god: the Trickster Loki, when without asking he takes back his wedding gift of brood-mares for his own warriors. Left with only a few colts, Acha must recognise that Athelfrid acts as lord and owner of everything and everyone.

 

Fortunately, helped by her wise old servant Megan, Acha’s attractive and generous spirit guides her to act in ways that brings her firm friends. Eventually, she even finds a sister and fellow-mother in the Pictish Queen Bebba, and it seems her life as a princess is settled. However, all is not over. During what should be Acha’s moment of greatest happiness, she discovers that Athelfrid has, been playing a long and treacherous game, and that she and those she loves are caught up in it.

Reviewed by Penny Dolan

The Tribute Bride by Theresa Tomlinson.

Published by Acorn Digital Press.

ISBN 978-1-909122-63-5 £7.99.

Available on kindle too.

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The Echorium Sequence., by Katherine Roberts, reviewed by Cecilia Busby

Katherine Roberts' Song Quest, originally published in 2000, was reissued by Catnip in 2012. Recently Roberts has added the two sequels, Crystal Mask and Dark Quetzal, to the growing numbers of her back catalogue which have been reissued as e-books. I became a fan of Roberts' writing after coming across an early, book, Spellfall, in my local library. My daughter and I both loved it, and kept an eye out for her other books, subsequently devouring the whole Echorium Sequence, as well as the later Seven Ancient Wonders series (also now reissued as e-books and highly recommended!) I thought it might be time for a review of the Echorium books which are particular favourites of mine.

Song Quest opens on the Isle of Echoes, where apprentice Singers are trained in the songs of power. These are songs that can be used to bring healing, songs for laughter, sadness, death, fear - in essence this is the form magic takes in this world. Not all apprentices go on to become fully-fledged Singers - some lose their voice at adolescence and have to take menial jobs as orderlies - but the main protagonist of the story, Rialle, is a particularly gifted apprentice, and one who, unusually, finds she can communicate with the Merlee, the fish-people. All is not right in the world the Singers inhabit. Merlee are being killed and their eggs stolen - and it is Rialle, together with her best friend Frenn, one of those apprentices who have been demoted, who ultimately have to find out what is wrong and try to remedy it. At the same time, Rialle's great rival, Kherron, finds himself on the other side, working for the Karcholders who appear to be responsible for the Merlee killings. The story is told alternatively from Rialle's and Kherron's point of view, and while Rialle is an easy heroine to like and sympathise with, Kherron is an altogether more divided and difficult character. Is he on Rialle's side or not? Will he help or hinder Rialle and Renn in their quest to help the Merlee and stop the Karholders?

Song Quest reminded me of Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books, and I loved the originality of the idea that magic here was done through song. Rialle, Renn and Kherron are strong protagonists, and the Khiz priest, Frazhin, who is ultimately responsible for all the evil going on, is suitably creepy. Its a great read, deservedly winning the Branford Boas Award the year it came out - and it's a world you really want to return to at the end. Which brings me on to...

... The Crystal Mask, the second Echorium book. This is set twenty years after Song Quest, and features Renn, Rialle's son, as well as a half-wild girl called Shaiala, who arrives on the Isle of Echoes with half memories of centaurs, and of a sinister crystal mask. The mask is made of the khiz crystal used by Frazhin in the previous book to manipulate people's thoughts, and the suspicion begins to rise that the evil Frazhin might not, after all, be dead.

In the final book of the sequence, we get to hear more about the mysterious bird-people, the Quetzal, and we see Frazhin once more trying to use khiz to destroy the Echorium. Dark Quetzal is set eleven years after The Crystal Mask, and features a grown-up Renn, older Rialle, and promising novice Kyarra, the daughter of Frazhin, brought up from a baby on the Isle of Echoes. The story is as complex and spell-binding as the previous two, and we grow to love the new characters while also enjoying meeting old friends again - especially Shaiala. All the books have a fabulous assortment of half-creatures - the Merlee, the Quetzal, the centaurs - and Roberts does a great job of making them both familiar and alien, fully imagined and intriguing non-human characters. And Frazhin, the twisted and bitter source of all the nastiness in the sequence, is a great invention, who sends shivers up your spine.

All in all, it's a great trilogy, and I thoroughly recommend it to any fantasy fans out there who haven't yet read it!



Cecilia Busby writes as C.J. Busby. Her new book, DEEP AMBER, is a multiple worlds adventure aimed at age 8-10, which was published by Templar in March

Website: www.cjbusby.co.uk
Twitter: @ceciliabusby

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INVASION and THE QUEEN'S MAID - two short historicals by June Crebbin. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull.

These two illustrated stories are each less than 100 pages long, and both bring well-known historical events to life for readers of around 7+.  Invasion appears to be currently out of print but, if so, let's hope that Walker Books plan to reissue it. These are engaging, beautifully-written stories.

INVASION by June Crebbin, illustrated by Tony Ross. Walker Books, 2008.

Invasion is a story of the Battle of Hastings. Unusually, it's told from the Norman point of view, and our hero, young Rollo, is a page who serves Duke William. Harold Godwinson is therefore seen as a usurper, and Hereward the Wake as a cunning enemy - his assassination attempt on William foiled by the quick-witted Rollo.

Rollo has a special love of horses and helps care for them when the Norman army sets off across the Channel to invade England. He is constantly at his lord's side and always on hand when danger threatens - as it frequently does.

I particularly liked this story because it's always interesting to see familiar events from a different point of view.

There are delightfully witty illustrations by Tony Ross throughout.


THE QUEEN'S MAID by June Crebbin, illustrated by James de la Rue. Walker Books, 2012.

This story is set in 1588 when England was threatened by the Spanish Armada. The heroine, young Lady Jane, is a lively, intelligent girl who loves riding, writes poems and longs to perform in a play.

As a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, Jane is involved in a series of exciting adventures. When the Armada is sighted at Plymouth, Jane is there. Later she witnesses the fireships being sent amongst the Spanish fleet, and rides to London to take the news to the queen. She is at Tilbury when the queen makes her famous speech, and the story ends with Jane reciting her own poem The Scattering of the Armada.

The illustrations by James de la Rue are fine line drawings with lots of detail and expressive faces. I especially liked the picture of the queen and Jane, both wide-eyed and gossiping, watched by a line of snooty-looking maids of honour.

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TEN LITTLE PIRATES by Mike Brownlow and Simon Rickerty

Author: Mike Brownlow
Illustrator: Simon Rickerty
Publisher: Orchard/Hachette
Publication:   Hardback, July 2013. Paperback, Fenryary 2014



Mike Brownlow usually illustrates his own books but here he teams up with Simon Rickerty to produce a gem that I'm sure is destined to become as much a modern classic as Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury's We're Going On A Bear Hunt.

TEN LITTLE PIRATES is one of those perfect picture books you wish you'd written yourself.   The idea is simplicity istelf.  Taking the rhyme Ten Green Bottles [Sitting on A Wall...you know the one], it tells of ten little pirates who embark on a nautical adventure only to encounter mishap one by one and get separated from their crew.

The text, told in jaunty rhyme, uses lots of sound words and propels the simple plot along at the rate of knots.   Rickerty's primary-coloured illustrations make it very obvious that we are in the land of 'let's pretend', making each buccaneer look like a kid dressed up to play.  There are monsters too, including a shark and a giant squid.  They look scary and cute at the same time.

It's a backward-counting counting books, it's a rhyme, it's an adventure story with lots of scope for joining.  And needless to say, it's got a happy ending, on a deserted treasure island topped with coconut trees.   No home or library should be without this one!   But be warned, your children will be going "Arrr," way way way past their bedtime.

Ten little pirates sailing out to sea,

Looking for adventure, happy as can be.

Are they hunting treasure? Are they going far?

Ten little pirates all say, "Arrrrrr!"

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Buffalo Soldier, by Tanya Landman: review by Sue Purkiss

Buffalo Soldier begins in Gone With The Wind territory – on a cotton plantation in the deep south, just before the beginning of the American Civil War. But this story is not told from the point of view of the owners, but by one of the slaves.

So far, so interesting. However, this is not about the Civil War itself. It’s about the aftermath. Charlotte, a slave, and her surrogate parents, Cookie and Amos, expect that when the Yankees march in, a new world of freedom and happiness will be theirs. They soon find out their mistake. Forced to follow the Yankee column after the soldiers have razed the great house and destroyed everything which might have been used for food, they eventually escape; but they have no means of providing for themselves. Worse, hostility and prejudice are apparent on every side. In an almost post-apocalyptic landscape, everyone turns with a will to persecuting the former slaves, and when Charlotte does the simplest thing – staying on a pavement instead of stepping off to give way to approaching white people – she, and more especially, Cookie and Amos, pay for her temerity dearly.

Alone now, Charley decides that safety dictates she must pass for a boy. And then a passing stranger suggests she should join the army. She finds herself in a black regiment – the Buffalo Soldiers. Their captain is a kind, enlightened man, and she makes good friends; she has found a kind of home. But eventually, after the training, the real work begins, and it involves the persecution of the Indians. Charley’s innocence is gradually lost as she begins to see clearly just what they’re doing: but what choice has she but to carry on – not only witnessing, but also eventually perpetrating horrors? What can she do but follow orders – where else can she go, how can she survive?

This is a difficult read: Tanya Landman doesn’t spare us the grim details of what the Indians and the Army did to each other, or of the compromises necessary to stay alive. There is a redemption of sorts, but it’s partial – how could it be anything else, when we all know how long it was before the black people of America really gained their freedom, and what the fate of the native Americans was to be?

But we’re carried through by the voice of Charley, who is courageous and caring and just keeps going. It’s an astonishingly consistent voice; it never slips, from the first few lines: ‘I guess Ma died. Or she was sold. I don’t know which… All I got from her was a name. Charlotte. Darned fool fancy thing for a slave girl. Didn’t no-one never call me that.’ We’re inside her head, and with her, we journey through a tragic landscape because there’s nothing else we can do.

It’s a remarkable book, and I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t win prizes - and lots of readers.

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VERDIGRIS DEEP by Frances Hardinge: reviewed by Gillian Philip

So Frances Hardinge has the coolest style, especially when it comes to hats and gorgeous long coats. I was at the Fantasy WorldCon in Brighton last year when I met her. The convention happened to take place over the Halloween weekend, and Frances was laughing when she turned up one evening, because someone on the street had congratulated her on her Halloween costume. When she wasn't actually wearing one.

Hmm. I don't know; I think there's some kind of sorcery on the simmer here. Verdigris Deep was her second novel, and I picked it almost at random from her Amazon page because I was intrigued by the blurb: One evening, Ryan and his friends steal some coins from a well... Then the well witch appears, with her fountains for eyes and gargled demands. From now on the children must serve her – and the wishes rotting at the bottom of her well.

If you think it sounds as much like horror as fantasy, you'd be right, and yet there are moments of sinister comedy. Who'd have thought shopping trolleys could be sentient creatures of dread and terror? I was completely convinced, and I'll never pass the Tesco trolley stacks again without looking at them askance and wondering if they're watching me.

The witch at the bottom of the well is herself an extraordinary creation, seen initially in Ryan's visions after the three children steal her coins to pay for bus fare. She is introduced stealthily but horrifically: via Ryan's reflection in his own bathroom mirror, or in the eyes of a smiling model on an advertising hoarding. When the witch's true nature is at last revealed, there's something tragic about it despite the horror. She's doing what she was always meant to do, after all; but three twenty-first century children can't possibly have known just how deep a simple wish can go.

Ryan is the terrified, ultimately brave young hero, but his friends Josh and Chelle are if anything even more complex and engaging. All of them go through more changes than the reader expects, and they do so through challenges that are far deeper, darker and more twisted than they (or the reader) could foresee. Their happy expectations of being wish-granting Angels are gradually destroyed by the true natures of the wishes and the people who make them – and, of course, their own. Their peril lies as much within themselves as in the supernatural forces around them.

I never felt confident of a fully happy ending, and I feared most of all for Josh, who begins the story as the arrogant, charismatic leader of their small gang but falls apart, morally and psychologically, with every chapter. That genuine uncertainty is not too common in children's fiction, and it kept me reading into the small hours. (And no, I'm not going to tell you.)

It's a dark, intricate tale of fantastical but convincing danger, and it's written with stylish beauty, too. It's mysterious magic, is what it is.


Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children's Books, 2007), £6.99

www.gillianphilip.com




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The House in the Floods by Norah Pulling, review by Lynda Waterhouse

I have been familiar with this novel all my life. Until a few weeks ago it lived on a bookshelf in Oldham next to The Girls of Gwynfa, Keeper of the Bees and Dimsie. They are part of a collection of Mum’s Sunday School prize books. The House in the Floods is one of her favourite books.

I hadn’t read it for at least thirty years but was drawn to it again as the storms and heavy rain hit Britain. The story is about three schoolgirls who get trapped in a flooded house on the River Thames. Joan, Rosemary and Dinah are left behind in quarantine when their boarding school breaks up for Christmas. At the last minute they are allowed home and are given telegrams to post to inform their parents.

They don’t send the telegrams and decide to go and look at the flood. Dinah’s school hat blows into the river and Joan decides that ‘this is a chance that only comes once in a lifetime’ and they borrow a boat and set out on an adventure. The boat sinks and they have to use Joan’s penknife to break into a house. They search the house to find food and warm clothes. Joan justifies this by saying, ‘We can’t stop to think too much about everything being other people’s possessions, it seems to me. It’s a case of our being in a hole; and necessity like ours excuses almost anything.’

As a child reading this story I particularly loved the sections where they search the house and hunker down. The girls are brave and practical. They find a tin of cake and some apples in the attic and rescue a kitten from drowning. There are, of course, no adults. As an adult I found this section about children trying to define their world the most satisfying.

Joan mentions her father once as she recalls how he as a young man ‘had often to get up in the middle of the night and do things in the Great War, in the most uncomfortable circumstances… Youth and not having a light were neither of them excuses for being unenterprising.’

They are joined by two other schoolgirls, Isobel and Anne (from the rival boarding school), and they have to decide who will be in charge and maintain order and they all learn to trust each other and become friends.

Yesterday I looked again at the dedication and the date inside the book - 2^nd January 1943. Mum was 10 years old at this point and living through a war when she first encountered and became so attached to this story. She had not been evacuated and was living in a part of Manchester that was being bombed.

I began to see more clearly why this story might have been both a welcome escape into a world of controlled danger (the floods are never made to feel life threatening) and also to reflect the experience of food shortages, make-do-and-mend and the loss of homes and possessions. Does anyone have any information about the author, Norah Pulling? I would love to know more about her.

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DEAR THING by Julie Cohen, Reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

Claire and Ben and Romily have known each other since university. Claire and Ben are married, Romily and Ben are best friends, and Romily and Claire - well, they tolerate each other for the sake of Ben. Things might have gone on that way forever if Ben and Claire hadn't been desperate to have a baby and Romily hadn't offered to give them one...

On the surface, Dear Thing is about motherhood; one woman's need to have a baby of her own and another's well-intentioned offer to help, no matter what the personal cost. And certainly the subject of pregnancy is an integral part of the story: surrogacy, hormones, societal norms, stretch marks and ultrasounds all feature. But don't be fooled, this book is about so much more than that. It's about fatherhood, too, and marriage and family, about the secrets we keep and the lies we tell ourselves. It's about growing up and letting go and understanding our own parents better, about protecting ourselves and accepting failure. And most of all, Dear Thing is a book about love.

Every character is perfect and complete, from the protagonists down to Max, a boy in Claire's music class who engages her professional and maternal instincts. The details of Romily's work as an entomologist fit beautifully with her metamorphosis from Ben's friend into the mother of his child, a change that ripples out into every area of all their lives. And all the way through the story, we are subtly reminded that it isn't simply the act of giving birth that makes a woman a mother.

I knew that Dear Thing would make me cry, but it wasn't the most obvious places that moved me - Claire's despair at her body's failure or Romily's anguish as she battles her own demons - it was this paragraph, where Claire is at a concert, listening to some music:

When the mother theme came at last, she recognized it: slow and soft, warm and sweet, full of the smell of a baby's head, a cheek tilted against hers, the brush of eyelashes. The papery skin of her mother's hand, which had once been the most beautiful hand she had known.

Julie Cohen effortlessly captures the hardest part of parenthood; how we love and cherish and ultimately let our children go, just as our own parents did before us. It made me think when I read that last line, reminding me of my own children growing up now and of my mother, whose hand and face really were beautiful to me. In fact, I am still thinking about them now and I have a lump in my throat.

Dear Thing is more than a book about motherhood - I challenge you to read it and find out what it means to you.

Published by Black Swan, out in paperback 8th May 2014.

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Wild Wood by Jan Needle illustrated by Willie Rushton reviewed by Julia Jones

And so a gallant band was formed to bring about the downfall of the rich uncaring few. They were the Wild Wood volunteers and theirs is a saga of poverty and desperation, loyalty and treachery, strange love and great despair.
This is a new edition of a novel first published in 1981. Jan Needle states that he was "in a dosshouse in Dewsbury" talking about Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, when the idea for Wild Wood first came to him. Leaving aside (for the moment) the question what sort of person spends his time in a dosshouse talking about Ratty and Mole and their furry chums, one can't help wondering what sort of book will have emerged from this unlikely spot.
"It occurred to me," continues Needle, "that Mr Toad and his chums from the River Bank didn't know that they were born. Mr Toad lived in a glorious mansion from which he bought and abandoned executive toys on the merest whim. The servants who existed to service his desires were not even mentioned. They were invisible, taken for granted, as indeed were Mr Rat's." So would this new, alternative version be an angry, revolutionary book or a heart rending lament for the dispossessed? By 1981 Needle had already written Albeson and the Germans (abuse and vandalism), My Mate Shofiq (racism) A Fine Boy for the Killing (a lower deck subversion of the Hornblower tradition) and he would soon be writing scripts for the TV series Grange Hill -- epitome of mid-80s gritty.

Wild Wood works well as political satire -- there's anger at the exploitation and betrayal of the working classes in their attempt to overthrow "the biggest Banker of them all", as Needle describes the plutocrat Toad. Revolution is tried -- and fails.  "There was peace all right but there was something else too. Regret's the nearest to it I can think of.." The mood at the end of the story is melancholic. Yet the words that sprang most regularly from earlier reviewers' pens were words like "joyful",  "exuberant", "truly comic". Wild Wood was published as children's fiction.

It's easy to find exuberance in the language. Here is the hero, Baxter Ferret, starting his employer's lorry, the mighty Throgmorton Squeezer. So I advanced the ignition, wiggled the toggle springs -- wound the handle.  Retarded the ignition, jiggled the priming sleeve -- wound the handle. Lifted the bonnet scowled at the little grinning face on the bleeder nipple, thought better of it and chucked it under the chin -- wound the handle. Billy Bingo! She caught with a hiss and a roar. The whole Throgmorton jounced and shook on its bright yellow, solid-tyred, wooden-spoked wheels.

Baxter is the oldest of six young ferrets and the sole support of his family and their widowed mother. He is conscientious and anxious: his life is hard but once a year comes Brewday when his mother makes her famous barley wine. Then there is joyfulness in the Wild Wood when long pink tongues are submerged, lips are smacked and the country band strikes up. Dour Harrison Ferret, for example, changes completely when he puts his penny whistle between his lips "His scowly face cleared like a summer sky after a shower, his shoulders swayed from side to side and his tail switched like a metronome." Kenneth Grahame's characters take a backseat in Wild Wood -- they are, after all, the Enemy. Instead Needle offers a wonderfully individualised array of proletarians -- from the grim revolutionary Boddington Stoat to the champagne socialist O.B. Weasel.

The outstanding creation -- and the source of the true comedy of Wild Wood is its protagonist, Baxter Ferret. Baxter, in his mother's words is "as dim as a dirty lampwick". He's humble, credulous, good-hearted, hard-working and a budding craftsman. Baxter, in his innocence, makes the book accessible for child readers and he may lead adults  to wonder whether this story was finally comedy or tragedy. Despite improved material conditions at the end of the story, Baxter is haunted by his memories of Toad and his uneasy feeling that there was something not quite right about the last days of Brotherhood Hall. "Regret's the nearest I can think of but I'm probably wrong. I never did understand it all. Not so's you'd notice."

Despite its oppositional politics and perception of social injustice, Wild Wood doesn't spoil Wind in the Willows. It's not a pastiche, it's a commentary, it's affectionate and respectful. After all, if Wind in the Willows was capable of enlivening a doss house in Dewsbury, Wild Wood can quite safely be enjoyed thoughout the length and breadth of Middle England.

Much of the comedy in Wild Wood
derives from Baxter's youthful earnestness,
perfectly captured in Willie Rushton's
exquisitely intense illustrations.

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