THE EEL OF FORTUNE by Sally Prue. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

When Sally Prue's first Class Six book came out, I reviewed it on this blog. A  link to my piece is below. For those who are pressed for time, the main thing about this review is my justification for reviewing a) a book by a friend of mine and b) a book for juniors, not hyped, and not much advertised and which could easily fall below the radar. 

http://awfullybigreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/class-six-and-nits-of-doom-by-sally.html

This is the follow up. The school has lost the wonderful witch Miss Broom..she's been sent away so that the terrible Mrs Knowall, who's keen on being a school governor, doesn't spot that there's magic in this school, doesn't report it to her friend the District Inspector of Schools, and get the school changed or closed down or somehow rendered unmagical. 

The only problem is: the School Fair is coming up. Will Class Six be able to prepare all the magical things that Miss Broom would have been in charge of?  What will Winsome and Anil and the hilarious Rodney do to save the day?

I can't begin to convey how delightful the solutions are. How fun-filled and silly and completely satisfying they are.  The staff at this school consist of a werewolf, a vampire and the head is mermaid who sings sad sea songs. The school secretary is called Jeanie and of course, retires into her lamp when she needs to. Beanstalks grow and giants appear. Barry the eponymous eel helps Miss C Weed tell fortunes. And my favourites of all are the band called The Sirens. 

They are put in charge of drawing in the crowds and of course the crowds are drawn into the Fair in their thousands.  And the song the Sirens sang, in Prue's words: "wasn't exactly singing: the sound was more like someone spin-drying a gibbon."

Prue writes so well. She's so zingy and inventive and the illustrations by Loretta Schauer fit perfectly with this zany and delicious story which every Year Six child will enjoy. And Prue isn't above slipping in a message for parents and educationalists. "Mrs Knowall wants to make this a place where all the children are squeezed into the same shape, so the fat ones can't breathe and the thin ones rattle."

There are numerous delights all through this book. And there are quizzes and bonus bits at the end....what more could you wish for? Buy for your school classroom. Buy for your child....enjoy!

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Song Hunter by Sally Prue. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

Hands up those lucky people who managed to get a ticket for the current Ice Age exhibition at the British Museum!  The popularity of this exhibition shows how much appeal this vast unrecorded period of history has for us today.

I failed to get a ticket, but I did go to the museum's bookshop and buy a copy of Song Hunter.  Sally Prue's new book is about Mica, one of a small family group of Neanderthals - or stonemen, as they call themselves - struggling to survive as the climate begins to change and an ice age approaches.

Mica is a teenage girl and, like any teenager, she's rebellious, her brain is developing fast and her mind is full of new ideas.  She has always been different from the rest of her group, and it becomes clear that her unknown father was one of the people they call the howlmen.  Her arguments with her family will be familiar to teenagers of any time, and so will the changing nature of the affection she and her childhood friend Bear feel for each other as they grow up.  The dialogue is modern and colloquial, and it works well.

Mica's ideas alarm her people, who are resistant to change - even though change is essential.  Mica hears the voices of the howlmen calling in the valley and finds a pebble etched by a howlman with a drawing of a reindeer.  In the scene where she examines this object we share her puzzled amazement as she gradually realises what exactly the reindeer is: not, as she first thinks, a tiny living animal inside the stone, but a representation of an animal - something she has never seen, or even thought of, before.

After this experience, Mica's mind and imagination expand rapidly, and although there is plenty of danger and adventure to come, this is essentially the story of her growing awareness and understanding, and of the imaginative leaps she makes.  The writing is beautiful, poetic, and full of the wonder of reality.

An attractive cover, clear font and short chapters add to the pleasure of this book.  And there is a satisfying surprise towards the end of the story.



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THE QUEEN'S SPY and THE VELVET THIEF by Sally Prue. Reviewed by Adèle Geras.

I'm going to begin this review with an anecdote, but bear with me. In 1994, I published two books in a Longman's reading scheme called The Book Project . Each book contained two poems about cats. They were called 'JOSEPHINE AND POBBLE' and 'MIMI AND APRICOT MAX' and telling these feline stories in verse was some of the most enjoyable writing I've ever done. I was also proud of the poems as poems...there, I've said it. I don't know how many writers will admit to liking their own books, but I'm happy to do so and I think, moreover, that there's a great deal of false modesty about and that most people are actually quite pleased with their own work.

The fact that the books appeared in an educational series meant that no one reviewed them. Not many people know about them, and yet I worked as hard on them as I did on my non-educational books. I think that many writers write very well for publishers whose books are not to be found in most shops, and they therefore have their light hidden, perforce, under a bushel, when it ought to be shining out all over the place.

Next, an admission. Sally Prue, the writer, is a friend of mine. We children's writers are a gregarious lot and I know an awful lot of people whose work I honestly admire and if I were to confine myself to reviewing books by strangers, I'd have very little to write about. And I do want to write about these two books, not because they're by her but because they put paid to the perception that all reading scheme books are boring/unreadable/unstretching of the imagination etc. Pearson in this case, just like Longman's in my case, have had the good idea of asking a real writer to write a proper book for those who still find long, difficult texts a little daunting. These two short stories are part of the very popular Bug Club which teachers will maybe know about but which very few ordinary readers will have come across. The wonderful Love Reading 4Kids website highlights them and I do recommend their site as being a repository of all kinds of good things.

This is a rather long preamble to a discussion of the two stories. They are linked, although each of them can be read alone. They are - and perhaps I ought to have said this before I said anything else - proper historical stories, set at the time of the first Elizabeth and concerning young Edward, son of a glover (yes, just like Shakespeare, for anyone who cares to make the connection) and brother of the indomitable Bridget. He has a Great Aunt Anne and a father and he meets Ned Cobbley in the first book of the two, THE QUEEN'S SPY. Ned Cobbley is a goodie. He looks as though he ought to be a baddie but he isn't. He's funny, and crude and helps Edward in all sorts of ways. The story in this first book revolves around the downfall of a nasty teacher and it's full of humour, good sense, and fun. It's also (and this is the main thing) historically accurate and full of wonderful writing that's elegant without being fussy; humorous without being silly and altogether leads the young reader easily through a story that's so much fun she won't realize how much she's learned about Elizabethan customs and history by the end of the story.

THE VELVET THIEF starts in a a way that will appeal to any lovers of lavatorial humour: with Ned Cobbley cleaning out the jakes. Did you know that this was a word for the pit by the side of a house which caught the toilet droppings? You do now! Great Aunt Anne appears for a visit accompanied by Giles Pettit, who is briliantly named. You just know he's not what he seems and his unmasking by Edward, with help from Ned, is delightful. Along the way there are many incidental pleasures in these books. They are full of slapstick, of people falling over, getting wet, and generally landing in uncomfortable situations but throughout the language is fast and unfussy. While not being in the least 'pish-tushy', the words convey clearly a time that isn't our own. These books could easily lead to more children resding historical fiction, and that's surely a good thing. It's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying these books and if I can get them into the hands of a few more children, then I'll be very pleased.

THE QUEEN'S SPY illustrated by Alan Marks. Pearson Bug Club pbk. (no price printed. Order from myorders@pearson.com) ISBN: 9780435076207

THE VELVET THIEF illustrated by Alan Marks Pearson Bug Club pbk as above IBN: 9780435076252

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