Corey's Rock & That Asian Kid - Reviewed by Chitra Soundar

I recently read two books by two Asian authors – both very different in feel, different in target age-group and the topics they dealt with. But both books affected me in a way that very few books have done in a long time. I'm reminded of them at odd moments and recall thinking about the characters as if they are real.

Author: Sita Brahmachari, Illustrator: Jane Ray
Published by OtterBarry Books

I first got hold of a copy of Corey’s Rock at least a year ago. It’s written by Sita Brahmachari and illustrated by Jane Ray. The beautiful watercolour illustrations draw you into the world of the story and the text lulls you into a magical land.

Corey’s Rock is like a calm sea – you might not see the waves rising or the ripples in the water,  but it has innumerable depths like the sea. In this story, Sita and Jane have deftly handled the loss of a sibling, migrations, mixed-race families and how new communities can be not just daunting but surprisingly welcoming. It anchors the story in parental love, friendships made in classrooms and the love for a place, a place that has belonging. Sita has wonderfully woven the myths of selkies into Isla’s story and the myth not only helps with the reconciliation of Isla’s loss but also gives her hope.

Every character we see in this book gives us a sense of belonging, reminds us of someone we’ve met in our lives who brought a smile to our souls or someone we’d hope to meet when we are dealing with such difficulties on our own.

Sita does not shy away from difficult topics and with the help of the gorgeous illustrations by Jane, she has given us a story as magical as the selkies.

Written by Savita Kalhan, Published by Troika Books

And now to the second book, That Asian Kid by Savita Kalhan. It’s not a book I’d read normally. But based on the first chapter Savita read at her book launch, I bravely sat down to begin. Soon I found myself racing through the pages and even though I read only just before bedtime, I finished the book in 3 nights, each time, reluctantly closing the book as sleep took over my senses.

In this book, we see the story of Jeevan, who has a normal and regular life in a grammar school and he’s good at studies and doesn’t have any major hang-ups at home or in school. Enter English Lit and a teacher who doesn’t seem to like him. As Jeevan realises that his chances at acing his English Lit wasn’t going according to plan, because he thinks his teacher might be biased, he gets a chance to take revenge on her. You have to read the book to get the rest of the plot because I’m so worried I’d give it away.

What I wanted to share about this book, as a writer and as a reader are the characters and the dialogue. The characters are wonderfully real, fun to be around and I love the camaraderie between Jeevan and his friends. Their differing viewpoints drives Jeevan crazy but also keeps him grounded.

I love the family setting of this story – an Asian family, high-achievers, yet both pragmatic and supportive. I love the friends – old and new Jeevan gets to deal with and a new friend Ree he meets, who seems to be constantly playing devil’s advocate. In fact I’d like to see Book 2 in which Jeevan and Ree are on their own exciting adventure – perhaps another blunder that leads them towards big decisions.

These two books deal with difficult subjects of love, loss, bigotry and yet the characters are redeemed by the power of friendships. These are wonderful stories that are relevant to our times for children to cope with the various challenges and highlight the need for safe spaces – where children can discuss their worries, ask for help and find a support system.

In these two stories, the embrace of the family and the hand of a friend has been offered and accepted. But in real life many of our children suffer from anxiety and depression and have no tools to articulate their troubles. The role of these books is to provide that safe space, where children can reflect their realities in the troubles of the protagonist and figure out a way to talk about their own anxieties.

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Chitra Soundar is an author and storyteller based in London. Chitra writes fiction, non-fiction chapter books and picture books. Find out more at www.chitrasoundar.com and follow her on twitter at @csoundar.

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The Electrical Venus by Julie Mayhew; review by Lynda Waterhouse

I have not read any of Julie Mayhew’s work before and I selected this book as I was dashing to catch a train.

First of all, let me make clear that I really liked this novel. I was swept away by the muscular prose, the salty sensuality, the sharp dialogue, the clever characterisation and the philosophical exploration of the question of what love is. By nature I am a dour Northern lass not prone to gushing and have indeed, after a past review, been contacted by an author to ask me if I really liked their book because they weren’t sure. Generally if I post a review of a book it is because I like it.  

However, I have two quibbles about the Electrical Venus. The cover, which is beautifully illustrated by Suzanne Carpenter, may be too young for the content. Indeed I selected it from the 9-12 section where it had been misplaced. My second quibble is the over use of the ‘F word’ in the text. It was used too many times, was rather gratuitous and began to grate on me. The rest of the writing is sublime and I fear that this over use of one word will limit the marketing of this book which would be a shame.

The story is set in Georgian England where a group of characters are trying to scrape a living in a travelling side show. The story is told from the perspective of two characters, Mim and Alex. Their chapters are interspersed with advertising broadsides for the shows, a ballad and a newspaper article, all of which create the atmosphere of Georgian England with its preoccupation with natural philosophy and science.

Mim is the daughter of a highborn lady and a West African slave who was sold to the show as a baby. Her best friend is Alex, the one-armed boxing boy. Their lives are changed by the arrival of Dr Fox and his electrickery which transforms Mim into the star turn as the ‘Electric Venus’ where men jostle to pay a penny and receive an electrifying kiss from her lips.

But is Mim’s transformation a measure of her real worth? Is there a better future awaiting her if she can shape her own destiny?

ISBN 978-1-4714-0704-8

www.hotkeybooks.com

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Bone Gap by Laura Ruby: reviewed by Sarah Hammond

Laura Ruby’s teen novel is set in Bone Gap in rural Illinois, a place that everyone knows "had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind."  Brothers Finn and Sean are only too aware of people slipping away: their father died, their mother ran away to Oregon with an orthodontist leaving them to fend for themselves, and the story begins just after Roza, Sean’s beautiful girlfriend, is kidnapped by a mysterious man at a local fair. 

Finn is the only witness to the disappearance of Roza, but his description of the alleged kidnapper as moving "like a cornstalk in the wind" is frustratingly inadequate. The searches reveal nothing. Roza becomes another person who is lost through the gaps, leaving a rift between the two brothers behind her. 

Yet just as we gradually learn that neither Finn’s strange vagueness, nor the odd disappearances in Bone Gap are quite what they seem, neither is the novel itself. Although we follow the vivid, realistic, well-drawn lives of the people of small-town America —  the local eccentrics, the sassy beekeeper, the bullies —  another story begins too. This story reveals Roza, trapped in an increasingly fairy-tale-like world by her strange captor and desperate to find her way home. 

And this magical world begins to spill into Bone Gap. A black racehorse appears at Finn’s house without explanation, taking him on rides through unrecognisable landscapes, over strange cliffs in the middle of cornfields. We begin to notice subtle sprinklings of Greek mythology. Roza’s garden wilts and dies in her absence. When Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, was dragged by Hades to the underworld against her will, didn’t Demeter let the world go barren in her absence? Didn’t Demeter also take the form of a black-winged mare? 

Other questions emerge, too. How important is beauty? Petey, Finn’s new girlfriend, is seen as conventionally ugly yet Finn does not notice. Some of my favourite scenes show the pair falling in love, making up increasingly ridiculous college essays “Describe someone who has had the biggest impact on your life using only adverbs”, “Tell us how you feel about Thursday - is it better or worse than Tuesday?” Roza is kidnapped for her beauty, yet this is not how Finn ultimately recognises her, and Sean’s first drawing of his girlfriend was of her hands. 

And what of abandonment? Who is at fault when someone leaves? Alongside the mysterious story of Roza's abduction, many characters are alone or have missing family members. In learning to heal and move forwards, who rescues whom? 

Bone Gap won the 2016 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature in the U.S. and was published in the U.K. in April 2016. It is a well-written, thought-provoking novel that encompasses realism and myth, changes in worldview, abandonment and rescue, and, ultimately, questions how we see those we love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laura Ruby writes fiction for adults, teens and children. She is the author of the newly-released YA novel Bone Gap as well as the Edgar-nominated children's mystery Lily's Ghosts, the ALA Quick Pick for teens Good Girls (2006), a collection of interconnected short stories about blended families for adults, I'm not Julia Roberts (2007), and the forthcoming middle-grade trilogy York. She is on the faculty of Hamline University's Masters in Writing for Children Program. She makes her home in the Chicago area. 

You can find her online at:

web: www.lauraruby.com
twitter: @thatlauraruby

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sarah Hammond is a writer for young people. She has published a picture book, Mine!, and a teen novel, The Night Sky in my Head, which was short-listed for four awards in the UK. She is a Brit abroad, now living happily in Chicago, with strong ties to the UK which regularly pull her back across the Pond.

You can find her online at:

web: www.sarahhammond.org

facebook: SarahHammondAuthorPage

twitter: @SarahHammond9

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THE WILD SWANS by Jackie Morris Reviewed by Adèle Geras

"It was a book so beautiful that she felt at any moment the painted characters would leap out of the pages and come to life."

So says Eliza, the brave and resourceful heroine of Jackie Morris's THE WILD SWANS. That sentence sums up my feelings about this retelling of one of my favourite fairytales. 

Anyone who reads my reviews regularly will know that I always say, right up front, that I know this or that writer; that I can't help it if some of my best friends write super books and so on. With Jackie, I can truthfully say that I've only met her once briefly in person. But she's a Twitter chum and anyone who takes part in that online cocktail party will know that such relationships can be a great deal of fun. I have followed Jackie and because I've been an admirer of her work for years,  I did actually ASK to review this book.

I had another reason for doing this. It's this: I myself wrote a version of this fairytale for David Fickling's collection of stories, which sold for £1 each back in 1998. My story was called THE SIX SWAN BROTHERS and it was beautifully illustrated in black and white by Ian Beck. 

There are twelve swans in Morris's version. The whole book is so beautifully produced and presented that it's worth pausing to pay tribute to those who made the decision to publish it in this format. It's a square-ish hardback, with full colour illustrations and turning every page is a pleasure.

Morris has written the text as well as providing the haunting illustrations. I am always deeply envious of anyone who can do that. It seems to be the most perfect way of creating a book and here the writer has managed to produce such a rich story,  so full of pleasurable language that actually, it would be possible to read it with no pictures whatsoever and still have the images in your head. Take, for example the painting below. It shows Eliza after she's been enchanted by the White Queen.

 The text reads thus: "...the queen now pulled and backcombed and filled her hair with things.  Eliza saw jewelled combs where there were only tangled twigs and thorns and ragged nests of birds."

And yes, the picture adds to the words but they are poetic and vivid in themselves, even without the help of an illustration.

The story is well known to many  in one version or another. What Morris adds to it is nature and detail. The story is told at much greater length, with many more layers of story for  readers to enjoy. It's told well, with good pacing and gorgeous choice of language. I've also tried reading the text aloud and that works very well, so I hope there will be an audio version. Morris is one of the best illustrators of  creatures: bears, cats, birds and hares. She shows us the world as a beautiful place but also one where cruelty is constantly present, always there waiting to catch us unawares.

In this book, the two creatures who matter are a dog and a hare. Shadow is Eliza's companion and friend. She is a big, grey, skinny animal, but also very gentle and loving.  The White Hare,  (the animal embodiment of the Queen who turned Eliza's brothers into swans) is both sinister and lovely. And the swans themselves are magnificent: white and powerful and crowned with gold.   

 This book will doubtless appear in paperback in the fullness of time but  the very competitively-priced  hardback  would make the most wonderful Christmas present for anyone who loves fairytales, and nature and the joys of holding in their hands something that will go on giving pleasure for years and years. John Keats said it and he's quite right: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

THE WILD SWANS is published by Frances Lincoln

Hbk: £10.99

ISBN: 9781847805362

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Last Chance Angel, by Alex Gutteridge, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

 

Alex Gutteridge’s ‘Last Chance Angel’ is a truly exceptional novel for children (particularly girls) of about ten to fifteen.

The premise of this novel is one which doesn’t feel as if it will make for a comfortable or a positive read, and yet the book emphatically manages to be both of those things.  Fourteen year old Jess is knocked off her bike, then lies in a hospital bed, in a coma, dying.  But a disorganised Angel of Death, Darren, gets the date of her death wrong, with the result that Jess is granted an extra few days in which to invisibly visit, and effectively, haunt her friends and family before her proper death day arrives. 

Those days of visiting friends and family could be morbid.  They could be sentimental.   They could be trite.  But they aren’t because of the sheer skill of plotting and character creation and writing employed.  A large cast of characters are wonderfully, movingly and humorously brought to life on the page.  Darren himself is a camp and rather spiteful jobs-worth of an angel, but even he becomes sympathetic by the end!  Jess gets insights into her group of friends, who, like her, are fallible.  She can help some, gain insights into others.  And the same is true of her imperfect, but very likeable, family.  The result is surprisingly profound, making for a compelling read as we come towards the end, and Jess is given a choice that makes us reel. 

Jess is given the ultimate moral personal dilemma.  Darren tells her that she can avoid death now, but only if she will sacrifice the once best friend who has since betrayed her.  Will Jess choose for Sarah to die so that she can live?  This is edge of the seat stuff, really exciting, but also moving and thought-provoking.   Brilliantly, the ending does surprise.

Alex Gutteridge has a rare gift for observing families and friendship, but also places, with a sure and kind eye that translates into beautiful writing.  Grounding the story with details of homes and cookery and gardening that bring it life on the page make the story all the more poignant.  This is also a love story of the very best kind.  Yes, there is a gentle boy/girl love theme, but love in so many other forms too … even love for wonderfully bracing Mrs Baxter the dreaded maths teacher! 

This is a story about understanding and forgiving, yourself as well as others.  It is, ultimately, a wonderfully hopeful story that leaves the reader a little different from the person they were when they began reading the book.  It is fresh and original, and would bear many re-readings.  Highly recommended.

 

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THE DOUBLE SHADOW by Sally Gardner . Reviewed by Adèle Geras

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


INDIGO
Hardback. £9.99
ISBN:9781780620121
pp. 384

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