No.235 the children’s book magazine online March 2019 Authorgraph interview LGBTQI+ fiction in 2019 Laura Hughes Windows into Illustration 30 years of The Blue Balloon

www.booksforkeeps.co.uk CONTENTS Guest Editorial 235 MARCH 2019 2019 sees celebrations for 20 years of the Children’s Laureate. Anne Fine reviews her time as Laureate 2 Guest Editorial by and the lasting changes brought about by the post. Anne Fine Waterstones ______Children’s Laureate 2001–2003 When the idea of a Children’s Laureate was first and vice versa. The 3 EmpathyLab 2019: put forward, I wasn’t at all keen. I’ve always only thing stopping an update from founder thought far too much attention is paid to the her was lack of loot. Miranda McKearney personality of the author, and not nearly enough ______I dunned £5000 each 6 The LGBTQI+ novel to the work itself. At the time, I was getting lots of off Jacqueline Wilson, comes of age: Michael class projects sent in by children. ‘We done a topic J K Rowling, Terry Lee Richardson celebrates on you. Here it is.’ I’d read it through. They knew Pratchett, Philip Pullman and myself. Her project ______my favourite colour was yellow, my favourite food was off the starting blocks, and I got to visit two 8 Authorgraph: Julia Golding interviewed by Imogen Russell was toasted cheese, my favourite word was ‘silver’. high security jails, Gartree and Long Lartin, to Williams But there’d be no mention of any of the books at thank the men in their brailling units. ______all. I thought the Laureateship would only make It was an exhausting two years. Everyone wanted 10 Ten of the Best things worse. Daniel Hahn takes a personal the Laureate to give major talks, keynote addresses, reading journey round Europe But when I was invited onto the first shortlist of annual lectures. Depressed by how many children ______three, I had a long think about the opportunities I met over the years who’d only ever been 12 Windows into the role would offer. I’d been worried about the introduced to easy-peasy doggerel, but no actual Illustration: Laura Hughes ______miserable statistics showing how few books many poetry, I also put together three anthologies of 14 Beyond the Secret children had in their homes. In some areas, the classic but accessible poems for different age Garden? Protest and the average was as low as three, and we all know that groups: A Shame To Miss 1, 2 & 3. Lois became British Children’s Book one of those would be The Bible or The Koran, ______mortally ill halfway through my term of office, 16 I Wish I’d Written… another The Highway Code, and the third, How and the other layers of protection for the Laureate Matt Brown chooses to Pass Your Driving Test. had yet to be put in place. During the whole two ______On the bright side, the Labour Government was years I never wrote a single word of fiction, and 16 Good Reads chosen by Cannon Park Primary School, putting a huge amount of money into upgrading though I drove to many events, my accountant Coventry libraries. For the first time since Tory Minister Iain still actually phoned, dead embarrassed, to query ______Sproat dared ask the shocking question, ‘Is there whether I could possibly have been on all the 17 Two Children Tell: train journeys for which I was claiming expenses. Rebecca and Nicholas anything so special about reading that it should recognise an illustrator’s style be made publicly available without charge?’ I’m proud that my projects are still going strong ______libraries themselves did not seem so much under (although the poetry books are, sadly, out of print) 18 Happy 30th Anniversary to threat. Talk of encouraging children to start their and I’ve watched the subsequent laureates with

______The Blue Balloon own ‘Home Libraries’ would not be seen as the interest to see how their own various interests and 20 Reviewers and reviews dangerous Trojan Horse it would have been in passions have coloured their active two years. Under 5s (Pre-School/Nursery/ previous years (and would again be now!) Indeed, I think that’s the strength of the Infant) I had a plan, and knew if I were Laureate, I could Laureateship, and the reason why people still 5-8 (Infant/Junior) + Ed’s Choice get it done. I’d always loved bookplates, and believe it’s a splendid idea, and other countries 8-10 (Junior/Middle) + New Talent wanted a website of brilliantly designed modern have begun to copy it. Just as, if you look at the 10-14 (Middle/Secondary) book plates anyone could freely download. ‘Make professional work of the ten Laureates so far, their 14+ (Secondary/Adult) a cheap charity shop book new to you. Stick one differences in nature and approach are startling, ______32 Classics in Short No. 134 of our bookplates over the last owner’s name and the same can be said of their periods in office - The strange fate of Rip Van put it in your own growing home library.’ how they used their short term influence, what Winkle The second time round, I took the job, and with impassioned them and what they chose to do ______the generosity of scores of our finest illustrators, with their time. COVER STORY and the unflagging help of the wonderful Lois So over the years up to this special twentieth This issue’s cover illustration Beeson, got started on www.myhomelibrary.org anniversary, I’ve lost pretty well all the reservations features The Curious Science I started with about the role of Children’s Quest series by Julia Golding Lois and I wanted to include all readers in the Laureate. Mostly, I look forward to seeing how illustrated by Andrew Briggs. system, so met Marion Ripley, of ClearVisionProject. Thanks to Lion Children’s Books for org - a lending library for blind and visually the opportunities it offers are seized by the next their help with this March cover. impaired children. She had a plan to interleave Laureate – and the next – and the next. transparent brailled text pages into picture books Anne Fine was Children’s Laureate from 2001 – 2003. for blind parents to share with sighted children,

Books for Keeps is available online at Books for Keeps www.booksforkeeps.co.uk March 2019 No.235 A regular BfK Newsletter can also be sent by email. ISSN 0143-909X To sign up for the Newsletter, go to www.booksforkeeps.co.uk © Books for Keeps CIC 2016 and follow the Newsletter link. If any difficulty is experienced, email addresses can also be sent to Editor: Ferelith Hordon [email protected]* Editorial assistant: Alexia Counsell Managing Editor: Andrea Reece Email: [email protected] Design: Louise Millar Website: www.booksforkeeps.co.uk *Email addresses will be used by Books for Keeps only for Editorial correspondence should the purpose of emailing the Newsletter and will not be be sent to Books for Keeps, disclosed to third parties. 30 Winton Avenue N11 2AT.

2 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 EmpathyLab 2019 In 2015 a new organisation called EmpathyLab sprung into life, drawing attention to the scientific evidence that reading builds real- life empathy skills. Since then, it has developed practical programmes to help schools, libraries and families harness the power of stories to increase children’s understanding and practice of empathy. Books for Keeps has followed its progress with interest. Here, EmpathyLab’s founder, Miranda McKearney, looks ahead to Empathy Day, and reports on a powerful refugee project with the Scouts. Get ready for Empathy Day, 11 June A new refugee project In our divided world, empathy is a beacon of hope. We founded Empathy Day to be a lightning rod for a new national conversation about the power of books to build empathy, and the power of empathy to build a better world. This year it’s on 11 June. Empathy Day is the day to step out of our bubble and make new connections with each other. And to celebrate a dynamic new wave of empathy work in our schools and libraries. The calls to action are Read: because stories and book characters build our real-life empathy; Connect: make new connections with people, inspired by sharing stories; Do: put empathy into action, in your home and your community. One of Empathy Day’s functions is to act as a focal point for If you only have a minute, these are our recommended actions on-going work to build children’s empathetic understanding. An • Tweet about #EmpathyDay to swell the national empathy example is a powerful refugee project EmpathyLab has been conversation working on with the Scouts, the illustrator Jane Ray, and Year 5 • Share how a book character made you feel in the huge children from Kenilworth Primary School in Borehamwood. It has #ReadForEmpathy campaign led to a new generation of children developing empathy skills and a • Use our Read For Empathy Guides to choose a book for a young deeper understanding of the challenges faced by displaced people. person (www.empathylab.uk) Called Moving Connections, the project has helped children • Save our Read Connect Do suggestions for another day – deepen their understanding of refugees’ experiences. It was initiated Empathy Day can be any day! by the Scouts’ Heritage Service, drawing on the organisation’s proud history of supporting displaced people. In the First World War Scouts If you feel inspired to get more involved and want to access the helped Belgian refugees arriving at Folkestone, and Scouts across wide range of Empathy Day resources subscribe to updates on the world are still helping refugees. This project used a collection of www.empathylab.uk objects from members of the Scout International Relief Service, who were sent to European war torn countries to help in the displaced person camps. The work was funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund. READ CONNECT DO The project kicked off in autumn 2018 with a Year 5 workshop It builds real-life empathy Join the Empathy Put Empathy into action to raise awareness of refugees and migrants. Children looked at conversation a selection of famous people and worked out what they had in common – they had all moved from their home country. Looking at the people in detail, the class then discovered which were refugees, Make an Find and share empathy- Snap up tickets for Empathy Resolution – and which were migrants, and explored the difference between the boosting books – use The Empathy Conversation special cards available two terms. #ReadforEmpathy Waterstones Piccadilly, 7pm in March Deciding which five items to pack if they had to flee their home, the class agreed that money would be useful! The top five things Use our Read for Empathy Use #EmpathyDay to share Teachers: sign up; packed were money, mobile phone, games console and touchingly, Guides for young people which social issues need use our training, booklists, a family photo. http://www.empathylab,uk/ more empathy Empathy Day packs read-for-empathy-guide An activity which aimed to show the class the commonalities between themselves and refugees saw them write down their likes and dislikes, and then finding matches amongst their classmates. The Check out your library’s Meet someone different Librarians: sign up; pilot empathy books in libraries’ Empathy Empathy Conversation main commonality was that they were all human. and activities Conversation events events In the plenary the class showed they understood that refugees are just like you and I, humans. And although we might not speak the Buy a whole empathy book same language, we can connect with people through similar likes Follow the special Make a giant workplace collection for 26% off: and hobbies. One girl when asked, ‘What would you do if a refugee author blog tour; listen Empathy Wall – share ideas www.peters.co.uk/ to their podcasts for changing things joined your class?’ immediately said, “I would respect them, not empathy2019 judge them and be their friend”.

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 3 The Empathy Tree 4 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 Jane Ray: the illustrator’s role “I ran three workshop days at Kenilworth. The idea of birds as symbols of freedom is a recurring theme in my work and in our first session, having read my book Ahmed and the Feather Girl, the children created Wish Birds. They imagined what it might be like to have to leave their homeland, and then wrote hopes and wishes on the birds’ pleated paper wings. As an illustrator I need to be able to show facial expressions to tell a story, and after reading The Unicorn Prince, we experimented with drawing expressions on blank faces. We talked about how we interpret what people might be feeling through their expressions. The children also drew self-portraits and thought about how they communicate their own feelings. In our second workshop we explored symbolism, how simple images can represent something bigger and more emotional. For example, the bird representing freedom, and the tree representing growth and Jane Ray was chosen as the artist to work with Kenilworth’s strength, with its buds and blossom, leaves and fruit representing new children. She has first-hand experience, because she runs a class hope and development. The Empathy Tree is our response to these at the Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants, with author ideas, and was created by the whole class – a truly collaborative work! Sita Brahmachari. One of EmpathyLab’s aims is to help children In our final workshop together, everyone was given a postcard on which recognise a wider range of emotions, in order to understand to paint a brightly coloured bird. On the back they wrote a hopeful and themselves and others better. Jane’s wonderful, expressive artwork friendly message. These will be reproduced and posted to children who is a powerful springboard, and many of her books have empathy at are currently living in refugee camps and temporary homes in other their heart. parts of the world – the children of Kenilworth Primary School holding out their hands to children of similar age whose lives have been torn Jane collaborated with Year 5, creating artwork that helped the children apart by war and upheaval. to empathise with the refugee experience. Time spent ‘Empathy I have loved my time with Year 5. Through the art activities, working BookSpotting’ inspired the class to focus on books with refugee and with the Scouts, the sharing of books, and the resulting discussion empathy themes, and they contributed books recommendations on and thought, the children have developed a much deeper and more luggage labels. These included Francesca Sanna’s The Journey; Kate empathetic understanding of the refugee experience and our response Milner’s My Name is Not Refugee, Judith Kerr’s When Hitler Stole to it”. the Pink Rabbit, and Morris Gleitzman’s Boy Overboard. The children worked with Jane to draw a variety of facial expressions, exploring how to ‘read’ feelings. The idea of flight, migration and freedom manifested itself in the form of ‘Wish Birds’, where the class wrote wishes for a child refugee arriving in the country. One response, “I wish everyone could be treated equally” shows the power of their understanding. The third workshop took place at the Scouts Headquarters at Gilwell Park, Chingford. The class learnt about Scouts’ contribution on the Home Front during both World Wars and activity in Prisoner of War camps. Children explored objects which brought the learning to life. Inspired by these, the class created artworks, including letters thanking the Scouts, and comic strips from both the perspective of a Scout and a refugee. Further workshops have created postcards to be sent to refugee transit camps in and Sudan where Scouts are working, and an Empathy Tree which explores the empathetic vocabulary learnt by the children throughout the project. One session looked at campaigning and activism, which resulted in the class creating their own campaign All the material was brought together in a moving exhibition at the placards in support of refugees. The children also wrote a letter to Mill Green Museum. their MP, expressing their hopes for refugees arriving in the UK. Some EmpathyLab resources for schools and libraries • Read For Empathy book collections, curated by an expert panel. 30 books for primary aged children, and 15 for secondary. You can download the linked Guides from www.empathylab.uk, and buy the collections at a 26% discount at www.peters.co.uk/empathy2019 • Toolkits for Empathy Day: there are three toolkits with creative ideas and resources. To find the one right for you, go to www.empathylab.uk • Training: EmpathyLab now offers training. Enquiries to [email protected]

Miranda McKearney is a social justice entrepreneur who has spent 35 years turning kitchen table ideas into nationwide campaigns, culminating in founding The Reading Agency, a national charity, in 2002.

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 5 At last, the LGBTQI+ novel comes of age Michael Lee Richardson celebrates the best new writing for young LGBTQI+ readers. 2019 marks 50 years since the Stonewall riots, the protests by LGBTQI+ literature for young adults has come a long way since lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people which took place in Davy and Douglas ‘making out’, but some of the key themes – of the early hours of 28th June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York love and relationships and self-discovery – remain the same today. City. Originally a demonstration against violent police raids, the My own journey with LGBTQI+ YA began in 2003, with the riots are the reason we now have Pride during the summer, and are publication of David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy, a riotous romantic considered the catalyst for the current fight for LGBTQI+ liberation comedy that takes the old trope of ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, in the West. boy gets girl back’ and tickles it pink. In the same month, June 1969, John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Reading it as a 17 year old, Boy Meets Boy was a revelation, a Better Be Worth the Trip was published. Widely recognised as queer story - in more ways than one – where all the tropes of one of the first LGBT novels for young adult readers, I’ll Get There LGBTQI+ YA past were turned on their heads. This wasn’t a world follows Davy Ross, a 13 year old who finds himself moving back where gay and lesbian characters (bisexual and transgender people home with his alcoholic mother following his grandmother’s death. barely existed in early 2000s YA) lived sad or secretive lives, usually It’s hardly cheery stuff, and Davy cuts a lonely figure until he meets dying before the last page; this was a world peopled by people Douglas, a classmate at his school. The two boys become fierce like me, where the ‘boy meets boy’ love story was almost mundane friends, eventually kissing and hugging while sharing a bed, with against a backdrop of cheerleaders on Harleys, a gay-straight other, less easily smuggled past the radar activities hinted at (‘making alliance formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance, and a out’ and ‘doing it’ feature heavily). drag queen quarterback named Infinite Darlene. One of the most exciting things about having my story The Other Team published in Stripes Publishing’s PROUD has been being featured alongside Levithan’s own story, As the Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir Sings Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’…, a playful ensemble story about an LGBTQI+ ensemble, illustrated by Steve Anthony. Compiled by Juno Dawson, PROUD features a host of UK authors and illustrators who all identify as LGBTQI+ writing and illustrating on the theme of ‘pride’. The contents page is a good starting point for readers who want to read more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or just plain queer writers, and find more LGBTQI+ stories. For someone like me, who loves Young Adult contemporary, standout stories include Penguins by Simon James Green, whose novels Noah Can’t Even and Noah Could Never bring some much-needed levity to the queer literary experience; it is, as I’ve often iterated, absolutely excellent being gay. Green’s story is illustrated by Alice Oseman, whose own books and comics offer up whole casts of queer characters who run the gamut of gender identities and sexual orientations. Other favourites include Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s Love Poems to the City, a timely story about the fight for marriage equality in Ireland, with a bisexual protagonist; and Fox Benwell’s The Courage of Dragons, about a non-binary teenager and their Dungeons & Dragons group. Having worked with LGBTQI+ young people for almost a decade – as a youth worker with LGBT Youth , and now for LEAP Sports, a charity which works for greater inclusion for LGBTI people in sport – the PROUD anthology represents communities I know and communities I’m part of (I’m queer, and I also play Dungeons & Dragons). This is the type of book that I know the young people I work with will want to read, with characters like them and stories like theirs. In an increasingly difficult climate - not a week goes by when trans young people don’t find their identities questioned or criticised in national newspapers in a way which echoes tabloid stories of ‘perverted’ lesbian and gay people in the 1980s - it’s more important than ever that LGBTQI+ young people see themselves reflected in the countries cultural life and in our libraries, with positive role models both on and off the page.

6 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 For me, more trans representation remains a priority. The publication last month of Lev Rosen’s Jack of Hearts (and There have been excellent books with trans protagonists over the Other Parts) – which journalist Alim Kheraj has championed last few years: Lisa Williamson channeled her experiences as an across a number of publications – feels like an exciting sign of administrator for the Tavistock Centre, a Gender Identity Clinic with things to come; a witty, charming and emotionally-charged story, a specific service for children and young people, into her book The which deals with sex and sexuality in a way that’s frank and funny Art of Being Normal, a witty, charming coming of age novel about (sample line: ‘My first time getting it in the butt was kind of weird’). a young trans woman coming out at school. We’ve come a long way from Davy and Douglas ‘making out’, and books like Jack of Hearts and projects like PROUD feel like a Alice Oseman thanks a long list of trans men who helped her taste of what’s to come if LGBTQI+ writers are given the space to research and write Jimmy Kaga-Ricci, a young trans man, one of write for the communities we know and the communities we’re a two protagonists in her most recent novel, I Was Born for This, part of – and an exciting time for those of us who love it. an absolute belter of a boyband book. Oseman also features a non- binary character – someone whose gender identity falls outside of I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip, John Donovan, traditional, binary notions of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ – in her novel Radio Golden Hoard Press, 978-0738721347, £7.60 Silence. Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan, HarperCollins Children’s Books, 978-0007533039, £7.99 Juno Dawson is a fantastic role model for trans young people, and PROUD, Various, Stripes, 978-1788950602, £7.99 pbk I would love to see more trans writers writing for young adults. Noah Can’t Even, Simon James Green, Scholastic, 978- The same need for representation is true of young people with 1407179940, £7.99 pbk intersectional identities. 2019 has already seen the publication The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali, Sabina Khan, Egmont, of Canadian author Sabina Khan’s book The Love and Lies of 978-1407194578, £7.99 Rukhsana Ali, about a young Muslim girl who is sent to live with her The Art of Being Normal, Lisa Williamson, David Fickling grandparents in Bangladesh after she’s caught kissing her girlfriend Books, 978-1910200520, £7.99 pbk and I’m particularly looking forward to The Black Flamingo by I Was Born for This, Alice Oseman, HarperCollins Children’s Dean Atta, whose poem How to Come Out as Gay rounds off the Books, 978-0008244095, £7.99 pbk PROUD anthology. The novel in verse, about a mixed-race gay Radio Silence Alice Oseman, HarperCollins Children’s Books, teenager coming to terms with his identity, tells the story of the 978-0007559244, £7.99 pbk young protagonist creating his drag persona. Starring Kitty, Keris Stainton, Catnip Publishing, 978- As young people are able to identify themselves as LGBTQI+ 1846471841, £7.99 pbk earlier and earlier, work for younger readers is going to become WAIN, Rachel Plummer, the Emma Press, 978-1910139479, £12.00 increasingly important. Alongside a handful of US titles – including Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts), L.C. Rosen, Penguin, Raina Telgemaier’s Drama and Better Nate Than Ever by Tim 978-0241365014, £7.99 pbk Federle – standouts from UK authors include Keris Stainton’s Starring Kitty, in which a light-hearted lesbian love story plays out against a backdrop of more serious themes of family crisis. WAIN – a collection of queer retellings of Scottish myths and legends (featuring gay giants, a trans boy Selkie and a non-binary Nessie) by Rachel Plummer – is published this month by The Emma Press. The Pants Project, about a young trans boy who has to fight his school Michael Lee Richardson is a writer and dress code, by Scottish author Cat Clarke – who’s also written books youth worker based in . with LGBTQI+ protagonists and themes for young adults - has been published in the US, but is yet to find a UK publisher.

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 7 Authorgraph Julia Golding Interviewed by No.235 Imogen Russell Williams

buzzing bookshop café in Oxford feels like an appropriate gently through the history of science via its uncountable halls, place to discuss Julia Golding’s erudite, intriguing new exhibits and corridors. books: The Curious Crime, an alternate history for Golding chose to set the story in an alternate Victorian era partly middle-grade readers, and The Curious Science Quest, because she felt the science of the period was well illustrated by a a younger series of time-travel adventures focused on the museum (unlike, say, general relativity and quantum mechanics). Ahistory of science. Golding is best known for her books, It’s also a period characterised by intense debates about women’s set in eighteenth-century theatrical London (the first in the series, The education, and she wanted to ask: what if the debate went Diamond of Drury Lane, won both the Waterstones Children’s backwards? ‘What if, when Darwin came up with his version of Book Prize and the Nestle Children’s Book Prize in 2006). She biological evolution, [some scientists] took it in an extreme way, and has ranged far and wide as a writer, however, writing books under used it to justify existing biases in society?’ In The Curious Crime, different names, for different ages and set in very different periods – which she describes as her own ‘thought experiment’, societal dark teen thrillers as Joss Stirling, Elizabethan historical fiction as Eve prejudice against women and people of different ethnicities has been Edwards, and mythological creatures, Arthurian legends, Victorian justified by a dubious Darwinism taken to anti-religious extremes. To butlers, Vikings and pirates as Julia Golding. Is there a quintessential suggest belief in a creator of any kind is now anathema; to work as element that always appears in her work? a mason, if you’re female, a monstrous transgression. In the first few ‘Perhaps a certain gentleness,’ she says, quoting an early review – pages, Golding’s heroine, Maria ‘Ree’ Altamira, does both. Defiant, as well as a willingness to see things from the villain’s point of tenacious, an accomplished stonemason with an excellent head view. Golding is fond of her bad eggs, in fact, and likes to remind for heights and an adored, indulged dodo companion, Ree is an herself that ‘everyone is the hero of their own story’, providing her instantly engaging protagonist. How much does Golding have in readers with nuanced, at least slightly sympathetic portraits of all common with her heroine? her characters. ‘Well, I like doing things with my hands, but I haven’t actually had Her own career has had a fascinating range – after reading English a go at stonemasonry. And I’m not bad at heights, but I probably at Cambridge, she joined the Foreign Office, and took up diplomatic wouldn’t offer to be a roofer in another life…’ The relationship work in Poland. Returning to Britain, she studied for a doctorate in between Ree and her dodo, Philoponus, however, is based on the Romantic literature at Oxford before joining Oxfam as a lobbyist, bond between Golding and her cockapoo. (Philoponus’ name is though she now writes full time. As a child, her favourite books a nod to the forgotten scientist who ran Galileo’s famous ‘falling included Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘adorable fantasy’ The Little White bodies’ experiment, centuries before the Leaning Tower of Pisa was Horse, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and A even built; Ree’s full name, meanwhile, is borrowed from Altamira, a Little Princess; especially the latter, in which Sara Crewe ‘creates site in Northern Spain where early cave drawings were discovered. a world out of her imagination, to make her own reality bearable.’ ‘It was actually a little girl who was there with her father; she was She enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, too, for its vision of ‘British really small, about seven or eight, and she crawled through a hole countryside writ large’, the everyday made sublime. The rich, that he couldn’t get through, and came back and said: “Papa, there resonant sense of these fully-formed imaginary worlds is clear in are oxen on the walls.”’) her own work. Golding allows Phil the dodo and other extraordinary creatures – In beginning a new story, Golding admits, she also looks for a Tasmanian wolf, a Javan tiger, a python, a macaque – to roam ‘complete worlds’ that she can build. The vast museum in which throughout the museum partly just for the fun of it. ‘But, also, there The Curious Crime is set is a prime example; a building both is a serious point to be made there about extinction – I wanted to discrete and seemingly infinite, isolated by its island situation and say these are gone, we’ve lost these creatures, and to remind the fascinatingly rife with wandering wildlife and straying students. Part reader of their amazingness. All of the main animals, apart from the Gormenghast, part Hogwarts, part Holmesian mind palace, it’s the macaque, are extinct.’ As menageries were part of the scientific way ideal setting both for a murder mystery and for walking the reader of teaching, giving the museum dedicated zoological gardens makes

8 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 historical sense – but in this alternate Victorian landscape, Golding is input: ‘When I first started working on it, and I did a sample text also able to put an Aboriginal character, Mr Billibellary, in charge (he to show – some pages about the possibility of time-travel – I sent is so devoted to his creatures’ freedom that he is satirically described them off to Andrew, thinking he was going to check it. But no - as ‘a let-looser’, rather than a keeper.) about two weeks later, he said “I’ve showed what you wrote to the The cast of characters is diverse throughout – the book’s other Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, and he’s given you this feedback.” And protagonist, Henri Volp, for instance, is an Algerian scholar, then a week later I got another email, saying “I was at a conference pioneering the forensic science of fingerprints – and the place itself in Cambridge, and I showed what you’d done to Stephen Hawking, remains unnamed. ‘I wanted to make clear that science doesn’t and here’s his feedback!” So I got a short paragraph of feedback just belong to the Western tradition…and I wanted someone to be about the paradoxes of time travel from Stephen Hawking - and I reading the book in America or France and to be thinking it could thought, well, that’s it, my career has peaked!’ be happening in their country. I wanted that feeling of a little city- The series is humorous, light-touch and highly illustrated, with state, that could be anywhere, so I deliberately went for quite an cartoon-style images by Brett Hudson and try-at-home experiments international flavour, making it feel it didn’t belong to any particular interspersed. It has some weighty points to make, too: ‘There’s a bit history of any particular country, but was actually the history of in the last book about how society needs to engage with science, science.’ because science is taking big decisions which affect all of us. We can Ill-feeling runs high within the closed world of the museum, destroy the world now, for instance. You can’t just disengage from however, with phrenologists defending dubious observations, science if you don’t understand it. As well as the fun and games students competing for kudos and resources, and despised maids, and time travel, it has that running underneath.’ One of Golding’s denied formal education, picking up furtive scraps of information. major contributions was to put in women wherever possible, and to But when a murderer strikes, Henri the scholar and Ree, stonemason try and avoid the ‘history of dead white guys - which is a struggle. turned skivvy, must pool their skills and knowledge to solve the It is largely a history of dead white guys, because they’re the ones mystery – discovering more about the museum’s secrets than they who got recorded.’ Nevertheless, she explains, ‘the word ‘scientist’ could ever have imagined in the process. Hidden renegades, the itself was coined by Mr Whewell in 1833, in order to include Mary complex balance of faith and science, the necessity of the scientific Somerville…‘Scientist’ is a neutral word, and has been all the way method and the dangers of attachment to debunked theories all run through, since the beginning.’ through this thought-provoking, quick-paced crime-and-creatures The Curious Crime, Lion, 978-0745977874, £6.99 pbk caper, enticing its readers to explore the museum island in their own minds. The Curious Science Quest: Cave Discovery, Lion, 978- 0745977447, £6.99 pbk The Curious Science Quests series, meanwhile, came about very differently. ‘Normally, when I write a book, I just think of an idea The Curious Science Quest: Greek Adventure, Lion, 978- and then get on with it.’ This time, however, Golding was asked to 0745977454, £6.99 pbk adapt The Penultimate Curiosity, a book for adults dealing with The Curious Science Quest: Rocky Road to Galileo, Lion, enquiry, science and philosophy, by Andrew Briggs, professor of 978-0745977522, £6.99 pbk nanomaterials, and artist and poet Roger Wagner, both of whom are The Diamond of Drury Lane, Egmont, 978-1405285308, £6.99 pbk friends of Golding’s. ‘They said, could you turn this into a book for kids? And I said I can’t do one book – there’s too much here. So I suggested slicing it up into six parts, and then I came up with the idea of how to do it – with time travel.’ The series’ protagonists are Harriet, Imogen Russell Williams is a journalist a tortoise collected by Charles Darwin and brought home to and editorial consultant specialising in children’s literature and YA. in his suitcase, and Milton, a cat belonging to Erwin Schrödinger, a pleasingly unlikely duo who travel through time to witness moments of significant scientific discovery. Impressive figures have provided

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 9 Twenty-seven of the Best A Personaltwentyseven Reading Journey In a specially extended Ten10 of the Best, Daniel Hahn takes us on a journey via 27 books you should read.

I’ve only recently noticed how it’s about a boy who is accidentally delivered – in a tin can, obviously many of the series I loved most – to the wrong house; a great book about, and against, conformity.) as a child featured a protagonist What I remember relatively little from childhood, curiously, are the who sought out their adventures folk-tales and fairy-tales – I must have heard them, I suppose, but in a different setting for each they aren’t what stayed with me. Though I’m increasingly fascinated book. The globe-trotting Tintin by them now, by the stories that seem to pop up wherever in the was a particular favourite, but world people build a community together, and which are retold, there were many others like it to shared, adapted, passed down. I travel a lot (not quite as much as open the world up to us young Tintin, but nearly) and every culture has its rich tradition – perfect readers. Many of my non-fiction for investigating on a holiday destination, I always feel. You can read regulars were the same, now I the Slovakian traditional tales collected by Pavol Dobšinský think about it. Where children when you’re weekending in Bratislava, Ivana Brlic Mazuranic’s today might pore over Maps Croatian tales in Zagreb, Trevor Zahra’s retelling of local folk (that large-format marvel from tales if you happen to find yourself in Malta (the attractive Hrejjef Aleksandra Mizielinska and Maltin collection comes with a CD), or – if in Romania – some more Daniel Mizielinski) to get their recent stories in the collection by Mircea Sintimbreanu (My Book of vicarious taste of the what the rest of this planet has to offer, in my Twenty-Two Stories for Children). The things they have in common childhood we collected the distinctive works of M. Šašek, in those and the things that make them unique are equally fascinating; they days seemingly ubiquitous – This Is London, and many others in don’t only enchant us, they teach the series. (If you had them as a child, I bet you can still picture us so much about each other, exactly how they looked, too.) too. Libraries in our teemingly And, I suppose, my tastes haven’t totally changed since then; it’s multicultural UK should be full certainly true that many of my of such things, really. recent favourite literary heroes are I haven’t been a child for themselves also pretty well-travelled. quite some time, obviously, I’ve lately explored Lisbon and , but children’s books remain and various places between, in the important to me, and so I’ve company of Sally Jones, for instance; managed rather cannily to build if you haven’t yet experienced the some of my work around them. brilliant The Murderer’s Ape, I I’ve edited collections of stories recommend that journey, and Sally (including a couple of volumes Jones’s company, most highly. for the Hay Festival’s Aarhus39 project, featuring writers like Cathy I also loved the Moomins, naturally, Clement, with her story Mediterranean Cruise, and Andri Antoniou, though they were rather more with hers, Why Rudolph Went to Rome Last Summer); and when I’m valley-bound. (I mean, what kind lucky I get to review children’s books, too: Evelina Daciuté and Aušra of monster wouldn’t love The Kiudulaité’s picture book The Fox on the Swing (those lovely eye- Moomins?) And Fattypuffs and catching illustrations) and Luize Pastore’s tremendously winning Thinifers, of course, with those novel Dog Town most recently. fantastic Fritz Wegner illustrations; Oh, and talking about dogs (and, in though I suspect it’s not as widely this case, talking about talking dogs), read today it should be, André I’ve also over the years come to judge Maurois’ story of the uniting of two a number of children’s books prizes, seemingly irreconcilable nations is which in one case allowed me to a proper, solid-gold, unimprovable reward one of the greatest children’s classic. Like the Moomins, I know literary dogs of all, the eponymous I’ll remember that one till the day I heroine of Bernardo Atxaga’s Shola, die – as any BfK reader will know, a rather self-regarding, but very funny that’s so often the case with favourite little animal who features in many books from childhood, isn’t it? To spirited stories. (The same round of this day, I can’t see a sky-blue suit judging, incidentally, introduced me without thinking of Conrad, the to Anton and Piranha – another of Factory-Made Boy… (If you don’t those books that never seems to have know this Christine Nöstlinger gem,

10 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 twentyseven10 twentyseven got the attention it deserved and I can’t Lest my choices above make you understand why. It’s a warm-hearted wonder whether my personal taste in and hilarious story about a boy and a children’s books is overwhelmingly fish who meet on holiday and become young and light and quirky, I the unlikeliest of friends – I never pass should probably mention a couple up an opportunity to recommend it.) of counterexamples (both for older Though at the risk of disloyalty to my readers) – how about the Marsh beloved Shola, I should also mention Award-winning In the Sea There a more recent passion: the gloriously Are Crocodiles, based on the real enjoyable Elise and the Second- testimony of an Afghan refugee, so Hand Dog. Naturally, this dog talks, gripping and so filled with compassion? too, though this time in an unexpected Or Tina’s Web, another story about Scottish accent. a young person forced to cross a (And OK, in the interest of fairness, I continent and make a new home, but do just occasionally also like some cat in altogether different circumstances? books. Read The Cat Who Came in off the Roof if you haven’t That one’s by Alki Zei, a children’s/ already – it’s a treat. It’s by the legendary Annie M.G. Schmidt.) YA writer not much known here but who was a real ground-breaker in her I’ve even translated some books myself, including many picture native Greece. But yes, OK, allow me books – if you don’t know it, look at Don’t Cross the Line, by one more not-altogether-serious story Isabel Minhós Martins and to round things off, because the latest Bernardo Carvalho, an incredibly book to arrive in the post this week is clever look at how to challenge called Arnica, by Ervin Lázár, and it’s arbitrary authority built into a a fairy-tale about kindness and ducks simple picture-book conceit. (among other things). I love it. It’s only Translating a picture book can just out – order yourself a copy today. be harder than you think, by the way – so few words, but they So – a very grand total of twenty- have to work with such density seven stories! Placed side by side, and detail, and speak to their they are stories about travel and images. Just consider something bravery and discovery; about like Chris Haughton’s work, freedom; about striving to be better a book like A Bit Lost (he’s and surprising ourselves. They are another favourite of mine) – apart from everything else, there’s such enlightening and various and fun, incredible precision. When I Want to Keep Silent by Zornitsa heart-warming and heart-breaking. Christova and Kiril Zlatkov (a young bear’s thoughts on the strength They are stories about celebrating of words and silence) contains fewer than eighty words, but great our differences and forming unlikely beauty and sophistication. friendships, often in unexpected circumstances. Of course, some of the most powerful of all picture books are totally wordless, which could allow sensible publishers to do without What else do they have in common? pesky translators entirely. I’ve just this week been introduced to Each of my chosen twenty-seven Maja Kastelic’s beautiful A Boy and a House, which happens to stories comes from a different one of be from Slovenia, but you wouldn’t know it – apart from the jacket, the twenty-seven countries who will you have no way of knowing that it continue, hereafter, to constitute the happens to be a book without any European Union. To me, their stories Slovene words rather than without add up to something immeasurably any English words… precious, for which I’ve never been more thankful. What good fortune, (The one thing even harder for what a privilege, to have shared them. a translator than picture books is poetry, of course, but I try my best to avoid that sort of work myself – yes, I’m a glutton for punishment, Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, and somebody who should know better than to but only within reason. Others do it write an article about international books without wonderfully, though: if you doubt that, naming any of the translators. (Translators have The Emma Press have just published a strictly enforced #namethetranslator campaign, a charming and delightfully peculiar which this article is quite spectacularly failing to respect; Daniel Hahn apologises grovelingly to his collection by Contra, Everyone’s the friends and won’t do it again.) Smartest.)

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 11 Windows into illustration: Laura Hughes

Laura Hughes is the illustrator of There’s a Pig Up My Nose, winner of the Oscar’s Book Prize 2018, as well as We’re Going on Elf Chase and the Ruby Roo stories. Her loose, energetic illustrations are instantly recognizable. Here she describes the process involved in creating the illustrations for Mummy’s Suitcase by Pip Jones.

Mummy’s Suitcase, by Pip Jones is the fourth title in the Ruby Roo picture book series, following on from Daddy’s Sandwich, The Chocolate Monster, and Quick Barney RUN! The books feature the main protagonist, Ruby Roo, and sometimes her mum, dad and baby brother Barney. Pip is such a brilliant and funny writer, and I love all the ‘Mum jokes’ she has included in the story. I feel very lucky to have been able to work with her on the Ruby Roo books. The image I’ve chosen to talk about features later on in the book. Mum is going away and Ruby decides to pack her Mum’s prized roses for her, because she knows her mum loves them, but she’s obviously been warned not to touch them, so she decides to dig them up instead! Ruby isn’t being intentionally naughty though; she is just trying to be helpful in the best way she knows how to. s

12 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 pic 1 pic 2 pic 3

I mostly work ‘traditionally’, using gouache paints and inks to create Lastly, I paint the flowers and other small details, such as the bees my artwork. The backgrounds are painted as one piece, and then I and the butterflies, and add more texture and depth by building up add the characters towards the end. I do use Photoshop, but I keep layers of ink. The watering can and the decking are drawn separately it to an absolute minimum, usually to quickly alter a colour, or to on scraps of found paper and collaged into the piece before scanning. correct a mistake. I add skin tone digitally as the flat colour acts as a contrast to the I start my colour illustrations by tracing over my rough ink drawing texture in the hair and clothes of my characters. (pic 3) using a light box. Then, when I’m happy with the layout, I add My absolute favourite part of making a picture book is creating washes of colour in ink. I do this part quite quickly and dunk lots of things for children to spot. If you’re familiar with Daddy’s the ink onto the paper in a very rough way. I usually make a Sandwich you might recall that Ruby creates a really silly sandwich terrible mess, but sometimes the mistakes make the painting more made of all the things that her Daddy REALLY loves. For added fun, interesting! (pic 1) I have hidden all the ingredients from his sandwich throughout the When the first wash of colour is dry, I add outlines and a few of the pages of Mummy’s Suitcase. Can you spot them all? bigger details, such as leaves, using a dip pen. (pic 2) Mummy’s Suitcase is published by Faber & Faber, 978 0 571 327539, £6.99 pbk

the Of /ALL things Chester Parsons he’d be famous thought for, being stuck inside a gorilla’s mind was /NOT one Of them! Protest and the British Children’s Book

In the latest in their Beyond the Secret Garden articles, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor find rebellion and riot in children’s literature

In Emile (1762) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, rejecting the prevailing Caribbean more than to the Caribbean migrants in Britain who were Christian notion of original sin, argued that children are born trying to assimilate into their new homeland. By the late 1960s, innocent and only become corrupted through experience. This view however, the new migrants were looking for books that taught their influenced the so-called ‘Golden Age of Children’s Literature’ and its (often British-born) children about their island roots, and they had legacy can be detected in contemporary children’s fiction. If we are the Jamaican-born Andrew Salkey’s books to provide a picture of the motivated to preserve childhood ‘innocence’, we are likely to avoid world they had left behind. Salkey created his Disaster Quartet for narratives of injustice and protest. , and the books were published in Britain. Writing about British children’s books published in 1968, a year of The four books contrasted the difficulties of life in the Caribbean with global revolution, Lucy Pearson comments that “the cultural revolution the benefits of the warm family life that many experienced in the of the sixties was incompatible with the world of children’s books – or islands. The final book in the series, Riot (1967), depicts a modern- at least with the wholesome ‘butter and eggs’ image of a mainstream day workers’ rights protest in Kingston that develops into a riot. publisher” (The Right to Read: Children’s Rights and Children’s Salkey’s British audience would have been mostly white at the time of Publishing in Britain). But as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, publication; although the narrative mostly focuses on the role of class protest and even riots became more prominent in children’s books, (particularly the abject poverty of Kingston slums) in initiating the riot, both fictional and nonfictional, and this is at least partly due to writers the middle-class family who act as the book’s protagonists suggest that of colour and other citizens who increasingly stood up for their their there is an additional, underlying reason for the unrest. The father of rights in Britain. Many pre-1970 children’s books dealing with protest the family, surveying the destruction caused, “thought of the Island’s and riots were written by authors who grew up in the Caribbean. V. S. very early years of , then he thought of its colonial status, and Reid’s 1960 novel Sixty-Five, about the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in he recalled words like ‘exploitation’, ‘inferiority’ and ‘despair’” (163). Jamaica, was published by Longmans primarily for Caribbean readers, Salkey never directly blames British colonialism, but the implication although the book was printed in London. The historical nature of is clear. Following the publication of this book, Salkey left Oxford the book and its anti-colonial stance responded to the independence University Press to work as editor and writer for the newly-established and nationalist movements in the English-speaking islands of the Black British press, Bogle L’Ouverture. His final work for children, published with Bogle L’Ouverture, Danny Jones (1980) moved the idea of protesting police harassment to London, but ultimately, the protagonist considers leaving Britain for Jamaica because he doesn’t see the situation improving for his generation of young Black Britons. Class-based protest can be solved, according to Salkey, but racially- based protest is futile. This is borne out in other children’s books published around the same time. A. Sivanandan, head of the Institute of Race Relations, began publishing a series about racism in Britain in the early 1980s; the third book in the series, How Racism Came to Britain (1985) included depictions of Black British protest “to resist racist attacks in light of police indifference” (40). The book, which was used in London schools, was singled out by Secretary for Education Kenneth Baker as “aggressive”; he called for its removal from school libraries. Marjorie Darke’s A Long Way to Go (Kestrel 1978) is an unusually early depiction in children’s books of a Black British family during World War I (and part of Darke’s sequence of books depicting a Black British family from slavery to the twentieth century). Luke Knight, the book’s male protagonist, refuses to sign up for military service, because “I can’t do what ain’t right” (99). Luke is at first alone in his protest, and because his brown skin makes him more visible, he receives considerable verbal and physical abuse. However, he holds his ground and gains supporters and friends. Although he is nearly killed several times, he survives to the end of the war to become a sculptor, creating rather than destroying. His race makes him stand out, but because he is not protesting racial inequity, his protest is ultimately successful. Among Luke’s supporters in A Long Way to Go are the suffragettes, particularly the real-life suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. While Emmeline Pankhurst supported the war in the hopes of gaining parliament’s support for women’s suffrage after the war (she succeeded in this),

14 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 Emmeline’s daughter Sylvia was a known anti-war campaigner, who argued that the war was a class issue—since most of the men who died were poor and working-class. The women’s suffrage movement is often seen as a white British protest movement, but recently, several children’s books have been published that include the protest of Indian princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Two recent books that include Singh are David Roberts’ Suffragette: The Battle for Equality (Two Hoots 2018), which pictures Singh (presumably) on the front cover as well as giving her a two-page spread inside, and Kira Cochrane’s Modern Women: 52 Pioneers (Frances Lincoln 2017). Roberts keeps the focus of Singh’s transformation to radicalism on being “troubled” (36) by the way the British had treated her family, but Cochrane’s book specifically mentions Singh’s “loathing” for the British Empire after her visit to India. For women of colour, suffrage was not just about the right to vote; it was about the right to represent themselves and be heard as people of subjugated nations. For years, Singh’s story was lost to child readers, and those that do depict her often shy away from her anti-colonial attitudes. It is acceptable to depict Singh as part of a battle that white British women dominated, but rarely is her post-war work to raise awareness of the contribution of Indian soldiers recognized, an effort which, according to Manmeet Bali Nag, “triggered near-panic among the stalwarts of Whitehall and New Delhi” (https://ponderingpauses. wordpress.com/2018/03/10/sikh-princess-suffragette-sophia-duleep- singh/). Singh, like the fictional Luke Knight, is celebrated for her radicalism, but only when the issue is not racially-based. Recently, Angie Thomas’ YA debut The Hate U Give, and Breanna J. McDaniels’ debut picture-book Hands Up (in the USA) and Mohammed Khan’s debut I am Thunder and Sita Bramachari’s Tender Earth (in the UK) all offer narratives where children and young people of colour engage in protest over injustices they have experienced. Onjali Q. Rauf’s 2018 debut, the Blue Peter Book Award winning The Boy at the Back of the Class can be read as a careful negotiation between ideas of ‘childhood innocence’ and a narrative of protest neighbours and politicians with racist views – whilst refraining from against injustice. When the nine-year-old protagonist learns that her using racist epithets for her middle-grade audience. The first person new classmate Ahmet is a refugee who has been separated from narrative offers us light-hearted moments of innocence – just what his parents, she wishes to help. An unlikely plan to visit the Queen does a deputy headteacher do if the headteacher is never absent? – proves to be the catalyst for a happy ending. This may not seem like yet we get a sense that our mixed-race narrator has grown up with the most realistic portrayal of social protest. Yet Rauf deftly includes some sense of injustice and that her friendship with Ahmet leads not to a rude awakening but rather an extension of her understanding of the world. The Making of Modern Children’s Literature in Britain: Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s (Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present), Lucy Pearson, Routledge, 978-1138252189, £37.99 Suffragette: The Battle for Equality, David Roberts, Two Hoots, 978-1509839674, £18.99 hbk Modern Women: 52 Pioneers, Kira Cochrane, Frances Lincoln, 978-0711237896, £20.00 hbk I Am Thunder, Mohammed Khan, Macmillan Children’s Books, 9781509874057, £7.99 pbk The Boy at the Back of the Class, Onjali Rauf, Orion Children’s Books, 978-1510105010, £6.99 pbk

Karen Sands-O’Connor is professor of English at SUNY Buffalo State in New York. She has, as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, worked with Seven Stories, the National Centre for the Children’s Book, and has recently published Children’s Publishing and Black Britain 1965-2015 (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).

Darren Chetty is a teacher, doctoral researcher and writer with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children’s literature and hip hop culture. He is a contributor to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla and published by Unbound, and tweets at @rapclassroom

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 15 I wish I’d written… Matt Brown chooses a Woking-set, sci-fi classic. I think the book I most wish I’d written is H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. It was written in the dying embers of the 19th century but it feels so modern and so relevant even at a distance of more than one hundred and twenty years. The War of the Worlds tells the story of a brutal, devastating alien attack from Mars. I’m a sucker for sci-fi that’s set on earth, which The War of the Worlds most certainly is. It takes place in Woking for flip’s sake and has chapter titles like, The Heat-Ray in the Cobham Road. The idea of alien-life can seem so far-away so it’s always a treat to see intelligent life travelling across the universe to blow up buildings that I recognise. It’s much more fun than them acting out their violence in gleaming, distant worlds. The War of the Worlds reflected the fears of its time. It’s a story about a catastrophic, technologically-advanced war and was written barely sixteen years before the outbreak of WW1. And yet, wars keep on being waged, The War of the Worlds Matt Brown’s latest book Mutant with increasingly sophisticated ways of killing, and (978-0141441030) is published Zombies Cursed My School Trip (978- The War of the Worlds just sits there, reflecting our by Penguin Classic, £6.99. 1474960236) is published by Usborne.. senseless brutality right back at us.

Our Good Reads are chosen by pupils at Cannon Park Good Reads Primary School, Coventry. Thank you to them and to Nicki Cleveland, HLTA & School Librarian. Nicki is one of Just Jack the librarians on the UKSLA School Librarian of the Year Kate Scott, Piccadilly Press, 9781848126244, £5.99 Honour List 2018. Just Jack is the story of a boy who has moved house a lot. He’s kind of given up on making friends and has developed a system to make it easy to start in new schools. This time there’s a problem, his system doesn’t seem to work with one of the children and Jack starts to think a friend might be a good thing. I was in love with this book within the first few pages. Kate Scott is really funny. You get to know all of her characters really well. I loved going to Tyler’s house with Jack and seeing his zany inventions, and understanding him better. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes funny stories that make you think too. Mia, Year 5 Mia Tomas Jasmine Zoe The Legend Of Podkin One-Ear Boy X Knights And Bikes Kieran Larwood, illus David Wyatt, Faber & Dan Smith, Chicken House, 9781909489042, Gabrielle Kent, illus Rex Crowle, Knights Of, Faber, 9780571340200, £6.99 £6.99 9781999642503, £6.99 This is a great book. A storyteller arrives on Demelza lives in her caravan on the peaceful Bramblemas Eve and begins telling the young rabbits When Ash wakes up, he needs answers. He’s in a island of Penfurzy. When a monster breaks in, The Legend Of Podkin One-Ear. He promises that strange place that seems to be a hospital, but he she grabs her foam sword and prepares to defend the version he will tell will be the truth! Podkin, his can’t find any doctors or nurses. When he does her home and pet goat. It turns out the monster older sister Paz, and younger brother, Pook have to find the front door he realises he’s a long way from isn’t a monster, but a really cool girl called Nessa. escape the safety of their burrow when the Gorm home as the heat hits him and he stares out at the The two become best friends and set off on their attack their home, and that’s the beginning of their jungle ahead of him. bikes to find the legendary fortune of the Penfurzy adventure to defeat the enemy that is threatening When Isabel arrives, she takes him to where her Knights hidden somewhere on the island. Knights rabbits across the Five Realms.Although at times, dad should be to discover their parents have been And Bikes is great fun and full of adventure. My it is a sad tale, I liked it because of all the action injected with a deadly virus and they’re running favourite character is Nessa; she always sticks by and adventure. My favourite part was when the out of time to get the cure. her friend Demelza however crazy her ideas are, Gorm attacked Podkin’s warren. The illustrations I loved this book so much! I don’t have a and my favourite part is when Nessa gets bitten by help bring the characters and the world they live in favourite part - it was all better than amazing! a head! The illustrations are really funny too. There to life, and the map at the start is great for seeing Ash is very brave and resourceful, and Isabel is is also a clue hidden within the story for the reader where they go on their journey. Tomas, Year 3 courageous and smart. They make a great team! Jasmine, Year 5 to find which adds to the mystery. Zoe, Year 5

16 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 Two Children Tell Rebecca and Nicholas and Lucy and Tom Virginia Lowe finds that a familiarity with picture books leads to children recognising different artistic styles. Young children’s preferences for artistic styles has been researched From Lucy & Tom quite extensively, but the majority of studies have focused on their From One To Ten, reactions to a single painting, or groups of three or four, never to Shirley Hughes (Red picture books. Young children sort pictures as similar by subject not Fox 2018) originally by style, though exposure to many paintings by the same artist could published as Lucy & be training in recognising their style. This is exactly what exposure Tom’s 123 by Victor to picture books offers. The average book contains at least fifteen Gollancz illustrations by the same artist, and this must influence children’s who had read her the book Round the Corner by Jean Showalter ability to recognise style, especially when they are exposed to and Roger Duvoisin once, three months before.) Duvoisin illustrated several books by the same illustrator. Cognitive psychologists do both books, and the boy in Veronica does resemble Jim. From age not expect children to recognise style until about seven. ‘Trained’ 2y10m onwards, Rebecca always recognised Shirley Hughes’ pictures on picture books, they began commenting on style much younger. saying that they looked like Lucy in Lucy and Tom’s Day. Other In our house books were usually referred to by their titles. However books in which characters were recognised as similar were illustrated we referred to some books generically by author/illustrator names. by Brian Wildsmith, Clare Newberry, and Margaret Graham. For instance, on rushed evenings we only had time for ‘a quick Dick In all of these cases the other book was not visible. Commonly the Bruna’ and the children also used this term for the series of square response was a spontaneous comparison on the child’s part, though brightly-coloured little books shelved together. The term was first occasionally we drew their attention to similarities. The children used by the children at 2y11m (Rebecca, two years eleven months) soon mimicked this prompting: and 3y3m (Nicholas). N (4y3m): What does that remind you of?’ One night Rebecca (3y9m) and her father John went to her bedroom J: ‘I don’t know’. to select books for the evening reading: N: ‘The grandfather who pulled up the turnip!’ J: Time for a quick Dick Bruna. comparing Oxenbury’s illustrations in The Hunting of the Snark R: You’re Dick Bruna! with hers in The Great Big Enormous Turnip. He had not seen J: ‘What does that make you? Miss Bruna? Or Rebecca Bruna? the latter for five months. R: ‘No, I’m a girl. I’m going to put you on the shelf.’ But it was not only characters they recognised. The children picked Another generic term was ‘Beatrix Potters’, because her books were up other clues to the artist’s style also identifiable by their uniform appearance and were shelved N: These have got the same noses (two books by Loup in together. When she was asked what book she wanted, Rebecca, contrast to one by Mordillo at 4y2m). (2y6m), replied, ‘I want two Be-ix Potters’. Nick, (3y3m) remarked, R: I know who this is by. It’s the Millions of Cats person, ‘More Potter books’ pointing to a pile of them on the floor. When because it’s got the same clouds (Three Gay Tales from Rebecca (3y10m) was trying to get me to remember a library book Grimm at 4y11m both by Wanda Gag) borrowed ‘a long time ago’, she described it as ‘about a cat catching a mouse in a bag’ and more details. Eventually I asked her about the Children’s books mentioned colour of the cover. She replied ‘It had a white cover. It was a Beatrix The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carol, illus Helen Oxenbury Potter!’ Finally I recognised it as The Story of Miss Moppet. It had Veronica’s Smile, Roger Duvoisin not occurred to me to ask her to name the author, as I would have Millions of Cats, Wanda Gag done with an adult. Three Gay Tales from Grimm, Wanda Gag The first author name identified by Nick was to Richard Scarry’s Best Lucy and Tom’s Day, Shirley Hughes Word Book Ever, rather than to an identically bound series. At 2y5m The Architect, Jean-Jaques Loup he would ask for ‘Dat big Scarry book’, but by 2y11m, he had extended Patatrac, Jean-Jaques Loup this to others by the illustrator: Unlike the Bruna and Potter series, the Crazy Cowboy, Guillermo Mordillo Scarrys Ralph knew were not uniform in size and shape, and were The Story of Miss Moppet, Beatrix Potter recognisable as a set only by their drawing style and because we Best Word Book Ever, Richard Scarry included ‘Richard Scarry’ in the author statement each time. Round the Corner, Jean Showalter, illus Roger Duvoisin When Nick was 3y4m, Rebecca brought home a sheet of busy-work from The Great Big Enormous Turnip, Alexei Tolstoy, illus Helen Oxenbury school with Scarry figures along the top – photocopied line sketches in black and white. Although this was quite out of context, Nick recognised them at once: ‘That’s Scarry! Lucy [his friend] has got that in a book’. By Dr Virginia Lowe lives in Melbourne, , now the term was clearly being applied not just to the books, but to a and is a literature adjunct associate at Monash drawing style, although it was still a perhaps a generic term for a kind of University. She is the proprietor of Create a Kids’ Stories, picture rather than the person who created them. Book assessment agency. Her book Pictures and Reality: Two Children Tell Rebecca at 2y9m provided the youngest unambiguous case of (Routledge 2007) is based on the records of reading identifying character by style. Looking through Veronica’s Smile by to her children. Lines Between John and Virginia Roger Duvoisin, for the first time, she remarked on the endpapers: Lowe a poetry chapbook has just been published. ‘Janet read me a book about Jim one day’. (Janet was a babysitter

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 17 Happy Anniversary to The Blue Balloon For 30 years Mick Inkpen’s The Blue Balloon has been delighting small children and their grown-ups with its magical story of a boy who finds a balloon and discovers it has ‘Strange and Wonderful Powers’. The extraordinary balloon grows and expands, morphs and stretches. It flies into space and beyond the boundaries of the book into giant and concertina pages. Thirty years ago it also flew into the hearts of readers, securing Inkpen’s reputation as a creator of much-loved characters. Mick spoke to Michelle Pauli about creating a classic.

The confidence boost helped Inkpen to feel more comfortable trusting his instincts about storytelling and language. He’d had doubts about including the word “indestructible” in The Blue Balloon – was it too long, too difficult? He decided that including one or two such words would probably be ok and felt vindicated when, a couple of years later, a friend told him that his toddler, having been read The Blue Balloon, was now in the habit of marching around the house declaring that he was ‘indestructible’. The book also set Inkpen on a course of breaking conventions when he decided that his balloon should not be constrained by mere paper: ‘Hence the giant pages and concertina folds which allowed it to stretch and expand beyond the edges of the page – and led in turn to the dramatic irony of the end of the story, where it is the reader, not the boy narrator and owner of the balloon, who knows that the balloon is changing into rainbow colours as the page opens out,’ he says. This also feeds into the playfulness that Inkpen believes to be so crucial in children’s books – and in life – and that he has enjoyed throughout his work, playing with the conventions and structures of the picture book. Take the meta-humour of a Kipper book where Kipper himself wonders on the first page of a picture book what kind of book it will turn out to be, or Bear, where a bear cub falls out of the sky into the book and the reader must decide, at the end, if he can be kept, or This Is My Book, in which the naughty Snapdragon eats parts of the letters in the text and delights in changing their meaning, turning “this is my book” into “this is my poo”. Of course, The Blue Balloon is now celebrated as the book that introduced Inkpen’s classic character Kipper to the world, although he In the foreword to the new anniversary edition of The Blue Balloon, was still on four legs and playing a supporting role as the little boy’s Mick Inkpen reveals that the book’s publication marked the first time pet dog at the time. However, it wasn’t long before he was the star of that he ‘began to feel like a proper children’s author’. It was only the show. Hodder asked Inkpen for a follow-up to The Blue Balloon his second solo picture book following a long period as a graphic and he decided to tackle it strategically, aware that publishers seek designer, devising Gordon Fraser greetings cards, illustrating repeat success and that what repeats best is character. Having decided magazines and working on many joint projects with fellow author/ to create a character that could appear large on every page and would illustrator Nick Butterworth. As a designer he was used to working spawn a series of books, Mick’s wife Debbie suggested he take the to a brief and decided to create his own for his follow-up project dog from The Blue Balloon and give him his own book. for Hodder. ‘Weirdly it meant that I didn’t love Kipper as much for the first two or ‘I wanted a universal subject, one that both children and adults could three years as I would have done had he been a more spontaneous relate to, and balloons are cheap, celebratory things with character creation,’ reveals Mick. “But I came to love him a lot. I then began – they can be farty or squeaky or floaty. I simply made a list of the to apply some of that playful creativity to the Kipper books so I did attributes of a balloon and while I was making that list it occurred come to enjoy doing the Kipper books but it was a very different to me that there was no reason why my balloon shouldn’t have kind of birth, the first Kipper.” “strange and wonderful powers”’. Many more Kipper books followed, along with a series of animated Both the balloon and the book took off. Whereas Inkpen had films which totalled 78 episodes and was ‘a great experience – but not previously felt ‘slightly fraudulent’ claiming to be an author, that one I would swap for the luxury of control in making picture books’. all changed when he started to see piles of The Blue Balloon on Now enjoying semi-retirement, Inkpen works with his daughter bookshop counters. ‘It was a tremendous boost of encouragement Chloë Inkpen, an acclaimed illustrator in her own right. Together that affirmed what I had dared to suspect – that I was capable of they have created the Zoe and Beans series, the truly wonderful making picture books that children would want to read,’ he says. ‘It I Will Love You Anyway and Fred books about a naughty dog who was probably the most exciting moment in my career. From that year cannot help but run away, and, most recently, Mrs Blackhat, a most on I did think of myself as a bona fide children’s author.’ contemporary witch.

18 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 Inkpen’s partnership with his daughter has freed him up to focus on the words rather than the pictures in their collaborations, something he now views with relief. ‘I’m not one of those illustrators who has pens and pencils in his top pocket and will always draw on napkins, so it’s always been the creation of the book that’s been the most exciting thing,’ he says. ‘When I know in my head that there’s a beginning, a middle and an end, when there’s a shape, I kind of almost resent that I’ve got to illustrate it. It’s never been an itch that I’ve got to scratch.’ To be able to work with Chloë is ‘just brilliant,’ he concludes, happily. ‘We have the same sensibility, we complete each other’s sentences and we can barely remember who created what: we don’t have a sense of being possessive about what we’ve created – it may not work if we didn’t share the same genes!’ The Blue Balloon, 978-1444922561, £6.99 pbk Kipper, 978-1444918168, £6.99 pbk This is My Book, 978-0340989630, £6.99 pbk by Mick Inkpen and Chloe Inkpen I Will Love you Anyway, 978-1444924572, £6.99 pbk Fred, 978-1444929539, £6.99 Mrs Blackhat, 978-1444940107, £6.99 pbk All published by Hodder Children’s Books.

Michelle Pauli is a freelance writer and editor specialising in books and education. She created and edited children’s books site.

Happy birthday, Kipper!

Celebrate with this special anniversary edition of the classic picture book, featuring fold-out pages and lift-up flaps that little ones will love.

Cuddle up with more Kipper stories! © Mick Inkpen, 2004 BfK REVIEWERS IN THIS ISSUE

Brian Alderson is founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Under 5s Pre – School/Nursery/Infant Children’s Books Editor for The Times. Gwynneth Bailey is a freelance education and children’s book consultant. Bear Moves see themselves reflected in this Aalbert loves flowers, sunshine and Clive Barnes, formerly Principal Children’s HHHH gentle, joyful and comforting book cheese and sleeps all night. So, the with its depiction of unconditional two seem fated never to meet despite Librarian, Southampton City is a freelance Ben Bailey Smith aka Doc Brown love. SR the increasingly desperate schemes researcher and writer. and Sav Akyüs, Walker Entertainment, Diane Barnes, of a small blue bird. Until, that is, was a librarian for 20 years, 40pp, 9781406359268, £11.99 hdbk mostly as a children’s specialist, working in The Truth About Old People Aalfred’s rushed attempt to console Kent, Herts, Portsmouth and Hampshire, and That purple Bear is back. But now HHHH the distraught blue bird sends him Lusaka (Zambia) with the . he is wearing a whole variety of tumbling headlong into Aalfred’s Jill Bennett is the author of Learning to costumes as he shows off his dancing Elina Ellis, Two Hoots, 32pp, burrow leading to the aardvark Read with Picture Books and heads up a moves whether hip-hop, street, the 978 1 5098 8226 7 £11.99 hbk equivalent of a ‘happy ever aafter’. nursery unit. Twist – even a Belly Dance. Bunny a This joyful picturebook from Elina This picture book is full of charm Jon Biddle is English Coordinator/Reading Squirrel try to keep up, managing the Ellis, winner of the Macmillan Prize and gentle fun in its depiction of Champion at Moorlands Primary Academy music, reluctant partners in Bear’s for Illustration 2017, shows older two endearing aardvarks and a in Norfolk, and co-founder of the Patron of enthusiasm. But Bear wants to Tango; people in a rather different light from determined and resourceful bird. Reading scheme. he needs a partner to match him in their usual portrayal in picture books. With its use of visual and verbal Rebecca Butler writes and lectures on size and vigour – and there she is. Far from being cosy decrepit people in humour, bold fonts, bright colour, well- children’s literature. Perfect. But can Bear match up to her? armchairs or on Zimmer frames, these observed details and expressions this Jane Churchill is a children’s book The action bursts off the page. Here grandparents may have little hair and appealing story should leave its young consultant. text and image combine to create an a lot of wrinkles, but they are active, readers, and their families, with Stuart Dyer is an Assistant Head Teacher infectious invitation designed to get a adventurous and willing to have a smiles on their faces. SR in a Bristol primary school. young audience moving and grooving. go at everything, including roller Anne Faundez is a freelance education Bailey-Smith is a rapper poet himself skating and jumping on a trampoline! The Green Giant and children’s book consultant. and his words have the rhythm and While your reviewer has one very old HHHH Janet Fisher is a children’s literature rhyme that demands to be spoken person in the family who is always Katie Cottle, Pavilion Children’s consultant. aloud. Sav Akyüs rises to the ordering online from his tablet, and Books, 32pp, 978 1 84365 400 1, Geoff Fox is former Co-Editor (UK) of challenge, creating vibrant images another who wins half marathons in £6.99 pbk Children’s Literature in Education, but using bold outlines, vivid, saturated the veteran section, there are rather Bea and her sausage dog, Iris, have continues to work on the board and as an yet simple colours that bring the text occasional teller of traditional tales. more of the sedentary type – not left the city behind to spend the to life. Bear is indeed a larger than everyone will be this lively, just as not summer with Bea’s grandfather in Sarah Gallagher is a headteacher and life character and this partnership Storyshack.org every old person has grey hair, but at the country. Grandfather is a keen director of www.storyshack. ensures that he is unforgettable. This org least this book may help children to gardener and at first Bea is oblivious is the book as a real entertainment, Ferelith Hordon is a former children’s realise that, even though when you’re to the garden’s charms preferring to librarian and editor of Books for Keeps to be enjoyed by lively young and young grandparents seem to be really play on her i-pad instead. But one Matthew Martin is a primary school uninhibited adults. FH old, they might still be AMAZING ( final day Iris chases a cat into the next- teacher. spread). door garden and Bea climbs over the Maisie’s Scrapbook The inky illustrations, in a style Sue McGonigle is a Lecturer in HHHH fence to find her dog and discovers a Primary Education and Co-Creator of similar to Quentin Blake and Tim wild garden paradise in a greenhouse www.lovemybooks.co.uk Samuel Narh, ill. Jo Loring-Fisher, Archbold with heavy black outlines, complete with a resident green giant Margaret Pemberton is a school Lantana Publishing, 9781911373575, portray the grandparents, a lanky and made of growing plants and leaves. library consultant and blogs at £11.99 hbk balding grandad and a rather plump The giant tells Bea how the city grandma, and their dog, getting fully margaretpemberton.edublogs.org. Maisie’s Scrapbook presents a year became too grey and claustrophobic Val Randall involved in anything and everything, is Head of English and Literacy in five-year-old Maisie’s life at the for him and how he had to escape to Co-ordinator at a Pupil Referral Unit. along with the child. The endpapers centre of a loving, multiracial family. find the green spaces he craved. Over Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of show the said child (probably a From the endpapers, with their child- the summer, Bea gradually discovers Books for Keeps. boy, but not necessarily) entering like family drawings and lettering the joys of the outdoors and the Sue Roe is a children’s librarian. a storeroom full of exciting objects through double page spreads which power of nature with her new giant Elizabeth Schlenther is the compiler of that hint at adventurous and sporty show the changing seasons, this book friend and when she returns to the www.healthybooks.org.uk lives, e.g. a surf board labelled 1978, gives the reader a child’s-eye view of grey confines of the city she realises Lucy Staines is a primary school teacher and leaving the room at the back her own world. Dada tells her African that she can make a difference by Nicholas Tucker is honorary senior lecturer of the book – it may be fun to work tales of Anansi the spider and lets her scattering the seeds the giant has in Cultural and Community Studies at out where some objects have come spirit and imagination soar and calm given her. Sussex University. from and what that might mean. Mama is her source of steady comfort Drawing on traditional legends The grandparents are active, but when she is frightened or upset. of the Green Man as protector of also computer savvy, and they can Maisie’s parents may have different the environment and as a symbol be romantic, (shown kissing) but the coloured skin, different words for the of regeneration this is a timely tale back cover shows them completely same things, they may cook different of finding joy in wild places and exhausted on a park bench, with the food, wear different clothes and play the outdoors as an antidote to the dog sleeping at their feet. This is good different musical instruments but overwhelming proliferation of the fun to read and to look at, and could they praise her just the same, nag gadgets that can so easily take over spark some interesting conversations her just the same and love her in the our lives. It shows the importance on the fun or embarrassing things same way. of taking the time to enjoy the that grandparents do. DB The mixed media illustrations environment around us and finding portray the move through the seasons the extraordinary in the ordinary. Aalfred and Aalbert Winner of the Batsford Prize for beautifully and use colour, texture and HHHH shade to skilfully contrast the bright illustration and shortlisted for the family scenes with the dark, swirling Morag Hood, Two Hoots, Macmillan Prize for illustration Katie backgrounds of Dada’s folklore tales. 9781509842940, 32pp, £11.99 hbk Cottle is a new talent to watch. This This is not strictly a story, but the Described as ‘A tale of love, aardvarks, is a striking debut picture book idea of a scrapbook working through broccoli and a small blue bird’, this with a jaunty illustrative style and a the seasons is very effective as a way quirky, delightful picture book by gorgeous colour palette of vibrant of portraying a happy year in the life Scottish illustrator Morag Hood tells greens, oranges and ochres. A great of a much-loved mixed-race child. the story of aardvarks Aalfred and story to promote discussion in class Cultural differences are celebrated Aalbert. Aalfred loves stars, broccoli or at home and perhaps to encourage and many children and families will and picnics and sleeps all day while a spot of guerrilla gardening. JC

20 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews

The Kiss nanny/grandad and grandchildren as Or knowing all the answers ever…other inseparable, spending every day HHHHH grandma definitely knows best and things are just as clever.’ The children together and having lots of fun. The has life sussed. in this story do all sorts of imaginative story focuses on one particularly Linda Sunderland ill. Jessica Courtney-Tickle, Little Tiger, 32pp, Layouts are varied with full page and fun things like playing witches or enjoyable and very busy day. Creeping 9781788811026, £11.99 hbk illustrations plus vignettes and pirates, drawing ‘things with claws’, up early to play before everyone is glorious double-page spreads. making boats out of boxes, helping up, they have exciting imaginary This beautiful hardback book tells One of those double pages has people when they are sad or shy, playing adventures as deep-sea divers or the delightful, thoughtful journey a powerful picture of a women the ukulele, playing space ships, etc. space explorers, learn new tricks, of a kiss. Grandma leaves her ‘shouting horrid things at her little etc. In fact, there are so many choices ‘helping’ with chores, meeting friends grandchildren’s house and her girl.’ It’s quite shocking as a scene of things that people can be good at and facing dangers in the park and grandchild, Edwyn, blows her a kiss as the emotions depicted are very that any child will find something (or finally curling up contentedly together as she is walking away. She catches clear. What a powerful way to show several things) in these pages that he at the end of a busy day. Ostensibly the kiss and puts it in her pocket for emotions though and the effect on or she does well. My only slight caveat a simple account of every day safe keeping. The kiss takes the form each of us….that’s why I like the book. is that someone might think they had adventures but look out for the clever of a little creature who maintains its It’s a simply a lovely story – told well to be good at all the things mentioned, twist on the final spread challenging glow and life through the love being and illustrated beautifully. Snap it up and that is certainly not the case. The our expectations about Rosie and her passed from person to person. The for the spring and it will be a joy all book is a jumbly rumble of busy, bright best friend. Readers are likely to want book tells the story of the journey of year round. SG colours and kids doing fun things – to go back to the beginning and read the kiss. Sadly in the book there is along with dinosaurs, birds and flowers the book again. a man who doesn’t understand love All the Ways to Be Smart and all kinds of creatures. It will appeal The illustrations are delightful, and wants to get hold of the kiss as HHHH and help children who feel less than with striking use of colour and lots he thinks he will be happy. Grandma academically inclined to realise their of detail and humour, for example rescues the kiss and, at the same Davina Bell, ill. Allison Colpoys, Scribe, 32pp, 978 1 911617 55 6, own potential and do their best with showing exactly how unhelpful the time teaches the gentleman about £11.99 hbk their own talents and abilities. ES enthusiastic friends’ attempts at genuine kindness and love. helping actually are. The language and illustrations This picture book from Australia has glowing colours that seem to leap off Rosie is my Best Friend This is a joyful exuberant are whimsical and dream-like with HHHH the page and rhyming text that children picturebook about friendship between a lovely light element which lifts a human and an animal which adults the pages. The whole book is like will very much enjoy chanting. The Ali Pye, Simon & Schuster, 32pp, theme is that everyone is smart in their 978 1 4711 7250 2, £6.99, pbk and children will enjoy sharing and reading a hug and is a lovely one to returning to. SMc share with family-particularly for a own way and that, ‘Smart is not just Rosie and her best friend have a being best at spelling bees, a tricky test. very special relationship. They are

5 – 8 Infant/Junior

Mummy’s Suitcase HHHH book to share especially if there is a mummy or daddy about to go away Ed’s Choice Pip Jones, illus Laura Hughes, Faber somewhere....but I hope it is not and Faber, 32pp, 9781783708123, followed to the letter otherwise I’m Wisp: A Story of Hope £6.99 pbk HHHHH not sure it would be the most useful This is another lively paperback from luggage for three days! SG Zoe Fraillon and Grahame Baker- the ‘Ruby Roo’ collection. Ruby Roo Smith, Orchard Books, 32pp, has a little brother called Barney-the Little Rabbit’s Big Surprise 9781408350119, £6.99 pbk star of another in the series Quick, HHH Idris’s home is surrounded by barbed Barney, Run!. They spend a lot of time Swapna Haddow, illus. Alison wire, a place where people have together and the series is about big Friend, Stripes, 84pp,978 1 78895 retreated into themselves. When the sister and little brother getting up to 029 9, £7.99 hdbk Wisp arrives, blown in on the wind, it mischief and using their imagination Swapna Haddow is the author of the is only Idris who sees it and feels its wonderfully. popular Dave Pigeon series, but this need - a need to unlock the memories Ruby and Barney’s Mummy is book is nothing like those funny and of the people who have forgotten going away so Ruby decides to pack cartoony books. This is a serious story about life. This need is expressed as her suitcase for her: with all her very about helping, and responsibility, and favourite things. There then follows ‘Once.....’ But it is not just the adults full of shadow and light make us see the illustrations are gentle for this who need a Wisp to open their minds lots of loading up of the suitcase with more sensitive story. Alison Friend is what Fraillon expresses in her words. all the things Ruby feels Mum should - the Wisp comes to Idris but here The effect is visually powerful, rich experienced at depicting animals in the word is ‘Someday...’ as it unlocks take with her. All the pages will make social situations, and her soft style – almost too rich except that within you smile but the little quips that his dreams and hopes. the spreads his draughtsmanship matches well. Fraillon’s text is both direct and Ruby makes about her mum’s habits Little Rabbit is too small to help with provides a necessary tension. It is mean the humour will appeal both to poetic. There is no explanation for a fine line that has been negotiated the chores which mean that her Mum what a ‘Wisp’ might be, yet there children and parents too. For example and brothers and sisters are busy, successfully. There is no miracle Ruby chooses an abacus because is no difficulty in understanding at the end; Idris is still in his camp, and Mum suggests that Big Rabbit what is and what it represents. Her ‘Mummy loves counting! She counts will take her to play with Little Mole rather it is a story about humanity to three all the time.’ Or one to bring vocabulary - words such as ‘gentlied’ and human need; a need not and Little Hedgehog. However, Big ‘rememberings’ could easily have us all up short in 2019: ‘Mummy loves Rabbit knows that they are out with confined to material support but one her laptop. Tip-tap!Tip-tap!! Every day.’ become whimsical. Instead Baker- requiring something more intangible their families collecting dinner, so he Smith’s illustrations bridge the gap Once again Laura Hughes’ suggests she accompanies him in his - memories to create the stories and illustrations add even more joy to between the real world and the songs that express the self, keeping work. Little Rabbit is astonished to metaphysical - the world of memory the humorous language – the colour hear the word ‘work’ as she thought the spirit alive, hope to visualise a and movement give it a lively charm and imagination, of hope and ‘someday’ - a promise of a future. he lay around in the sun all day with promise. His bold saturated colours which is fitting for a little girl and a his friends, but off they go. They find Everyone needs a Wisp. FH toddler. Mummy’s Suitcase is a lovely

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 21 BfK children, whilst the keenest of picture to a major falling out and they are no 5 – 8 Infant/Junior continued spotters will see that the balloon body longer friends. Suddenly they both is made up of the patchwork fabric feel very alone. Is this really the end animals who need some kind of help, his listeners along with the directness on Sophie’s bed! This story bears of their friendship? Perhaps helping to and they are able to provide that help. of his prose. frequent reading to glean all the solve a dispute between two other girls Little Rabbit is even able to add an And there’s the extra pleasure of touches woven into it, both in the text might lead to their reconciliation. idea of her own in helping Squirrel with Alemagna’s illustrations, bringing and in the charming illustrations. GB This is a story about the value of his family responsibilities. This is not another dimension to the story, adding bonds between two very individuals a picture book as such, as it is small colour and detail. Her quirky style with The Dinosaur Department with different perspectives on life. like a chapter book, but each page its expressive lines and atmospheric Store It explores the strength and the looks like a picture book with a lot of use of soft colour wash is ideally suited HHH potential fragility of friendship and the Illustration and usually not much text, to the humour of the story as we move Lily Murray, ill. Richard Merrit, impact its ups and downs can have though a few pages contain two short from the chaos in the house to the Buster Books, 32pp, 9781780555966, on wellbeing; themes many young paragraphs. It’s quite a long story, and joyous expanse of the park. Double £6.99 pbk readers will relate to. Told from the perspective of both would probably be read in stages for, page spreads alternate with vignettes Eliza Jane wishes for a prehistoric of the friends with a different font or by, the child for whom it is intended. to bring rhythm, movement and depth pet for her 4th birthday and as she indicating a change of narrator, this It might be tricky to find the right place as the narrative progresses. The is described as a ‘wilful child’ (and is a beautifully designed hardback for it in a library, but it is a charming illustrations do not merely illustrate drawn as one too) her parents decide book with a fresh layout and stylish little book. DB the action they effectively emphasise it would be better to give her wants full colour illustrations. This title is part the arc of Alemagna’s tale – not just she wants for her birthday despite of a new series designed for newly Harold Snipperpot’s Best a story about a party but a story about them looking a little alarmed; ‘Her independent readers from Stripes Disaster Ever changing family relationships, about parents weren’t keen, it has to be Publishing an imprint of Little Tiger HHHH learning to enjoy life even as an adult. said, They wished she had asked for Group. SMc Beatrice Alemagna, Thames and Harold is right, this is the Best Disaster a rabbit instead.’ Hudson, 40pp, 9780500651872, Ever and one to be shared, especially Handily Eliza Jane’s mum knows FH Hello Lighthouse £12.95 hbk by parents and children. just where to go so the family visit the HHHH ‘Some days feel like complete only dinosaur department store they Wishing for a Dragon know. When they get there they meet Sophie Blackall, Orchard Books, disasters’, declares the young HHHH 9781408357163, 48pp, £12.99 hbk narrator of this tale – seven year a rather sinister looking dinosaur old Harold Snipperpot. He longs for a Becky Cameron, Hodder store owner who lets them look Hello...hello...hello... The light from proper birthday party but his parents Children’s Books, 32pp, around. The ending is rather sweet the lighthouse shines across the are, in his view, always grumpy 978 1 444 93623 0, £6-99 pbk and heartening as Eliza Jane does sea, greeting ships and sailors. and have no interest in organising The cover gives lots of clues of the something kind for all the dinosaurs Making sure all know it is there. But anything so frivolous. Call Mr Ponzo: plot within; its night sky twinkles with she meets. a lighthouse needs to be looked after. ‘We will throw Harold a party that silvery stars and three small children The book is a lovely one to read Who does that? What would life be will be absolutely extraordinary’ he ride some huge winged creature. together or in a class and then would like in a lighthouse? In summer it declares on his arrival. And it is – Down below graze four-legged be fabulous to start a discussion could be nice; what about winter but not perhaps as expected. As beasts, both sporting single horns. about your own dinosaur department or when it is foggy? In this picture the catalogue of disasters mounts Three small children should be ready store. It’s rather refreshing to have book by American illustrator, Sophie the reader’s eyes will grow wider for bed, but all three are wide awake a girl who likes dinosaurs and also Blackall, we are introduced to the and wider but even disasters don’t and ready for adventure. ‘Where shall to think about a store with them all life of the lighthouse keeper aimed necessarily turn out to be disastrous, we go? And what shall we see?’ One packed in there. The rhyme is great at a young readership. Here are and this will be Harold Snipperpot’s wants jungles, another treasure, but to read aloud and the language is no technical details; the setting is Best Disaster Ever. little Ella’s dearest wish is to see a snappy with many recognisable words domestic and we watch the keeper Here is a picture book in the great dragon. ‘Hop in,’ shouts Ella, as a for children themselves to decode. going about his tasks through round tradition of the nonsense story told hot air balloon floats to their window. Onomatopoeia and alliteration in bold porthole-like windows on the page. with great verve and vigour. It is not Wishes come true…a search amongst and capitals help with the reading out The colour palette is aqueous – the the fact that the guests to the party pirates for gold and a narrow escape loud too. sea is everywhere, perspectives are all animals (are they from the from a tiger in the jungle. Eventually Richard Merrit’s illustrations are vertiginous as we scurry up and zoo? It doesn’t matter. They have the balloon crashes tipping them into gloriously colourful and bold. There is down the stairs. There is a gentle come for the party), it is what they a magical land full of the strangest plenty to spot especially when meeting rhythm to the text as we follow the get up to that creates the atmosphere creatures. Readers will love to search the dinosaurs themselves and their round of seasons – the excitement of horrified hilarity. Nor are we for all the tiny pixies in the detailed quirky features especially one who of a storm (waves reminiscent of a completely divorced from reality – pictures. As dark falls, the three likes hot dogs…the little sausage dog Japanese print), the cold of a frozen Beatrice Alemagna cleverly reminds children gaze in wonder at the star- features in a few more pages after that sea (this is an American lighthouse), us of the inevitable consequence of filled sky, three special constellations if you look closely too. the repeated ‘Hello’, then finally, untrained animals in a house – yes, picked out; a treasure chest, a As with many picture books this the goodbye, as the lighthouse poo. Harold is assured storyteller tiger….. and a dragon. Over swoops a one is multi layered for different ages. mechanism is automated. too; indeed, one could imagine him huge shape. It is Ella’s dream dragon! You can tell it’s likely Eliza Jane will This is an enjoyable introduction to relating this as a class story, carrying Exchanging tales of adventures each get her own way through the language a lighthouse that could be just that, a has enjoyed, the children become and also the illustrations. The book picture book opening the door to this sleepy, realising their balloon has is lots of fun for all ages including world, raising a question or two but no crashed so their homeward journey a grown-ups too. SG more. However the author-illustrator problem. Dragon to the rescue, and includes an afterword expanding they are safely delivered home. There Two Sides the text, adding further facts and are lots of details to be found in the HHHHH amusing anecdotes which add a bit pictures which enhance the mystery Polly Ho-Yen, ill. Binny Talib, more substance to the whole and of the tale, lots of ideas to spark off Stripes Publishing, 96pp, extending its potential. FH 978 1 78895 062 6, £7.99, hbk imaginative talk about dreams and Sophie Johnson Detective their fulfilment. Having read the story Lula and Lenka have known each other and returned to the title page, we all their lives. They are very different, Genius see the three children going upstairs, Lula is messy and chatty, Lenka is HHH Barney carrying a skull and cross super tidy and quiet. Lula likes dogs Morag Hood, ill. Ella Okstad, bones flag, Olive picking up their pet and Lenka prefers cats. However this Simon and Schuster, cat,…. and Bella clutching her cuddly isn’t a problem for them, in fact it 978 1 4711 4565 0, £6.99. pbk toy dragon, inspiration for all their helps them understand that people This book is ideal for reading aloud to dream adventures. The repetition of have different points of view. They do a savvy audience who would be able to the questions, ‘Where shall we go? everything together until that is ‘The spot exactly what is really going on in And what shall we see?’ make for Day That Everything Goes Wrong.’ This Sophie’s world by reading the subtext, good participation for the youngest of is when a minor disagreement leads told in the quirky illustrations. Sophie

22 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews in the pictures, each character taking anything in the world that you want 5 – 8 Infant/Junior continued turns to advise Humpty. Tom Tom to be!’ Such positive thinking! ‘THINK the Piper’s son starts the ball rolling BIG!’ says the Giant from the top of the detective has a crime to solve. illustrator. Sophie, Detective Genius, by asking Humpty what he wants to the beanstalk. ‘Aim for the stars!’ Someone has stolen Lion’s tail. (One solves the case. Rabbit is the guilty be when he leaves school. Humpty says the cow who jumped over the of many toys partaking in Sophie’s party and is dragged off by Sophie to promptly replies, ‘A boiled egg.’ moon. Convinced, Humpty declares imaginative detective story.) She her police station. But it is Bella who His numerous friends, sitting atop his friends are absolutely right. He has a new assistant, Bella, (pet dog) receives the police recommendation, the wall on either side of him, are will work hard at school, get a job in but Sophie considers Bella has not a VERY GOOD DOG medal, whilst we horrified at this response and quickly a space agency, start at the bottom absorbed any knowledge of detecting see three burglars locked up in the make suggestions… A hairdresser? and work his way up and up and up, from her vast library of books on the police van. A fun book for would-be A footballer? A musician? The and become the best astronaut in the subject. On her shelves we spot The detectives and their like. GB friends then tell Humpty their own whole wide world, no the whole wide Art of Investigating, Hidden Secrets, aspirations, ranging from scientist, universe! ‘good for you,’ cheers Jack Famous Spies, and Sherlock Bones. Think Big! (Little Miss Muffet), a builder, (Goosey be Nimble, giving Humpty a BIG pat on These books have obviously been HHHHH Goosey Gander), train driver, traffic the back… Oh what a delicious ending warden… each and every aspiration is then made by Kes Gray! What do well read by Sophie! Meantime Bella Kes Gray, illus Nathan Reed, does her best to tell Sophie that a Hodder Children’s Books, 32pp, hilariously illustrated in zingy, bright you imagine happens next, to end the couple of real burglars are sneaking 978 1 444 94212 5, £12-99 hbk colours. Incy Wincy Spider tells tale? Readers will immediately want past the window, swag bags aloft. Humpty he should definitely not aim to turn back to the beginning and ‘Believe and you can achieve’ says the to be a boiled egg…. And Jack and read the book again, identifying each Readers need to search the pictures front cover, as Humpty Dumpty sits to discover that Sophie has not only Jill sum up everyone’s opinion by and every character from traditional upon his wall, grinning confidently. A saying, ‘You might be an egg, but tales and rhymes in the brilliant eventually found that missing tail, but wonderful partnership between the has also captured the culprit. Poor you should really try thinking outside illustrations. This book is great for author and illustrator is on display the box.’ More suggestions follow… encouraging positive thinking and for ignored Bella gives up trying to attract here in this highly humourous book. Sophie’s attention, and sets about an artist (Little Boy BLUE, no less,) building self-confidence. There are The story line itself is novel, and the policeman, a doctor, a firefighter... lots of opportunities for youngsters creating elaborate traps to catch the illustrations go far beyond the text to real criminals. There is no text to until the Dish who ran away with the to participate, in speaking, drama, make a richly portrayed tale which is Spoon aptly announces, ‘If you truly art work and to spark imaginative explain any of these happenings, so surely bound for great success. All reading the pictures is vital, and this believe in yourself and you work really writing…. and reading, again and children familiar with nursery rhyme hard, then you can be absolutely again! A winner, go find it! GB telling is skillfully executed by the characters will love spotting each one

8 – 10 Junior/Middle

This turns out to be a sort of Victorian year-old Maxwell, with all his flaws consequences of his actions and to London frozen in time by the chimes and strengths brought vividly to work out what is important to him. As of Big Ben, run by magic and peopled life. At first, Maxwell comes across Maxwell gradually solves the mystery by the Night Folk, an assortment of as a thoughtless, disruptive boy, of what has happened to him the monsters and creatures from myths constantly goading everyone around strength of his character comes to the and nightmares. Here, Emily befriends him, testing friends and family to the fore and he is able to help others and and commandeers Tarkus of the Night limit and behaving in a destructive persuade them to help him. Watch, meets “The Library”, a powerful and infuriating way. The reader soon This novel is written in a light, magical character, and discovers that realises, however, that his parent’s pacey style but the authors covers her Mum is a secret agent librarian, constant arguments and anger important themes including the effect her Dad works for the heroic Night Post cause a lot of Maxwell’s challenging of marriage breakdown on children, in charge of dangerous deliveries and behaviour and that he does have a dementia, behavioural issues, that she herself is a shape-changing kind heart, having saved his beloved isolation and the need to belong. This pooka. All must unite to defeat the dog, Monster, from being run over is an emotional, but also humorous, deadly Nocturne who plans to use the and befriending his elderly neighbour, read with appealing characters and power of magic and music to destroy Reg, who has dementia. When strong messages on the importance the Midnight Hour and invade the day Maxwell commits a truly terrible piece of family and friends and the need to time world. of trouble-making at school he runs be kind and thoughtful and to take The Midnight Hour is a brilliantly away from the havoc he has caused responsibility. Highly recommended inventive and quirky fantasy adventure to hide in Reg’s house. Here, he for 8+ readers. SR story with an outspoken, determined, discovers a strange object in Reg’s brave and funny heroine who is full of cabinet, wishes he had never been The Boy Who Flew attitude and self-confidence. Humour born and suddenly finds himself HHHH and magic combine throughout, with erased from his own life. Fleur Hitchcock, Nosy Crow, 260pp, The Midnight Hour Initially, Maxwell enjoys the freedom HHHHH plenty of scares too, the pace never 978 1 78800 438 1, 6.99, pbk lets up and the dialogue is sparkling of never having existed as nobody Benjamin Read & Laura Athan Wilde lives with his mother, and witty. All in all, this is an excellent recognises him, but gradually the his fierce Grandma, his gentle older Trinder, Chicken House, 275pp, addition to the magical fantasy genre loneliness of having no one to share 9781911490906, £6.99 pbk sister Polly, and his younger sister, and, with sequels and a film planned, memories with overwhelms him and Beatty, who was born without the Emily and her Mum, both feisty, loud Emily and her surprising family, plus he determines to find a way to reverse use of her legs, in what seems to be and volatile, have had a big row on the assorted companions, should be his erasure with the help of his sister, Regency Bath. He dreams of flight, night that Mum receives a mysterious keeping readers entertained for some Bex, and his best friend, Charlie. and works for Mr Chen, an inventor, letter and disappears into the darkness time to come. SR Maxwell’s feelings of loneliness and until Mr Chen is brutally murdered, to solve a family crisis. When Emily’s isolation are powerfully and movingly and he realizes that he has to find the quiet, seemingly boring, Dad goes The Day I Was Erased conveyed, and his situation gives him HHHH plans for a flying machine they were to find her and fails to return, Emily great empathy with Reg. working on, before someone else decides to set off in search of her Lisa Thompson, Scholastic, 352pp, Lisa Thompson combines warmth, does. His friend Tod is very useful on vanished parents. Following her Mum’s 9781407185125, £6.99 pbk humour and poignancy in this story the practical side, and together they advice to “never knowingly be under- This new novel from the bestselling of family, friendship and identity. prowl at night on the rooftops of the snacked”, Emily packs sandwiches and author of The Goldfish Boy and The Maxwell’s erasure causes him to city and plan their future. His mother’s a hedgehog companion and heads off Light Jar presents readers with a evaluate his life and past behaviour new suitor, Colonel Blade, shows a into the world of the Midnight Hour. memorable central character, eleven- and to truly learn lessons about the less charming attitude to Athan than

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 23 BfK behaviour at Grandma’s house possibilities. The characters are well 8 – 10 Junior/Middle continued leads witchy Grandma to label her formed and there are some great a brat and cast a spell on her. Ellie villains in the form of Norton Cleat discovers that she has switched and the housekeeper Mrs Thistleton, bodies with Jolly the cat and has so that you really long for them to get only one day to find Grandma’s lost their comeuppance. It is really good New Talent ring otherwise she will remain a cat to see an orphanage that is shown in Little Badman and the forever. Ellie soon realises that a a positive light, rather than being the Invasion of the Killer Aunties girl trapped in a cat’s body needs stuff of nightmares. This is Sinead HHHHH some help and that she must learn O’Hart’s second children’s story and some manners and make some she has produced something that Humza Arshad and Henry White, friends fast. With the help of a brave is even better than the first. This is illus Aleksei Bitskoff, Puffin, mouse and a resourceful spider, Ellie an absolute gem and hopefully will 9780241340608, £6.99, pbk succeeds in finding the ring, defeating become a firm favourite for lovers of Humza Khan is a 12-year-old ninja- the machinations of Jolly the cat and the fantastic. MP rapper-gangster with huge plans convincing her Grandma that she has learned her lesson. Call Me Alastair for his future. Unfortunately, he HHHH also suffers from debilitating stage Ellie discovers the importance fright and has the ‘greatest cricket of kindness and friendship and the Cory Leonardo, Scholastic, 320pp, coach Pakistan has ever known’ satisfying ending resolves the family 978 1407 18671 9, £6.99, pbk for a father, which means that his problems that lead to her challenging Cory Leonardo reveals in her opportunities for world domination behaviour. The story is fast-paced and ‘Acknowledgements’ that “This are rather limited. When not laying funny with a touch of magic and a cast book was a winding eight-year, soul- down rap tracks and losing vital of appealing characters. This short searching journey. A crazy dream”; cricket matches for their school tale was first published in a different and, yes, at times it reads like that. team, Humza and his friends, Umer format as “Elaine, You’re a Brat” but There’s a meandering, even whimsical and Wendy, begin to notice that changing relationship dynamics this new incarnation under publisher plot; sometimes conversations and the teachers from their school are between them will be familiar to all Barrington Stoke’s “super readable” incidents move things on, sometimes slowly disappearing. Even more children. There were several times label and with their trademark they don’t. If you settle on an African worrying, they are being replaced when I laughed out loud at Humza’s dyslexia-friendly layout and typeface grey parrot called Alastair as your by sinister aunties from the local frustrations with his family and and Matt Robertson’s brilliantly lively principal narrator, then who knows Asian community, whose only friends, as well as at the references and humorous illustrations is fully what sort of plot you’ll end up with? objective seems to be to regularly to rappers such as Tupac. The plot justified and should prove to be an Especially if, from the moment his feed the pupils a wide variety of inevitably veers into the realms of enjoyable read for children of 8+ who egg cracks, the bird has the ability to sugary snacks. Clearly all is not as science-fiction in the second half prefer short chapter books. SR think and speak fluently as he tells it seems, but what can Humza do of the book, but it’s done in a way his own story (and we’re not talking that builds upon the energy of the The Star-spun Webb when nobody will take him seriously, HHHHH ‘parrotting’ here). either as a rapper or as a detective? earlier chapters and seems (almost) In addition to using a young parrot Little Badman, the first believable. Sinead O’Hart, ill.Sara Mulvanny, as her mouthpiece, Leonardo imposes collaboration between Humza Little Badman reminded me Stripes, 352pp, 9781788950220, further constraints upon herself in Arshad and Henry White was an of the My Brother is a Superhero £6.99 pbk this debut novel. We’re almost half- absolute delight to read, and I series by David Solomons, with its When a young baby was left at the way through the book before the genuinely loved it. Even though it lively writing, contemporary setting entrance to an orphanage there was scene shifts from the back room may be their first foray into children’s and plots featuring ludicrously no clue as to where she came from; of Pete’s Pet (and Parrot!) Shack. fiction, the writers’ background in over-complicated plans for world unless you consider that there was That’s not a setting likely to generate comedy shines through. The book domination. Children will love snow on her blanket and yet there too much dynamic action, and it features a wide range of diverse for its exciting story and, just as was no snow in the area. As Tess doesn’t. Instead, there’s a great deal characters but, crucially, never importantly, it’s another book that grows up she becomes fascinated by of dialogue in a consistently comic forgets that an entertaining and will reach out to an audience who science and is allowed to have a small American idiom, since Pete’s store exciting plot should always be at may not often see themselves lab at the orphanage (Ackerbee’s), is indeed somewhere in the United the centre of a good story, and represented in children’s literature. life is fairly good. Then suddenly States. The conversations mostly not the characters’ ethnicity or I’m already looking forward to the she is whisked away by a stranger involve Alastair, his much-loved sister religious background. The main next book from this pair and will be purporting to be her guardian and Aggie and a guinea-pig called Porky. characters are vibrant and easy recommending Little Badman at life begins to be less certain. Tess is Occasionally Pete and his young part- to empathise with, and the ever- every possible opportunity. JB accompanied by her pet tarantula time helper Fritz chip in, along with Violet and by a device that was found a rabbit named Babs, some puppies with her as a baby; it has strange star and a background chorus of gerbils to her, but surely he can trust Mr Katz, keep ahead. A female character proves shaped inscriptions, but what is it and infant rabbits. At this stage, the with whom he hopes to get a job so extremely useful in finishing the kite, for? Tessa finds out when the device goldfish say nothing. that his mother doesn’t force him to and the title does give away the ending, allows her to communicate with a boy Things open out considerably become a nightman, collecting the but the reader will want to know how it in a parallel world and they discover when, to his delight, Fritz gets ‘night soil’ from the local population… all happens. There is danger and quite a conspiracy to take over one of the together enough dollars to buy Aggie Athan’s mother and Polly are a lot of violence, mostly reported (or, in worlds. How can they prevent the and take her home. Soon after, dressmakers, also running a shop Grandma’s case, wildly exaggerated), destruction of a peaceful world and Alastair is bought by Mrs Albertina selling fabric and ribbons, and their as well as the death of several what is the relationship between Plopky, an elderly but sparky widow, domesticity is contrasted with the characters. The classification given by Tessa and Thomas? still given to writing loving letters violence that Athan encounters the publishers on the back cover as 9+ This is a magical tale of two to her late husband, Everett (her outside. Grandma is a very strong is perhaps a little low, so your reviewer versions of our world and how the correspondence provides another character, superstitious and deeply has acknowledged this in placing it in misuse of scientific knowledge can lively narrative voice). We also get suspicious of anyone foreign, especially 8-10, but also assesses it suitable for lead to danger and destruction. to read what Fritz calls his Medical Mr Chen, and Beatty, although unable 10+. DB The story itself is about friendship, Logbook, since he’s going to be a to move without being carried about, family in its broadest sense and how doctor one day, and keeps a record of is intelligent and perspicacious: Ellie and the Cat science can be used for both good his own health along with insights into wondering about one particular HHHH and bad. The author has created the conditions of people he meets. customer why they really came into Malorie Blackman, ill. Matt these two parallel worlds, both of Alastair’s a cross sort of critter, the shop. Athan is fiercely devoted to Robertson, Barrington Stoke, which see the action taking place in irritably plucking out his own feathers her, which means that her life can be 80pp, 9781781128244, £6.99 pbk their version of Dublin. There is a real to the point where he resembles threatened to make him do what his sense that we know these worlds, a naked turkey. His consuming enemies want. The characters are Malorie Blackman mixes comedy with a moral message in this sparky yet they are just different enough to psychological drive is to care for his credible, and the story is a real page- make us wonder about alternative sister. Time and again, he devises turner as Athan and his friend Tod try to tale of Ellie whose rude, disagreeable

24 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews kindness kings and princes sought that seems dark and full of danger. Her 8 – 10 Junior/Middle continued her hand in marriage. But Frideswide mother works at the town hall for the did not want to marry, she had plans Mayor and is never home, thus giving daring but hopelessly unworkable when Alastair has composed a clever to found a church instead. However Lil plenty of time to indulge in her escapes, so that he and Aggie could fly pastiche called ‘Jabberplopky’. The one suitor was persistent declaring passion of being a detective. When off to Key West, Florida, where they will poet is astonished when a hitherto he would attack Oxford and kidnap she accidentally comes across the take up residence in a palm tree. Flaws silent goldfish named Humpty Frideswide if she resisted. There ghost of Ned Stubbs he asks for help in his escape strategies include being Dumpty suddenly offers (in “a curious follows an adventure in which the in finding out what happened to him. unable to fly and having no clue where British accent at that”) an eloquent princess and her friends escape her Before long they are caught up in an Florida is. However, one of Alastair’s explication of several portmanteau pursuers by boat, sheltering with old series of crimes, and then when undoubted skills is the composition of words in the text, despite the sneers animals in a barn and hiding in a these seem linked to Ned’s death pastiches. He once shredded, chewed of Alastair’s implacable enemy, a foul- tree. An ability to perform miracles they enlist the support of the private and inwardly digested an old water- tempered cat named Tiger. emerges when Frideswide’s prayers detective who had dealt with the damaged Norton Anthology, thus Readers who take this rambling trip and songs produce a much-needed original investigation. The trouble is absorbing work ranging from Lewis as it comes, enjoying the views and stream of fresh water, later apparent that the more they delve into the past, Carroll to Herman Melville by way of in no hurry to get to the destination, again when she returns to Oxford to the more dangerous life seems to Wallace Stevens. will find an original, entertaining, face her would be captor. become; can they solve the mysteries The three narrators are all sometimes uneven read. Leonardo’s This is an interesting account of before the villains catch up with them? engaging, all unwittingly amusing. All next novel could well be worth looking a little-known story with a strong This is a great crime adventure miss loved ones, and now they need out for; with luck, it won’t be eight female protagonist. The illustrations, for middle grade readers and has a to break free from their literal and years in the making. GF traditional in style, attractively definite feel of American ‘gumshoe’ metaphorical cages, to see clearly complement the text. For those type stories. The author has created what they already have and to stop The Princess who hid in a Tree wishing to find out more about this a dismal and at times sleazy city, wishing for what they haven’t. Of HHH story the back of the book includes where the Mayor totally controls the additional information on its historical press and the police as well as the course, we know that in the end, Jackie Holderness, ill. Alan Marks, those needs will be happily met. Bodleian Library, 32pp, background. SMc local government. Lil is a particularly The publishers suggest 8+ as 9781851245185, £12.99,hbk feisty character and is not afraid of Potkin and Stubbs anything, although she does have a a reading age, which may seem Based on legend and set in Oxford, HHHH ambitious. Perhaps able younger habit of jumping in to situations and this book tells the story of Saint Ned makes an unusual and worthy children will race through the 300+ Frideswide, daughter of a Saxon King Sophie Green, ill. K.J. Mountford, pages to see how things turn out for Piccadilly, 375pp, 9781848127616, sidekick. The washed up detective and Queen. Adventurous and brave as £6.99 pbk Abe Mandrel acts as a link between such quirky characters. Older readers a child she grew up to be kind, gentle might relish the curious byways such The heroine of this story, Lil Potkin, is a the current action and the events of and talented. When news reached the past and we see him gradually a cast inevitably drifts into. There’s nearby kingdoms of her beauty and not very ordinary girl who lives with her an amusing passage, for example, mother in the city of Peligan; a place climb out of the despair that he

Originating from a family-owned publishing house established in Athens, Greece over 70 years ago, Faros Books is a new London-based independent publisher with a vision to inspire and entertain children, initially by publishing quality books for the very young.Our award winning authors’ and illustrators’ work has been successfully published in many languages, from Greek to Chinese, and now it appears for the first time in the U.K.

www.farosbooks.co.uk For all enquiries contact Roy Johnson - [email protected] BfK town of Uncaster they encounter rival to the excavation of Tutankhamen, 8 – 10 Junior/Middle continued theatricals escapologist Little Baby a circus to WWII. Here we are back Bubbles and his manager mother, with that World War II, a setting which had been in after failing to have the who have had the same thought and featured in Letters from a Lighthouse. villains convicted in the past. The have even more pressing reasons for Indeed young fans will be delighted to villains are as nasty as you could escaping the capital. The Pringles find meet characters they can recognise. wish for and there are some excellent digs with the aristocratic Lady Poskett, However, When We Were Warriors twists and turns in the plot, so that the also down on her uppers, and in spite is not a single novel. Rather it is a audience is kept guessing throughout of the best efforts of their rivals and linked series of three novellas. There the book. I look forward to any further thanks mostly to the determination are three protagonists to enjoy, three adventures of this intriguing pair; and ingenuity of housemaid Edie their situations in which to become involved after all being a ghost can be quite show goes and is declared a triumph. – but Carroll skilfully links all three in a useful for an investigator. MP French is a gifted storyteller and this way which provides a satisfying read. is a delight from start to finish, action- This is not just through the setting The Steam Whistle Theatre packed, hugely entertaining. Set in – the south-west coast of England Company the late 1800s there’s a real sense of facing the potential threat of invasion HHHHH the times too and she vividly conjures and enduring bombing raids., but also up the camaraderie of the theatre. through characters, not least, Eddie Vivian French, Walker, 304pp, MMA the GI stationed in the area; a clever 978-1406376319, £6.99 pbk device. The situations are domestic, A standing ovation for Vivian French When We Were Warriors requiring believable involvement whose new adventure has all the HHHH and action on the part of the young elements of the best dramas, i.e. Emma Carroll, Faber & Faber, people. Carroll’s writing style is easy intrepid heroes and unscrupulous 248pp, 9780571350407, £6.99 pbk and contemporary without being villains, lively scenes, a profusion of Emma Carroll is fast establishing anachronistic, attitudes are faithfully hopes, dreams and well-laid plans herself as one of the most consistent represented and there are many going awry. It opens in London and accessible authors writing for KS2 details that will both surprise and where the Pringle Players, a family inspiration and the family, including readers. Taking historical backgrounds inform. Though many young readers theatre-troupe, are facing shrinking youngsters Charlie and Rosie, are she makes them immediate and will easily finish this book perhaps in audiences and hard times. Almost travelling north to the provinces appealing. Her books have varied one sitting, for others the organisation before you can say curtain up and audiences who have yet to and intriguing themes ranging from a into three separate stories will provide however, Pa Pringle has had a flash of experience the delights of Pa’s Lear. Newly arrived in the unsuspecting ghost story, her first Frost Hollow Hall an added attraction. FH 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary

about Jessica’s role in their lives, and Asha and the Spirit Bird that the factory where Asha’s father it’s unfortunate that her allergy to HHH was working has been destroyed in dogs means that Georgie’s beloved a fire. There’s perhaps a little too Jasbinder Bilan, Chicken House, mongrel Mister Mash has to live in a 288pp, 9 781911 490197, £6.99, pbk much going on, which is maybe not nearby dogs’ home. It’s while walking surprising in a first novel. Asha’s Mr Mash on the beach with her best This debut novel was the winner of strength of character is unnecessarily friend Ramzy Rahman that Georgie the 2017 Times/Chicken House underlined at times. And the neat meets Dr Emilia Pretorius and all their children’s fiction competition. It’s ending will possibly not come as too lives – indeed the future of the whole an adventure for top primary school much of a surprise. Nevertheless, it’s world – changes forever. children that offers an attractive mix a story that engages and thrills. CB As scientists go, Dr Pretorius of social realism and cultural fantasy is firmly in the crazy/crazy haired and is set in the northern Punjab, Now or Never-a Dunkirk Story close to the Himalayas and the source tradition of Doc Brown – an eccentric HHHHH genius with a somewhat cavalier of the Ganges, where the author’s attitude to the personal safety of own family has its Indian roots. Young Bali Rai, 978-1-407191-36-2, others. She’s built an extraordinary Asha, facing the possibility of losing Scholastic, 203pp, £6.99 pbk VR machine which has the ability to her village home, sets off to find her This absorbing and revealing book is transport people into the probable father in the distant city where he part of the Voices series, published future and just needs some willing has gone to work in a textile factory. to give a platform to those unsung assistants to help her try it out. The She has only a month until the debt heroes from the past whose authentic plot allows for lots of very funny collector returns for the final time and stories have not been fully told. Now moments, as well as some that on the journey with her friend Jeevan, or Never explains the role of the are really quite frightening, and the she faces setbacks and dangers that Royal Indian Army Service Corps, tension builds when a terrible disease she overcomes with courage and sixteen hundred men who,in the The Dog Who Saved the World ingenuity, and with the help of the Second World War, with mules and HHHHH breaks out, one that is spread by dogs and deadly to humans. The ability to spirit of her maternal grandmother, trained mulateers supplied food and Ross Welford, HarperCollins time travel into the future suddenly Nanijee, in the form of a lamagaia, equipment to British troops across Children’s Books, 978-0008256975, becomes more than a game. or bearded vulture. For readers France. Although their role in the 416pp, £6.99 hbk Welford controls his plots with real unfamiliar with the story’s setting, it war has been acknowledged in some Ross Welford’s new novel, his fourth, skill and there are moment of high introduces aspects of everyday life prestigious quarters-for example, the returns to favourite themes: time, time drama, comedy and tragedy as, with in the Punjab, including a glossary of Imperial War Museum-the media has travel, family. The Dog Who Saved the the help of Mister Mash, Georgie sets Hindi and Punjabi words, and also not been widely used to acknowledge World combines a fantastical plot, out to save the world. He’s confident cultural and spiritual beliefs and the vital role these men and their relying on an ingenious manipulation enough to allow Georgie to meet a practices, including the reverence animals played. of the laws of quantum physics, version of her future self, and to learn for ancestors and a pilgrimage to the Fifteen year old Fazal Khan is proud with a traditional and warm-hearted from a conversation the two of them temple at the source of the Ganges. to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps adventure full of friendship, growing have. Genuine emotions are always It also tackles some headline social and support the British Army in his role understanding, and family love. at the centre of the action, however issues. Towards the end of the novel, as mulateer but his enthusiam and Georgie lives in Whitley Bay with wild it gets, and no matter what is Asha and Jeevan are kidnapped and naivete are gradually worn away as her dad, brother Clem and dad’s going on around them, we trust his forced to work with other children the war progresses and the advancing girlfriend, Jessica. Mum died some characters who are as warm and picking metal on a vast rubbish tip German troops eventually force the years earlier. Georgie is unconvinced realistic as they come. AR in the city; and they discover, too, British into retreat to Dunkirk. The

26 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews where Babagoo found him, having 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued been cast aside there by his mother and he is subject to Babagoo’s rules Indian soldiers encountered a degree She Wolf about how to keep safe and preserve of prejudice and hostility from their HHH the status quo. British counterparts and,in addition, The pair have developed their own Dan Smith, Chicken House, 320pp, idiosyncratic language variations- during the retreat, had to abandon 978 1 910655 93 1, £6.99 pbk their beloved mules as they could largely, though not exclusively no longer be fed. Fazal tries to stay This is an atmospheric but somewhat onomatopoeic-and terminology, which loyal to the British but his close friend bleak tale set in set in the chilly give their conversations both interest Mushtaq repeatedly reminds him that Northern lands in the time of the and opaqueness. Their relationship the war is not their war, Britain not Viking invasions of Britain. The story shifts and changes but there seems their country and many British soldiers opens with the cruel murder of Ylva’s to be real regard between them, do not regard the Indian troops as their mother and as we discover later her woven through with Babagoo’s equals. dog too. Ylva believes she must shifting parent/teacher/bully persona. Nowhere is this more apparent avenge her mother’s death as is the Babagoo constantly drills Landfill in his than on the beaches at Dunkirk, Viking way. She is convinced a three- rules, which are many and particular. when, amidst the wholesale slaughter fingered man is the killer as she saw However necessary and sensible rules of the troops as they await rescue him leave the trading post hut her might be, however, they are there to comes the order from High Command mother had entered. be broken and Landfill, eager to see that all non-white troops should be left Ylva is an awkward and intense The Outside beyond their own world behind in the rescue operation. One child and finds human contact difficult of Hinterland, ventures tentatively officer, Captain John Ashdown, father – she lives in her head, listening to and fearfully into the unknown. her dog’s wise counsel and telling island is a prison, a further one a This has devastating consequences of the politician Paddy Ashdown, deserted cemetery; and, over all the refused to obey this order, stating that the old Norse tales she learned from when Dawn, an Outsider, comes into her mother to comfort herself. We isles, the weight of a dead woman’s Hinterland using Landfill’s exit route it would be morally wrong to leave the curse. The Widdershins sisters are Indian troops behind. He remained might think now she is borderline from it. She is initially curious and then autistic. So, when a kind stranger, the particular victims of this curse, alarmed at Landfill’s lack of knowledge true to his priciples and saw to it that for any Widdershins daughter that as many men as possible from every Cathryn, appears together with a boy, and understanding of her world and Bron, who can only communicate in seeks to leave Crowstone faces alerts the authorities to his situation. creed were saved. He was rewarded certain death beyond its perimeter for his efforts with a court martial, sign language and offers Ylva help, This-and Babagoo’s illness and she brushes them off determined to to the sounds of crows screeching subsequent death-mark the end of which resulted in him being stripped in her head. Adventurous middle of his rank and his career ended. manage on her own. But after a near- the Hinterland and the beginning death encounter with slavers Ylva daughter Betty would have found any of exposure to life on The Outside. This simply written and moving restriction on her aspiration onerous, book ends with a short tribute to reluctantly agrees it would be safer to Landfill gets his first taste of this when travel with Cathryn. Although Ylva is let alone one so draconian. So this is he tries to go and buy medicine to Captain John Ashdown. Like Fazal, he the tale of how Betty, teenage Fliss, believed in duty and, like Fazal, he saw highly suspicious of Cathryn’s motives treat the animal bite which Babagoo she gradually begins to trust her as and little Charlie risk everything to received which has become infected. that the men who he served under lift the curse. Luckily, they begin were too often flawed leaders. VR Cathryn is unusually sympathetic to We see our world through Landfill’s her needs. with the help of their tavern keeping eyes and it is a source of shame to Ghost Along the journey to find the three- Gran, who presents them each with us. Greed, violence and a disregard HHHH fingered man they encounter fierce a magic heirloom: a carpet bag for for one’s fellow man prevail and warriors, wolves and a very dangerous Charlie that can take them anywhere Landfill-naive, sheltered, a lover of all Jason Reynolds, Knights of, 224pp, instantly; a mirror for Fliss in which 978 1 9996425 2 5, £6.99 bear. Bron and Cathyrn are forced living things-is at a loss to understand to split up to confuse their pursuers she can “face time” anyone wherever it. Yet, through Dawn, he has come Following the UK publication of his and when Ylva decides to take in an they are; and a set of Russian dolls to appreciate music and when, after remarkable verse novel, A Long Way orphaned wolf cub they argue when for Betty herself whose properties the destruction of Hinterland, he Down, last year, it is good to welcome Cathyrn explains that the cub is a wild can confer invisibility, as long as you is searching for food he follows its an earlier novel by this multiple animal and not a dog. Cathryn falls remember the proper procedure. sound. He witnesses a baby being award winning author. This one was on her knife and is badly wounded This is a fine piece of dark fantasy, rescued from a tip site-rather too first published in the States in 2016 but Ylva manages to get her to a cave in which, as in the tales that are neat an echo of his own fate?- and and is the first of his “Run” (US title where she tends her and is with her its models, the human capacity for recognises a spark of humanity “Track”) series of four books that has when she dies. Ylva finally faces the cruelty, sometimes visited by children within the rescuers and the book featured in best three -fingered man but realises too on children, or sister on sister, is ends with his nervous resolve to take seller lists. Each book is written from late that he is not what she thought he exceeded only by the strength of his chances in this new and startling the point of view of a member of The was and that her preconceptions may love. Michelle Harrison maintains the environment. VR Defenders youth running team, kids not always be right. Thankfully, Ylva sense of doom, lightens it with flashes who have been brought together from and Bron do reach a place of safety of humour, and creates a careering Halo Moon different city backgrounds to take and there is happy ending of sorts. plot and interesting characters, HHH their place on the team, exploring gradually unravelling the secrets of This is a page-turning story: the Sharon Cohen, Quercus, 340pp, what the experience means for each desolate landscape is beautifully the curse, as the sisters lurch from 9781786540102, £6.99, pbk of them. This is the story of Castle one perilous situation to another. It’s described throughout and Ylva is Sharon Cohen’s story features Cranshaw, aka Ghost, a boy whose a strong and brave heroine but the an ingenious and compelling tale. CB father has been imprisoned for parallel narratives that eventually constant threat of danger and the come together in an apocalyptic domestic violence, including shooting unrelenting hardship make this a Scavengers at Castle and his mother. Ghost is HHHHH event on the Yorkshire moors. One discomforting read and it is at times strand is the story of Ageze, an haunted by the memory of his father Darren Simpson, Usborne, hard to warm to it. There is a helpful Ethiopian boy who excavates three and his own life is punctuated by glossary at the back of the book 978-1-4749-5602-4, 322pp, £6.99 “altercations” that lead to frequent mysterious discs, associated metal and some information on Viking life. This book has all the hallmarks pointers and a brass key from the school suspensions. It’s an old This could be good novel for class of a tale from a dystopian world American story of how sports can sand near an ancient church. The discussion. JC future, with a boy called Landfill and discs are covered in symbols that transform troubled youth, but it’s an Babagoo-the man who looks after excellent version for pre-teens, with a Ageze learns to read with the help A Pinch of Magic him-living in the most primitive of of an old scholar. When the discs convincing first person narrative that HHHH conditions and scavenging what they reveals Ghost in all his contradictions and the pointers are assembled into Michelle Harrison, Simon and can from their environment in order and charts his changing perceptions a single unit, and the key is turned, Schuster, 368 pp, 978 1 4711 2429 7, to survive. The irony of this scenario Ageze discovers the instrument (the of himself, his community and his £6.99, pbk. is that, unbeknown to Landfill they running mates. It’s told with economy, Portendo device) has the uncanny Crowstone is one of the Sorrow are living in present time but hidden ability to foresee impending disasters, humour and understanding of the from the otside world, which Babagoo pressures of growing up, especially Isles: places of shadows, marsh like a nearby burst water main and and sea mists. The nearest other fears as a result of its corruption and factory fire. Meanwhile, in a small growing up poor in America. CB cruelty. Landfill is named for the place

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 27 BfK This cues up a race-against-time really enjoy this. It stands alone from 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued adventure, as Chester charges around the first story, which this reader will town inside the body of a giant gorilla, certainly go back to in order to find Yorkshire village, the strikingly named for children with cancer of any kind, trying to track down his body before he out where Danny and Maharajah’s Halo Moon is making a friend of it would be simplistic to say that is stuck inside his furry prison forever! story begins. JF Pedro Ortega, the new boy across having a ‘happy ending’ is the be- Chester teams up with a collection of hilarious helpers, who provide comic Unstoppable the road, and together they study all and end-all of their needs, but it HHH the stars at night and go for daytime is certainly the strongest and best relief. A gormless, cocky, cockney walks on the moors. Back in Ethiopia, outcome. The fifteen-year-old girl detective is accompanied by an Dan Freedman, David Fickling, Ageze’s device reveals that the in this story explains the five years extremely exuberant TV producer 300pp, 9781788450492, £10.99 hbk next catastrophe is due to happen of her life since she was diagnosed, and several very, very weird physic, Author of the best-selling Jamie in Yorkshire. It’s further away than and it hasn’t been an easy journey: mind-bender types, and all of them Johnson football series, Dan usual, but he determines to make the the pain associated with her chemo; have their own motivation for helping Freedman once again makes soccer long journey to warn those who are the problems she has had with her Chester (or not!). the cornerstone of his latest novel, in the path of destruction. Arriving parents because they try too hard to Though there is lots of fun to be had and does so extremely well. But off in Pockley, worse for wear from the be supportive and often get it wrong; from accompanying a young boy as he the pitch, his characters remain journey, and befriended by Halo her guilt feelings about her sister who sees life through the eyes of animals, two-dimensional and their dialogue and Pedro, he then has to convince doesn’t get enough attention; her and of his older sister (gross!), the has none of the salty rhythms of everyone to take him seriously. He friend, Maxine, who has died from most enjoyment comes from the actual street speech so well caught does, and the village is evacuated, the Leukaemia she herself suffers strong sense of jeopardy as Chester’s by Angie Thomas in The Hate U Give but then the children somehow find from and whom she misses very search uncovers increasingly dark and On the Come Up. The story themselves in the very eye of the much; how she longs to be treated as secrets, with implications far beyond revolves around mixed-race fourteen- storm. A preface bravely declares ‘normal’ and how she meets Victor, just himself. The book confronts year-old Roxy and her twin brother that, while such a story might be her boyfriend, who is the only one who moral questions about what makes Kaine, much the darker of the two. unbelievable and impossible, it did ‘gets it’. At the beginning of the story, us who we are, in an accessible and Once close, they now get on badly, all happen. I doubt whether any she and her parents are walking to provocative way, and would be a with their unemployed Dad regularly reader will believe that for a minute, the appointment with the specialist great one for children to share with making things worse. And life on but Cohen tells her story in the right who will tell her if her condition is one another or with adults. Chester their London estate contains extra spare urgent prose and, like buried cured or, transversely, if the illness is Parsons is not a gorilla - or isn’t he? SD dangers, with Kaine getting too close treasure, a secret cave behind a going to kill her. Beautifully written, The Great Animal Escapade to gang warfare for anyone’s comfort, waterfall, and the ability to see the with illustrations showing the girl to HHHH least of all his own. future, it’s a fiction that children be a grey shadow of herself, the only But with such a firm authorial hand might find seductive. CB colour being of others around her, Jane Kerr, Chicken House, 289pp, on the tiller, readers will soon realise until the end when she and Victor 9781911490340, £6.99 pbk that everything is going to work out The Unworry Book fall into each other’s arms and she With a splendid cover and a good title, well in the end, with once oppressive HHHH is able to tell him she is cured and this is an old fashioned adventure family debts somehow paid and minor Alice James, ill. Stephen Moncrief, her colour and vibrancy return. It’s a story. It follows on from the author’s characters happily married off while Dr Angharad Rudkin, Usborne moving story with much about what first book, The Elephant Thief, and tricky ones suddenly turn into selfless Publishing, 96pp, 978 1 4749 5077 0, it feels like both inside and out when features the majestic elephant supporters of others. Serviceably £8.99 hbk one is experiencing cancer, and it Maharajah of that book, together with written, avoiding highlights as well The first point to make is that a child should be on every children’s or Danny who trains him. Danny has as low moments, this is fiction at its using this book must have his or her teenage ward that deals with young been taken in by the Jamesons who blandest. It is only when we get to own copy. There are lots and lots of people diagnosed with cancer of run the Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester sport, either when Kaine is playing suggestions of things to do that mean any form. The teenage romance is in the 1900s, and his performance as football or when his sister is fighting writing IN the book, so this is not one important because it gives reason Prince Dandip with Maharajah forms to win on the tennis court, that for the library! It is sad that these days for hope, and girls particularly will the centrepiece of an extravaganza things start taking off. Not so much so many children need books about respond to that aspect. An unusual complete with fireworks which a fictional victory then, but certainly a worrying, but so it is, and they are and very beautiful production. ES Mr.Jameson hopes will bring in a draw, hard fought to the end. NT proliferating. This is a good one with Chester Parsons is not a great crowd of people and secure some simple scientific explanations of his zoo. But there are people who The Cosmic Atlas of Alfie Fleet how the body and the brain respond to Gorilla have other plans for the land and HHH HHHH worries and concerns and how to deal this is complicated by the local vicar Martin Howard, ill. Chris Mould, with them. A small black and white Martin Ford, Faber and Faber, who objects to the zoo being open Oxford University Press, 309pp, cuddly character is on every page and 324pp, 9780571332236, £6.99 pbk on Sundays. For Danny life gets 978 0 19 276750, £6.99 pbk provides reassurance and advice, and This is a very original quest story. even worse when a man appears In this comic adventure, Alfie Fleet the constant interspersed text and Chester Parsons has lost his body purporting to be his long lost father. is desperate to earn some cash pictures are clear and concise. There and his quest is to get it back before This all sets the scene for false so that he can buy his poor mum a are so many things to do, such as he forgets himself. Like all burgeoning accusations, barrels of gunpowder, new foot spa...and maybe afford drawing patterns, dancing and being actors, Chester loves pretending to be and an elephant losing half a tusk. something other than fish head soup active, writing limericks or stories, someone else, but, when he visits a The reader feels for Danny having for dinner for a change. Answering an scribbling, mindfulness, keeping therapist to help with his stagefright, his emotions played with, whether he ambiguous ad, he begins working for a diary, yoga exercises, joining the he discovers he has the power to do can he believe Mr. Larkin, and then Professor Bowell-Mouvemont, and dots, brain puzzles, origami, etc. It much more than just pretend! finding it so difficult to talk to the soon realises that the job will involve is all very positive and should provide Chester is a mind-jumper, and has Jamesons about it, not to mention an awful lot more than the lifting and many helpful hints and encouraging the power to enter the body of any trying to be friends with Hetty, the moving that had been described. ideas for young minds, particularly other person or animal. With this vet’s daughter, whose fierce aunt will The Professor, it turns out, is the last those who worry excessively. ES extraordinary ability realised, Chester not let him see her. Danny is a plucky remaining member of a unique and and his sister agree that the best hero, and the scenes in the story ancient organisation: The Unusual A Story About Cancer (With a thing to do is sign up with a production where he gets the elephant to roll the Cartography Club. He is custodian of a Happy Ending) company and make films of Chester’s barrels of gunpowder down the slope stone circle that is a portal to millions HHHHH antics. This proves very successful, into the lake and thus save thousands of worlds all over the universe. This India Desjardins, ill. Marianne and videos of Chester controlling of lives are very excitingly told. There is a wonderful opportunity for Alfie Ferrer, Solange Ouellet the bodies of squirrels and badgers, is plenty of local and historical to broaden his horizons, and also (Translator), Frances Lincoln, and possessing badgers and horses, atmosphere to make the story really an excellent source of comedy and 96pp, 978 1786 03218 8, £9.99 hbk and making all kinds of animals do credible and the plot moves along at adventure, as the unlikely duo hop This story was written because a ten all kinds of crazy things, are instant a satisfying pace. The notes at the from world to world, taking in the local year old girl asked the author why no social media hits. However, Chester end fill in where some of the story sights and running into all sorts of one seemed to write a cancer story soon loses control when, while inside has a basis of fact, and the whole is unexpected trouble. with a happy ending. In the long- the mind of a gorilla, someone steals tied up neatly possibly leading to a Planet Maureen, Brains-In-Jars- drawn-out treatment that is usual his body. third book. Boys and girls of 9+ will World and Outlandish, all host

28 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued 14+ Secondary/Adult beautiful, bizarre and bonkers local tells the story of her own young life. people and wildlife. There is a grizzly Partly based on the author’s Polish bartender who serves nothing but grandmother’s harrowing experience What a cast, then, and what a story beer, stew or customer’s own body during World War Two, it describes ensues as the couple contends with parts, and there are tribal religious how as a young girl Ania rescues her extreme poverty, prejudice and the zealots ready to sacrifice anything Jewish friend Mila from certain death problems of trying to live along with that moves. There are also lots and in one of the ghettoes. Heroism of this others while following ideals that lots of brains in jars. None of these dimension goes some way towards sound better on paper than when peoples are as weird as the professor, balancing out the evil it was up against experienced for real. Dogar lets this though, who is hundreds of years old, and here acts as an inspiration for Kat turbulent narrative largely tell itself. rides a moped and insists on stopping finally to put things right. Artfully dropping hints on the various for tea and sandwiches, even when So there is a lot for younger origins of Mary’s great novel found being chased by magical-spear- readers in this novel, and it would within her own life, she remains fair to wielding warlords! have made an excellent jumping all parties involved. Also packed with Sadly, the excitement offered by off point for classroom discussion minutely researched historical detail, these intergalactic whistle-stops when such things still happened not to mention al the complications is rather short-lived as the entire untied to any National Curriculum or of inheriting closely guarded money, second half of the novel takes place ‘comprehension’ exercise. NT there is so much going on here. Always on one planet: Outlandish. Outlandish interesting as well as emotionally is home to all manner of mythical The Closest Thing to Flying involving, what’s not to like? NT creatures that have already been HHHH made ultra-famous in other stories. Gill Lewis, Oxford, 240pp, Tales from the Inner City Gold-hoarding dragons soar over 978 19 274948 2, £6.99 pbk HHHH the heads of wistful woodland elves, Samira Solomon is eleven years old. Shaun Tan, Walker, 224pp, while knights and wizards hatch She lives as an illegal immigrant in 9781406383843, £19.99, hbk schemes to vanquish villains. Though modern London with her mother How might you portray the relationship there are subtle twists on these and Robel. Robel is the same man Monsters HHHH of humanity and the natural world familiar characters (the knight is who trafficked the two of them from and the threat of habitat destruction called Sir Brenda, for example), even Eritrea. Samira’s mother speaks Sharon Dogar, Andersen, 451pp, and species extinction? Perhaps, younger readers will feel that they very little English. She is under the 9781783448029, £12.99 hbk on the one hand, with the statistics have ultimately met them all before, complete control of Robel. Both 978-1-5098-7004-2, £7.99 pbk of decline, or a documentary horror which is a shame as the predictability Samira and her mother are abused by This is an outstandingly good book, so show–a dead de-horned rhino or a that emerges detracts significantly their criminal companion. congratulations to Charlie Sheppard sea-bird ingesting a plastic bag. And, from the humour and excitement that On one of her rare trips out of the for commissioning it and to Sharon on the other hand, the fascination is prominent in early chapters. home Samira finds and buys a hat Dogar for then coming up so splendidly of an Attenborough documentary, Alfie and The Professor are a great decorated with a stuffed green bird. with the goods. Already described all the natural glory of what we take team and readers will be rooting The hat came in a box. In that box she by Philip Pullman as ‘a talented for granted and are losing. In these for them as they stumble their way also finds a diary kept by twelve year storyteller,’ she exceeds even these twenty-five tales and poems, as you across the universe trying to get home old Henrietta Waterman in the 1890s. high expectations in this story about might expect, Shaun Tan takes a in time for tea. Their cosmic atlas The diary entries reveal that Henrietta the complicated and often tragic life of different approach. In prose that is maps out many fascinating locations, is starting to question the norms of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein at turns reflective, anguished, angry, though readers will have visited some that Victorian world. Supported by her and lover of the famous poet. It is their sad and ironic, and in jaw dropping of them a few times already. SD beloved Aunt Kitty, Henrietta begins relationship, rather than the genesis of illustrations, he moves within and to challenge those values. Reading the famous title, that forms the basis beyond these straightforward Girl 38 Finding a Friend Henrietta’s brave words, Samira finds for this current novel. HHHH reactions. Perhaps taking his cue comfort and courage. The question Mary met Shelley when she was from those animals who have long Ewa Jozefkowicz, Zephyr, 196pp, posed by Lewis is how the book 16 and the poet only five years lived with us and those others who 9781786698971, £10.99 hbk Samira has found will change the older. The young love that followed have adapted themselves to city Reading this sweetly told morality tale lives of all those concerned. was passionate and intense, even habitats, living mostly in secret in is to return temporarily to the world It is sometimes said that surviving a series of appalling our midst, he imagines a surreal of children’s fiction fifty years ago. young readers find history boring setbacks along the way. Mary herself urban landscape in which animals Children and parents like each other, and uninstructive. This book comes over as desperately earnest as and humans co-exist in various ways. there are no swear words or examples demonstrates that it need not be well as incurably romantic. Shelley, Here our mutual dependence is of teenage argot, teachers are benign, so. Lewis achieves a feat which has in return, shares her idealism and acknowledged and our own animal elderly neighbours respected and become increasingly popular in young reciprocates her love while never quite self is never forgotten. And what can main characters eventually realise they literature – combining a narrative escaping a type of thoughtlessness I say about these illustrations? They have do the right thing. There is always from a past age with issues all too stemming from owning a place are remarkable, sometimes creating room for novels like this concentrating prevalent in contemporary society, in British aristocracy plus the a dramatic narrative, sometimes on the theme of moral growth while such as trafficking of people. She expectations of money eventually to evoking wonder, always provoking also telling a good story. It’s just that also shows how some contemporary come. Other important characters our response, opening our eyes it all feels a little old-fashioned. So organisations have their origins in play their part too. There is Mary’s in so many ways. It is a masterful too is the comic strip adventure that the past. In this case she describes father, the insufferably self-righteous collection, whose visionary power Kat draws for herself, involving heroic the founding meeting of what was social reformer William Godwin, and is perhaps best expressed in the space-travelling Girl 38 and her mortal to become the Royal Society for the also her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, story of the Moonfish. The single enemies the Vllks. Protection of Birds. who died twelve days after Mary was illustration for this story graces the But all in all this is indeed still a This reviewer’s main misgiving born but whose ground-breaking cover of the collection, and, in the good story. Shy Kat even at the age about an otherwise outstanding book feminist ideals were to remain with classic stance of the fisherman and of fourteen is dominated by her is that the narratives of some of the her daughter all her life. Enter too his catch, encapsulates both our love bullying friend Gem. When an artlessly characters are developed enough to Jane, later known as Claire, Mary’s and pride of the natural world and our innocent but potentially popular new whet the reader’s appetite but not half-sister of equal age who also falls impulse to exploit it. This beautiful boy joins the class Gem temporarily enough to satisfy that appetite. There for Shelley, as did so many others. creature, whose transparency put in the shade sets out to make his are some unfinished portraits.RB And lastly Lord Byron, very much mad, embodies its vulnerability and its school life unbearable. Kat weakly bad and dangerous to know in life as glittering glamour, is destined for the goes along with this, despising herself well as in these pages. restaurant table. CB for doing so. But things change for her after she befriends Ania, an old lady living next door who over time

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 29 BfK London. Vetty welcomes this decision. poem Dive Bar, to Dean Atta’s How 14+Secondary/Adult continued She will renew her friendship with To Come Out as Gay, which concludes Peregrine, known as Pez, a boy with the book. For many of the characters tower or the outside world, Ele’s voice whom she has been friends since they it isn’t easy, and help comes from, and vision of the world will keep readers were both ten. Collins now sets out to among other things, gay penguins intrigued. MMA describe the renewal of this friendship in a zoo, a phoenix, the owner of a and the problems Vetty and Pez face record shop, a somewhat eccentric Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite as they grow up, including a discussion driving instructor, even Lady Gaga via Matinee of burgeoning sexual awareness. the Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir HHH The book begins with a structural – a list that gives a good indication difficulty. In the early pages Collins of the sheer variety of the stories Jeff Zentmer, Andersen Press, 386pp, takes trouble to introduce and included. Communities play a major 978-1-78344-799-2, £7.99 pbk develop a cast of characters whom role in stories of those choosing new This novel runs the gamut from surreal the reader expects to play a significant identities too, be that the gay football to affecting: the introductory chapters part in the unfolding narrative. But team or the Dungeons and Dragons introduce readers to Josie and Delia, with the move back to London these players eager to subvert the school’s who have their own, self-produced characters disappear almost for binary rules for one of their friends. horror TV show. This features such good. They certainly take a back seat Offered these affecting, honest, bizarre delights as dog weddings, in the structure of the book. sensitively written stories, all readers skeleton raves and showings of films The major strength of this book is will close the book with a sense of which are so bad they seem in danger its detailed consideration of a topic optimism, hope and yes, pride, in of becoming cult. hardly ever broached in literature for young people and the world they are Into this rather improbable-if this age group – namely an addiction making for themselves. LS sometimes entertaining-scenario the to online pornography. Such addiction author inserts Lawson- a young man and the way it erodes the character My Brother’s Name is Jessica who cage wrestles and also falls in of the victim are described in painful HHH Outside love with Josie. Meanwhile, Delia has detail. Collins’s text explores not only John Boyne, Puffin 247pp, HHHH problems of her own-she is desperate to the way in which the addiction takes 978 0 241 37613 3, £12.99 hbk hold, but also the reasons why such a trace her long-absent father to find out My copy of the novel was Sarah Ann Juckes, Penguin, preoccupation exists. RB the reason for his precipitous departure accompanied by a reflective letter 978-0241330753, 288pp, £7.99 pbk many years earlier, hoping this will bring from John Boyne to his readers. In Like Rapunzel, Ele is a captive in a some closure to her and to her mother, his books for younger readers, he is tower, or rather imagining herself as a particularly as her mother’s mental concerned to write about “children fairy tale princess helps her survive the health is extremely fragile. who are isolated in some way”. It is unimaginable horror of her life. Ele has If readers have weathered the important, he believes, to stand up for been imprisoned in a windowless room accounts of the recording of the TV those who are oppressed or bullied, – six strides long – for most of her young programmes, then there are more even when offering support can prove life. Food drops from the ceiling, ‘sun bars’ conventional rewards. Characters costly. His own journey through his flick on and then off, and disinfectant begin to develop plausibly and the teens was difficult – the prospect of ‘rains’ down at regular intervals. She deep friendship between the girls coming out as a gay man terrified shares the space with the ‘Others’, three is convincing, as is the gradual yet him; but when he did so around the friends who may or may not be real, and inexorable journey towards love by age of twenty, life became “a million knocks messages out to ‘Jack’, a prisoner Josie and Lawson. There are also some times better”. In this novel, Jason, in another part of the tower. very funny set pieces-not least the the idolised 17 year old brother of Of course there’s a ‘Him’ behind this, character of Jack Divine, the has-been narrator Sam, is also very anxious Ele describes him to us one physical presenter and Arliss, the girls’ friend as he tells his family he plans to attribute at a time – the sound of his who films their show. Humour is shot transition. Boyne mentions talking footsteps, his thick fingers, scratchy through with tension: Josie and Delia to young transgender people while lips. It makes him less human, more are in their final year before college working on the story – how impressed monstrous. Her descriptions of his and Josie must decide if she is going he was by their bravery, their honesty actions towards her are more chilling to accept an offer which will allow her and their recognition that people fear for the details Ele leaves out, but she to develop her career or study locally what they don’t understand. is clear when she describes how he in order to be near Delia and Lawson. My Brother’s Name is Jessica isn’t murdered her brother. Through of Zentmer writes authentically quite the book readers of Boyne’s all this, dreams of escaping to the about emotion and the ties of love Proud letter might expect. He has a sharp ‘Outside’ sustain her, and she finally and friendship and often handles HHHH talent for satire and for much of the makes it, fleeing into a wild Scottish humour in a deft fashion. More Various, compiled Juno Dawson, narrative the parents of Jason and landscape naked and knowing nothing radical Americanisms and spelling Stripes Publishing, 978- Sam are treated with comic mockery. of the world other than what she has which is completely American may 1788950602, 352pp, £7.99 pbk This is no ordinary family. Mum is gleaned from her book of fairy stories. deter some readers from continuing a Cabinet Minister and the top job The authors and illustrators in this She finds refuge with a boy called to read beyond the opening section is almost within her grasp; Dad is new collection of stories were each Willow and his father, who she fears of the book. For those who may feel her private secretary, ensuring the given the theme of pride, and asked at first is a giant. The tone changes daunted-there are rewards here. VR family’s lives are shaped by Mum’s to respond to it. Contributors range for this section of the book and is drive to No.10. So when Jason – an from the very well-known – David less intense, more sentimental – All the Invisible Things outstanding footballer – turns down a Levithan, Tanya Byrne, David Roberts, putting some strain on credulity – but HHHH chance to sign for Arsenal because he Steve Antony, Caroline Bird – to Ele’s voice, always clear, direct and Orlagh Collins, Bloomsbury, doesn’t want soccer to absorb all his young authors and illustrators being engaging, keeps readers with her. 356pp, 978-1408888339, £7.99 pbk time, Dad’s reaction is: “It would look published for the first time. Whatever We know of course that Ele will have very good for your Mum if you were Helvetica Lake, known as Vetty, the setting for their stories or poems, to go back to face Him and to save signed to a professional club”. Mum is aged 16. Her sister Arial is nine there’s an overarching sense of her friends, and the climax is almost looks up briefly from filing her nails years younger. Three years before energy and excitement, almost unbearably tense. and observes, “You’re selfish. You Collins’s narrative begins, the sisters certainly arising from that invitation to Comparisons with Emma Donoghue’s only ever think about yourself”. lost their mother to cancer. During give voice to the LGBTQ+ experience Room are inevitable, but Outside feels These parents are close to these three years Helvetica, Arial and and a shared sense of celebration fiercely original. It’s not easy to write caricature, as parents so often used to their bereaved father have lodged in that the stories will do more than a character in the situation described be in fiction for young readers. Mum’s Somerset with their aunt Wendy and entertain readers: after all, as one of and keep them cheerful, optimistic, concerned that a mixed-race family the aunt’s gay partner Fran, while the characters says, ‘We take stories credible, but Juckes manages it. This moving in nearby will damage her their father is mourning his loss. to heart, even when they are our own.’ is well-written, sensitive on issues such political image as well as bring down Eventually their father decides that Coming out is a recurring theme, as sexual abuse, and, whether in her property values. She is also implausibly it is time for the family to return to from Caroline Bird’s witty opening

30 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 reviews of scholarship, medicine, religion or Lark 14+Secondary/Adult continued politics and power. HHHH Seventeen year old Rakel has Anthony McGowan, Barrington stupid; although Britain is in a period of best friends are also competitors. David a particularly acute nose; she has Stoke, 120pp, 978 1 78112 843 5, anti-EU sentiment, she has to enquire, asks the question: can Esther succeed? already made use of her gift in £7.99 pbk refining her skills as a healer in her “Is the Czech Republic in the EU?” The David’s novel is a compelling read, Kenny and his brother Nicky – our parents will surely amuse readers, as since everyone must recognise how rural village. She needs to turn her talent into cash, for her father, an narrator – are ranking the world’s will Mum’s sister, Aunt Rose, who is a addicted we are to the technology that dirtiest words. “‘[Sod is] one of the kind of ultra-Green, late Sixties hippy, surrounds us. The book also reveals that army commander, has been forced into retirement having contracted worst words there is,’ Kenny told never seen with the same colour hair when young people deny themselves me. ‘Even saying it gets you a million twice. So far, she has traded in three the communication they make via the progressive Affliction (the ‘Rot’). She works hard to afford the best years in hell. A sod is a man who digs husbands, as well as her polluting car social media, genuine person to person up dead bodies to have it off with.’” which she’s swapped for an elderly communication may become more medicines and even hopes her own researches might lead to a cure. Nicky queries this, but Kenny has horse called Bertie Wooster. She is influential and more highly valued. David the last word: “‘And a daft sod is one absolutely on Jason’s side and warmly also poses a less obvious but even more Rakel narrates alternate chapters throughout the adventure. The other who forgets his spade.’” Barrington empathetic towards young Sam too. telling question. To what extent is our Stoke are renowned for publishing These broad-brush characters assessment of other people dependent storyteller is Ash, the ‘Shield’ or personal bodyguard to Nisai, heir to short fiction appealing to readers work fine as comedy; maybe they will on evidence and impressions garnered whose interests may be in advance persuade readers that they should not from social media? These are questions the ailing Emperor of Aramtesh. Ash was taken into the royal household of their reading abilities. Maybe the be taking this novel too literally. The of significance for young people publishers would cite the brothers’ problem comes with Boyne’s treatment and relevant also to the wider as a child after he had saved Nisai in a violent incident in the slums of conversation above to support their of Jason and Sam as they make their community. RB claim that Lark has a Reading Age complex journeys through the plot. the capital, Ekasya. There’s a mystery about what happened – neither ever of 9, while its Interest Level is 13+; Sam, who struggles with dyslexia, is where school librarians might shelve vulnerable at school, finding it difficult talks about it. Since that time, Ash has been rigorously trained to kill in a book involving grave-robbers having to make friends until he meets Laura, it off with corpses is another question. the daughter of Mum’s rival for the defence of his Prince. Both storytellers use the dramatic present, sustaining The boys’ discussion of dirty words leadership of her party. Boyne creates an is no more than a distraction. They’re engaging, hesitant tenderness between immediacy throughout the tale. Before long, during an official visit to lost in the wind and snow on the them. Jason/Jessica and Sam are Yorkshire moors; it’s getting colder convincingly aware and subtle in their the province of Aphana, Nisai falls into an unconscious state; circumstances and darker, their mobile can’t get affection and care for each other, even a signal, they haven’t got the right as they negotiate misunderstandings suggest assassination rather than accident – poison may well have been kit, and they’re scared. The many and anxieties – their relationship is so readers who have followed the boys’ nuanced that they seem not to belong involved, but the Prince’s condition defeats diagnosis. Rakel and Ash adventures through Brock, Pike and in the same book as their parents. Carnegie short-listed Rook are used Boyne writes about them in a different become suspects. Drawn together by a common goal, the pair set out, with to the brothers getting into this kind of register, without comic exaggeration. a fix. As Lark begins, things are okay Inevitably this contrast diminishes the Rakel’s irascible mare, Lil, on a search for rare ingredients which might at home, though Nicky and Sarah, the seriousness of Boyne’s exploration of girl he met in Rook, are no longer an transgendering. enable Rakel to devise an antidote to the poison. Their quest demands item. Nicky continues to look out for In the later chapters, things change. the amiable Kenny, who has special As the news of Jason’s transitioning they wrestle with ancient languages for clues hidden in curious corners of needs. Dad’s happily settled with nice becomes public, Mum and Dad Jenny, who sorted out the family’s confront their own failure to listen and every province in the Empire - a plot strategy which allows Freestone to domestic chaos of the earlier stories. support; they become the concerned The big moment they are all waiting parents they might have been if not offer a fascinating and varied series Shadowscent: The Darkest of adventures, thus avoiding the for is the arrival of Mum from blinded by political ambition. There to see her sons for the first time since are, of course, consequences still to Bloom one-similar-challenge-after-another HHHHH she walked out in Brock. be played out.... GF structure of too many quest fantasies. P.M. Freestone, Scholastic, 439pp, Theirs is a race against time, and What happens up on those The Disconnect 978 1407 19215 4, £7.99 pbk against the pursuing Imperial threatening moors is entirely credible. HHHHH Rangers. One of the clues is solved A fall and an injury leave Nicky unable Each of the five provinces of the Empire among the manuscripts of the Library to move; McGowan’s avoidance of Keren David, Barrington Stoke, of Aramtesh has its own ruler, culture, melodrama makes things seem all the 978-1781128558, 224pp, £7.99 pbk of the Lost – hewn from the rock resources and language. Each provides of a remote desert. Here a staff of more dangerous. Kenny has to find Esther is aged sixteen, in Year 11 the Emperor with a wife and together assiduous Archivists and Chroniclers strengths in himself he’s never tapped at a London secondary school. She the women form the powerful Council are absorbed by their scholarly before. As with the earlier books, along lives with her mother and step-father. of Five. Religious practices remain an work, untroubled by any interest at with the excitement of the adventure, They own a Middle-Eastern café. Her influence in daily life; different deities all in potential users of the Library. our interest lies in the relationship biological father and her older sister are worshipped or forgotten. There is Even the entrances are deliberately between the brothers and the Rosa live in New York. Rosa has a new a medieval feel to life in the cities; in concealed to discourage visitors. emotional frontiers they cross, together baby named Zach. Esther has seen her the countryside, travellers use horses, Both Rakel and Ash hide secrets and separately. McGowan makes such sister with her child only on photographs camels or maybe river boats and about their own origins and powers, complexity available to his teenage posted to her mobile phone. barges. By contrast, the military, who which they themselves only half readers in a social context where day- A wealthy woman named Irene Irvine maintain law and order, echo Rome in understand. Their search takes them to-day life can be abrasive and emotion makes a generous offer. Any pupil in their discipline, mobility and modes of not only into unfamiliar provinces, but is implicit rather than expressed. Esther’s school year can win £1000 combat; though women serve on equal into new territories within themselves; Chapters are short, adjectives and by refraining from using their smart terms with men. This otherworld of increasingly, they learn from each adverbs are used sparingly. On the phone for six weeks – and providing P.M. Freestone’s debut novel has that other. The narrative demands attentive other hand, Nicky’s strengths as a evidence to support the claim. For depth of credibility and consistency reading; miss half a hint, and you could storyteller include his own inventive, emergencies each contender may necessary for us to believe that this is lose the plot. Quest fantasies risk comic voice: “Kenny was dragging his retain an old fashioned non-smart a land crowded with untold stories. The ending in anticlimax, but here tension feet, going slower than a sloth with phone. Naturally the pupils in Year unique difference between Aramtesh builds towards a finale where mortal three legs walking in treacle.” 11 are attracted to the prospect of and our world – or any fictional world courage is fused with supernatural This novella brings the boys’ story to the money but also terrified. How can we have previously visited – lies in the violence, managed by Freestone with an end, and it does so in a way that anyone survive for six weeks without paramount importance of smells; from remarkable graphic intensity. She also may well surprise and move readers. using a smart phone? the allure of a fragrance to the stench seems to leave two or three doors It is good to learn that the first three Esther decides to enter the of the sewer. A discerning sense of deliberately ajar, suggesting a sequel books are now available in a single competition, hoping to win enough smell is invaluable in everything from which is already mentioned by the 380 page volume from Barrington money to take her to New York. Her two intimate relationships to the realms author on the web. GF Stoke, The Truth of Things. GF

Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 31 Classics in Short No.134 The strange fate of Rip Van Winkle Brian Alderson contemplates unlucky Rip Van Winkle’s encounter with the fairies.

The fairies Although his tale employ several techniques in was not written specifically for children, anaesthetising those so fortunate or its folktale theme placed it firmly within unfortunate as to encounter their the canon and it may be seen as the first ministrations. Look at the famous Sleeping American work to achieve a classic status Beauty (originally known as La Belle au in the children’s literature of that country. Bois Dormant). Pricked on the finger by Its comparative brevity allowed for a spindle she not only fell asleep for a publication as a single, often substantially hundred years but carried the denizens illustrated volume, one of the earliest of the castle with her, all of whom notable editions being produced as an were isolated behind a giant hedge of artistic ‘table book’ with etchings by immediate growth. When eventually the F.O.Darley. spell was lifted everything came to life Undoubtedly though again. The dinner started cooking (a bit off, I imagine), the kitchen boy caught its most famous presentation was as a the clip round the ear that he was due a trend-setting example for the fashionable hundred years before, and the princess Edwardian ‘gift-books’. As such, it also was ashamed that her accoutrements saw the arrival of Arthur Rackham in full were no longer in the height of fashion. fig as a picture-book artist, exhibiting the failings of ‘art’ in the role of illustration. Things were different To begin with the whole affair was an with the little girl in the manuscript story exercise in the making of a book to be from Wilhelm Grimm, converted into Thus it was treasured for its fancy rather than its Dear Millie, the picture book by Maurice literary qualities, being offered in short- that when he awoke next day, as he Sendak. The fairy is the unlikely figure run, large-paper editions, signed by the thought, he found himself in somewhat of St Joseph who looks after the girl, illustrator and with bindings de luxe. changed circumstances. Wolf had escaping from a war, for three days; when In addition though the multiple colour vanished and it seems that the ninepin she returns to her mother she is still a girl plates, were printed by the new method players had made off with his rifle, but thirty years have passed. of three- or four-colour separations. replacing it with a rusty and useless These required the use of a glossy paper And Rip Van Winkle matchlock. What was worse, when he and they were mounted on a thicker made his way home he found himself in was in similar case but not quite the same. paper-stock and divorced from the story a village and among people whom he He was a lackadaisical householder in a bundle at the end of the text. There could not recognise and who regarded living in a New Amsterdam settlement is no denying the brilliance of Rackham’s with suspicion this decrepit long-bearded up in the Catskill Mountains and he was draftsmanship, evident as stunningly stranger who, since it was Election Day, at the mercy of a termagant wife for in his pen drawing as his over-detailed was unwilling to commit himself to being his undomesticated ways. Rather than colour work. But he has lifted poor old either a democrat or a federalist. Nor manage his farm he liked to gossip with Rip out of his unpretentious rural fastness was help to be had at the pub which comrades under the rubicund portrait of into the drawing rooms of the gentry. His Majesty George the Third round the had changed into a new but rickety pub, while to escape ‘the enduring and building, named ‘the Union Hotel’ with Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories is and all-besetting terrors of the woman’s the rubicund King George renamed the published by Puffin Classics, tongue’, he would wander off with his General Washington. Unlike Wilhelm 978-0141330921, £6.99 pbk Grimm’s little girl, both he and the dog Wolf fishing the local streams or Rip Van Winkle illustrated by Arthur world around him had been transformed shooting squirrels. Rackham is published by Pook Press, through the twenty years of his sleep. On one such expedition 978-1447449553, £17.99 hbk he found himself in a little known gulley Rip Van Winkle where he was surprised to be accosted by arrived on the scene in 1819-20 in a name by ‘a short, square-built old fellow, two-volume collection of essays by the with thick bushy hair and a grizzled beard, American author Washington Irving, who was bearing a heavy keg of liquor. writing under a pseudonym as The Rip, who was a friendly chap, offered Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. help and the two of them ended up in ‘a The story was twinned by a second one, hollow like a small amphitheatre’ where The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and they Brian Alderson is founder of the there was a group of solemn and similarly were in fact written in England where Children’s Books History Society clad old gents, playing at ninepins. They Irving was living at the time. Although and a former Children’s Books Editor for refreshed themselves with the contents first published in America they were The Times. His book The Ladybird Story: of the keg, which were also much to the quickly followed by a London edition Children’s Books for Everyone, liking of Rip, and before long he could not which Irving published to protect his The British Library, 978-0712357289, help it but slumber overtook him. British copyright. £25.00 hbk, is out now.

32 Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019