ACHUKA: September 2003 Archives

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Tests are making children hate books, warns Pullman

"The award-winning children's author Philip Pullman today launches a broadside against the government's "brutal" school testing regime, warning that it is creating a generation of children who hate reading and "feel nothing but hostility for literature".

"Writing in Guardian Education, the author of the acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy attacks a lack of focus on enjoyment in the teaching of reading and writing. Drilling to meet the demands of tests makes children's writing "empty, conventional and worthless", he says."

Read Pullman's article...

Times Online - Sunday Times

Voyages Through Time: The Biginning by Peter Ackroyd

Escape From Earth

"...not just sound-bite snacks for short attention spans, but unfolding feasts that leave you with a sense of wonder that, in the mind-boggling span of the universe, you are there at all to read them." NICOLETTE JONES, ST

SpyHigh Episode 1: The Frankenstein Factory by A.J. Butcher

Series titles are not often reviewed in the print press, so the author of SpyHigh will be pleased to discover an online recommendation for the the first two title in the series:

"There are hints of romance, lots of gadgetry to keep the boys interested and a nicely paced plot. With potentially intriguing character traits in the characters that promise some revealing moments in later novels the book sets up the series well."

The most recent title is #4, The Paranoia Plot

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The Fire-Eaters by David Almond

Jan Mark reviews David Almond's The Fire Eaters

"...beautifully written, and polished to a lapidary gloss. It reads less like a novel than a memoir, reserved and distant, a record of events so skilfully arranged that everything shows to advantage. Everyone is invested with dignity, the most commonplace remark is rendered poetic. There are heroes, villains and martyrs, but no idiots."

What message, one wonders, is to be drawn from the timing of this review (less than a week ahead of the public announcement of the winner of The Guardian Children's Fiction Award, for which Almond's book is one of the four shortlisted titles)?

Everybody must get 'Stones'

"According to the Massachusetts Film Bureau, production on "Lemony Snicket" based on a series of children's books and starring Jim Carrey, will begin in Marblehead the end of October..."

Simon & Schuster Announces Recall of Children's Books

"Simon & Schuster Canada is voluntarily recalling about 1000 copies of the children's board book DORA THE EXPLORER: Whose Birthday Is It? The book is manufactured with a plastic replica balloon that can detach, posing a choking hazard to young children... ..."

EveningNews24: News

"Last October, the Evening News reported how city children's author Joyce Dunbar had had her porch destroyed twice in one year by cars mounting the pavement. Norwich City Council responded to her complaints by fitting the bollards... Mrs Dunbar said she was pleased with the improvements but wished drivers were more responsible."

Times Online - Sunday Times

Predator's Gold by Philip Reeve

"This inventive fantasy involves rich characters including a smug bestselling writer of a fake explorer?s memoirs, a tribe of lost boys trained as burglars and manipulated by a Faginesque sadist, dangerous experiments in resurrection that create murderous monsters, nail-biting pursuits, terrible punishments and violent battles. It is also insightful about human emotions ?- from love and parental loss to what it feels like to kill another person." NICOLETTE JONES, ST

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The Silver Child by Cliff McNish

Philip Ardagh reviews the new book by Cliff McNish in Saturday's Guardian Review:

"The Silver Child is an odd book, one in which words often seem deliberately and wonderfully incongruous. It's also thought-provoking, heart-warming, not too long and, in its current form, has a remarkable cover that seems to change colour when the mood takes it. What more can I tell you?"

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | A red sweater day

I buy so many weekend papers it's sometimes midweek before I get to some of the sections, so it was only late last night that I came across this review of The Life and Works of Alfred Bestall: Illustrator of Rupert Bear by Caroline G. Bott in The Observer:

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"Bott, who is Bestall's goddaughter and inherited the vast majority of his early work ('You will have to have a huge bonfire,' he told her, unassuming to the last) has done a diligent job. She has logged every available detail of his 93 years on the planet; she has included long extracts from his journals; and she has produced a 35-page appendix listing every single piece of art he ever produced, plus fee. The truth is, however, that AEB's life (the 'E', wonderfully, is for Edmeades) was quiet almost to the point of inaudibility..."

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Robert Cormier's novels are still causing controversy. Here's an article about someone calling for the withdrawal of We All Fall down from an American High School curriculum.

News

"The brand management group Chorion, which has owned and managed the rights to Enid Blyton's output since 1996, has announced a deal giving Five the first rights to participate in the production of any new television programmes..."

ThisisLondon

"Madonna has explained that she was driven to write these stories because when she came to read to her son Rocco, she found that children's books were all about princes and princesses and happy endings, and never about anybody "struggling for things". She must have got them from an antique shop. Children's literature today, even for the very young, majors on broken families, inner-city deprivation, handicap, and bereavement, as every parent knows."

Telegraph | News | Once upon a time there was a pop star . . .

Lengthy report, with full-length picture of Madonna at the event.

The Scotsman - Entertainment - Madonna launch

"Guests who attended the tea party, many of whom had brought their own children, included author Martin Amis, designer Linda Barker, chef Gary Rhodes and Nigella Lawson... ..."

Adele Geras's review of Stratford Boys by Jan Mark from the Review section of The Guardian yesterday:
Guardian Review

"Am-dram frustrations and mishaps abound, but you never forget how magical the theatre can be. For anyone who does know their Shakespeare, echoes from the plays are scattered everywhere. Anyone who doesn't couldn't wish for a better way to get acquainted with young Will. This is a hugely enjoyable and dazzlingly clever novel."

Times Online - Sunday Times

Indigo's Star by Hilary McKay

"Great jokes, irresistible characters and emotional conviction make this skilled and delightfully whimsical book unmissable." NICOLETTE JONES, ST

EducationGuardian.co.uk | eG weekly | Well read

Claire Armistead reports on the comments made about books on the Guardian longlist, by readers who entered the paper's children's book reviewing competition.

Recommended reading.

CBC News:Christie's awards year's best kids books

Report on presentations.

For her, writing comes naturally | csmonitor.com

Profile of Jean Craighead George, author of Julie of the Wolves

Times Online - Sunday Times

Ryland's Footsteps by Sally Prue

"...a dramatic adventure in a powerfully imagined setting, which follows youngsters through dangers involving a drifting raft, a shark attack, an armed uprising, fire, earthquake and paternal bad moods."

Three titles have been dropped from the Guardian Longlist, leaving a shortlist
of four. Simon French, Keith Gray, Marcus Sedgwick and Jean Ure were the omitted authors.
The four remaining titles are:

There was a big celeb-style profile of Georgia Byng in The Telegraph Magazine, Saturday 6th September, to tie in with publication of her second Molly Moon book, Molly Moon Stops The World.

Times Review by Amanda Craig
of Stratford Boys by Jan Mark:
"...You can read it because it makes vivid a hundred details about life in Tudor England, or you can read it because it brims with the love of our greatest writer, and doesn?t treat him too reverently. Either way, it is a joy."

Follow Me Down
Follow Me Down by Julie Hearn reviewed by Jan Mark:
"Writing as vital and evocative as this can stand alone without a supernatural crutch to prop it up."

Sisterland
Sisterland by Linda Newbery reviewed bu Diane Samuels:
"Linda Newbery might have done better to focus more heavily on the intricacies of the present than let herself get quite so entangled with the particulars of the past."

Three Novels
Three more novels -- Ryland's Footsteps by Sally Prue ("challenging stuff"); Small Gains by KM Peyton ("a wonderfully romantic story told by a feisty teenage girl"); and The Braves by David Klass ("a gripping account of the churning complexities of adolescence") -- reviewed more briefly by Julia Eccleshare.

Phew! Made the self-imposed deadline (6pm), more or less - though we were still deleting old files as new ones were uploaded. Must wait now to see what the reaction is. No messages on the TagBoard yet, so too early to say.

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