Reviews: November 2003 Archives
Jill Slotover reviews fiction
and selects her Top 12 of the Year
Lesley Agnew reviews book-and-toy sets etc.
"there are longueurs where the story seems more like a boardgame than an adventure..."
Amanda Craig has some reservations about Cornelia Funke's Inkheart
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Knight life
Kathryn Hughes reviews the last part of Kevin-Crossley Holland's Arthurian trilogy
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | On message
Eleanor Updale reviews The Opposite of Chocolate by Julie Bertagna and gives it a battering...
Beware the reviewer who begins her review by telling us that her 14-year-old daughter didn't like the book. "She didn't get to the end. She was defeated by pretentious prose and a story that manages to be predictable and unbelievable at the same time." Who is reviewing the book? Mother or daughter? And since the events in the book only begin to stretch credulity as it reaches its dramatic denouement, if the daughter didn't finish it, what exactly did she find unbelievable? We're not told.
Nor are we given any examples of "a wearingly self-conscious writing style". Updale says, "There are too many contorted metaphors, irritating repetitions and clich?s, and time and again the narrative flow is arrested by paragraphs pointing up the messages." Such criticism would carry more weight if it were accompanied by a sample of a contorted metaphor or irritating repetition.
It is quite clear from reading this review that Updale has read the book with a bee in her bonnet about 'issue-led' fiction ("grim, didactic psychobabble that has dominated teenage fiction for too long"), and as a result completely misread this particular novel, which is not in any way intended as a work of social documentary realism.
Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week
The Blood Stone by Jamila Gavin
"compelling about trust, sacrifice, patience, property and self- knowledge... ..." NICOLETTE JONE
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Diana Wynne Jones reviews Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
"I don't think I've ever read anything that conveys so well the joys, terrors and pitfalls of reading.... ..."
New children's picture books - www.smh.com.au
Australian picture book reviews in Sydney Morning Herald include this rave for The Cat Who Got Carried Away by Allan Ahlberg and Katherine McEwen
"Like Bob Graham, Ahlberg beautifully expresses the extraordinary in "normal" family life. Divided into bite-sized chapters and sprinkled with pictures as gaily as cake dotted with hundreds and thousands, kind yet sharp, clever yet lucid, charming yet never saccharine, this is about as perfect as a picture book gets."
"Madonna's second book is more likeable than her first..." says NICOLETTE JONES, selecting it as her Sunday Times Book of the Week.
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Net gains
"With a footballing hero on an Arthurian quest, Keeper by Mal Peet is a cracking story, says Jan Mark..."
"Beautifully written and gloriously good-hearted, Pirates! is a treasure of a book to give to any girl or boy, says Amanda Craig..."
Salon.com Life | Madonna the conformist
'Her second awful children's book, "Mr. Peabody's Apples," is a finger-wagging, moralistic tale that condemns a kid to permanent guilt for a very minor sin.'
Emily Jenkins reviews Madonna's new book in Salon (you'll need to be a subscriber or get a free day pass to read the full piece).
USATODAY.com - 'Apples' is a bruise on Madonna's new career
"a dreary, heavy-handed tale about the importance of finding the truth before spreading stories... ..."
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Puffin, normally punctilious about posting ACHUKA review copies, have not yet sent us a copy of Mr Peabody's Apples. Come to that, we never got to see the first book either. I actually quite like the sound of the story as described in this review.
Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean
"a book for cool kids who will grow up to be fearless" NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | The renaissance of children's non-fiction
"Once upon a time children's non-fiction was dull, poorly written and uninspiring. Not any more, says Nicola Morgan... ..."
The Village Voice: Features: The Essay: Mama Don't Preach by Mollie Wilson
"The fact that Apples is badly written is no surprise, and probably is of no consequence, but nevertheless the book is much worse than it has any right to be... ..."
"In her introduction, Madonna explains that Mr. Peabody's Apples is based on a 300-year-old Ukrainian tale called The Baad Shem Tov. She says her instructor in Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, first turned her on to the story, which aims to demonstrate the power of words... "
THE KING OF CAPRI
By Jeanette Winterson
Bloomsbury, ?10.99; 32pp
THE SNAIL AND WHALE
By Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler
Macmillan, ?10.99; 32pp
