Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Lizzie Nonsense by Jan Ormerod
Set in Australia around 1900, this picturebook is notable for Jan Ormerod?s atmospheric landscapes and figure drawings. In crayon, watercolour and gouache, with a skilful and immensely satisfying pencil line, they convey dazzling sunshine, autumnal softness, interiors lit by oil lamps, and faces and bodies that express patience, playfulness, anxiety, hope and, above all, tenderness. NICOLETTE JONES
A select group of junior reviewers write about a random group of good reads.
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Clarice Bean Spells Trouble by Lauren Child
What Bridget Jones is to thirtysomethings, Clarice Bean is to pre-teens: full of funny one-liners, doing her best to overcome her shortcomings, prone to embarrassing mistakes and good at heart. NICOLETTE JONES
Amanda Craig is disappointed by The Gruffalo's Child:
Unlike the first book, there is nobody really to root for. Children want to be on the side of the Gruffalo?s Child because she?s one of them right up until the moment that she tries to eat the mouse. It needs a further twist to the tale. Despite its charm, this, sadly, is not a worthy sequel to an inspired modern classic.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Of angels and oranges
Diane Samuels reviews Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli:
Milkweed is fresh and vital. The writing is vivid and as funny as it is uncompromising in its depiction of the horrors of life for less-than-humans under the Jackboots.
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Freak The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Suspenseful, touching and swiftly persuasive about its most unusual central characters, this remarkable book takes you through dark territory, but is written with humour and simplicity. It celebrates language, loyalty and imagination, and leaves you smiling. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Retelling the greatest story
Adele Geras reviews In The Shadow Of The Ark by Anne Provoost:
This may not be entirely a young adult's novel. Some teenagers will find it too slow and may decide that not enough happens on the way to the possible end of the world, but for those who don't demand a whizz-bang book every single time, there's much here to remember.
Once again the Guardian online review shows the US not the UK jacket, which makes Geras's comment that the "young woman on the cover could perhaps have been a little more Middle Eastern in appearance" difficult for the online reader to take a view on.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Really ab fab
Philip Ardagh is mightily impressed by Martine Murray's The SLightly True Story Of Cedar B. Hartley:
Part of me wants to keep it to myself, buying it for family and friends as a special treat, as "our secret". Part of me wants to shout its brilliance from the roof tops.
Slightly annoying for the book's UK publisher, Macmillan, The Guardian's review shows the US Scholastic cover, and (unless now corrected) links to Amazon's purchase page for the American edition.
Our link points to the UK edition.
SavannahNOW | Book delves into too dark a place - 09/04/2004
An Egg on Three Sticks makes a lasting impression, but why should a young adult mind go to such a desolate place?
Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver
adapted by Martin Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Riddell
This handsome book must be the year?s most impressive illustrative feat. NICOLETTE JONES
Two new novels, by the former children?s laureate Anne Fine and the enthralling Sally Prue, explore family loyalties and courage, and the relationship between God and man while placing their heroes in vaudeville settings. Both have resulted in novels of touching, startling hilarity, originality and depth. AMANDA CRAIG
