I'm grateful to 'brillbex' for alerting me to the fact that I missed - before I went away - this Nick Tucker review (of teenage fiction) in The Independent from a fortnight ago...
Reviews: October 2004 Archives
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Illustrated books: Oct 24
Kate Kellaway reviews a batch of piture books featuring father-son relationships...
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Young adult fiction: Oct 24
Hephzibah Anderson, in last Sunday's Observer, was less than excited by a batch of recent 'crossover' novels, saying of Charmian Hussey's The Valley Of Secrets, for example: "The prose lacks sparkle, however. There is something stubbornly one-dimensional about its simplicity, something fogeyish about its reactionary retreat into a rural idyll."
Recommended
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | His master's voice
Nicola Morgan reviews Frozen Billy by Anne Fine:
"Frozen Billy is a charming story. The opening led me to expect something more sinister, but that may be my horror of wooden dolls that talk through clacking red mouths. If you share my fears, fear not - Frozen Billy is soft at heart."
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Hooray for the hearth-sprite
Jan Mark reviews Troll Fell by Katherine Langrish:
The trolls are fun, the children are brave, the villains hissable and the plot involving, but Langrish's talent lies with what the late Katherine Briggs would have included in the term "fairies".
Amana Craig reviews Going Postal by Terry Pratchett:
Pratchett, contrary to what his detractors say, doesn?t offer escapism. His world, increasingly subtle and thoughtful, has become as allegorical and satirical as a painting by Bosch.
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Children Of The Lamp: The Akhenaten Adventure by P. B. Kerr
"ingenious, but with perhaps more smart than heart" NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Squaring up to the Troubles
Keith Gray reviews Alan Gibbons:
At a time when many writers for young people are determined to play down "issues" in their fiction, Gibbons seems to relish hitting them head on. His thrillers are guaranteed to keep the reader flipping the pages, but also to make them tackle subjects they may initially have shied away from.
LeGuin returns to young adult fiction with 'Gifts'
A review of Gifts, the new YA book by Ursula LeGuin.
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
The Little Gentleman by Philippa Pearce
Typically for Pearce, this is not only a story of page-turning compulsiveness, written with elegance and wisdom, but is also rich in history. Pearce?s powers certainly have not lessened. NICOLETTE JONES
see entry for October 15th for pictures of launch event
Times Online - Books
Amanda Craig's latest review in The Times includes recommendation for The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud ["The alternating perspectives between three central characters add depth, detail and humour to the action-packed thrills."]
and for Children of the Lamp by P. B. Kerr ["pure action-packed fun of a kind any child of 9+ will revel in."]
But the review's lead title is a book first published in 1937: My Friend Mr Leakey by J. B. S. Haldane, recently reprinted by Jane Nissen Books. Craig calls it "one of the funniest books yet written for children".
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Light at the end of the tunnel
Jan Mark reviews Philippa Pearce's new book:
a deeply moving meditation on the transience and mutability of childhood, the necessity - indeed, the desirability - of death at the end of a natural span, and on the painful truth that the highest expression of love is not to possess but to relinquish.
see also entry for October 15th...
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Not The End Of The World by Geraldine McCaughrean
This extraordinary novel imagines the ?reality? of Noah?s Ark: what it would be like to be saved while your neighbours and friends drown around you. It evokes the grief, loss and cruelty of the almost complete destruction of mankind, as well as the grimness of a floating zoo... ...NICOLETTE JONES
Haaretz - Israel News - Magic from a block of wood
An Israeli review of a new version of Pinnochio: "Harpatkaotav shel Pinokio" ("The Adventures of Pinocchio") by Carlo Collodi, Penguin, $19.99 [translated into Hebrew from the Italian with an afterword by Anat Spitzen, illustrations by Uri Ashi, Carmel Publishing House, 432 pages, NIS 94]... ...
It could be that English children's books are better than others. It could be that the 20th century, at least at its beginning, did well by children. The talk of misery and making the child miserable became two different things. "Winnie the Pooh" or "The Wind in the Willows" are genuinely fine literature. Yet nevertheless, the father and the mother who read to their children are all too often faced with too easy a choice, "what we ourselves read." No wonder, then, that the most popular children's books among adults, according to The Guardian at least, are the children's books of Enid Blyton, the author of "The Famous Five," which became "The Secret Seven."
Education news?& resources at the Times Educational Supplement
Published a week ago, but now online, my TES review of some recent fantasies...
In the latest issue of TES, Adele Geras reviews poetry anthologies...
Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week
Vivid, frightening and tender, this dark and stimulating allegory has the merit of asking as many questions as it gives answers, yet still reaches a proper resolution. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Lassie, come home!
Call me hypersensitive, tell me that it's me reading the stereotypes into the book and not Leonard writing them, but I felt I was in bed with some very old skeletons here.
MICHAEL ROSEN reviewing A Coyote's In The House by Elmore Leonard
I enjoyed Leonard's book without being unsettled by the observations that Rosen makes in this perceptively allusive review. But that's exactly what an intelligent well-written review should do - alert readers to the faultlines in a book that make it fall short of perfection. All books have these faultlines, so the question always has to be 'How many are there and how fundamental are they?'.
The Guardian should persuade Rosen to become its resident children's book reviewer.
