Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound by John Irving illus Tatjana Hauptmann
...has a curious and poignant text, made even more interesting by Hauptmann’s expertly pencil-drawn illustrations, which take the daring path of expressing the mood of the story without exactly depicting the action. NICOLETTE JONES
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
This is a classic new novel by an author who has written a rich fairytale for our times. AMANDA CRAIG
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | A peculiar brilliance
...What stands out in Chaney's account is how much he needed to be seen in relation to other people; to his mother, to Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, to her sons, and eventually to his secretary, Cynthia Asquith, with whom he reprised his relationship with Sylvia. He emerges as a strangely vampiric figure who fed off the energies of those around him and could not love without needing to possess...
from a review of Hide And Seek WIth Angels: A Life Of J M Barrie by Lisa Chaney
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Into the gloom
It is difficult not to think that, rich and adored, JK Rowling's gusto has gone. Now she is just, like her hero, set on completing the grand scheme. Into the gloom she is determined to take all those devoted readers.
John Mullan, senior lecturuer in English at University College London, writes an extended review of Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince in The Guardian.
Highly recommended
Harry and a glimpse of love - The Herald
Reviwwing HP6 for last week's Glasgow Herald, Julie Bertagna cannot help but see parallels with pomp rock bands of the 1970s:
... ... [the now book] got me thinking of pomp rock bands of the 1970s. The bigger they got, the more inflated the songs. Once they started on 13-minute guitar solos, it was time to find punk. At the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow this summer, I'm speaking at an event that asks: "Has Harry Potter Set Children's Fiction Back 50 Years?" The paradox is that an essentially old-fashioned story has become an unparalleled phenomenon via the modern wizardry of the most brilliantly inspired, unconventional, expensive and ruthless global marketing pomp the publishing world has ever seen. Harry might vanquish Voldemort, but what about the pomp? In HP7, I'll be rooting for him to find some punk.
The Observer | Review | Museums: Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre
Kate Kellaway gives her verdict on the Dahl museum in The Observer...
Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince by J K Rowling - Sunday Times - Times Online
Nicolette Jones reviews HP#6, and prefers it to #5:
It is impressive, given the unprecedented pressure that Rowling is under to sustain a sequence that she planned in obscurity, that she maintains its emotional energy, humour and the many spinning plates of its plot without showing the strain. There will always be those who say that Harry Potter, measured against Great Literature, is not worth the hoo-hah. But the hoo-hah is born of genuine enjoyment, and those who have enjoyed the first five volumes can’t possibly abandon the story now. Rather than miss this, most enthusiasts would, as Peeves the Poltergeist urges in the book, set fire to their own pants.
Who knows what lies beneath? - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig is impressed by the domestic comedy contained in Troll Mill, Katherine Langrish's sequel to Troll Fell:
One of the many things I love about this writer is the way that she allows for the possibility not only of magic but of reality, which is much harder for children to grasp.
Dinah Hall's summer roundup appeared in Sunday's Telegraph, containing this persuasive endorsement of Julia Green's latest novel, Hunter's Heart:
Of all the books I’ve read this year Hunter’s Heart by Julia Green (Puffin, £4.99), with its undertow of menace and superb portrait of male adolescence, was the one that truly got under my skin... ... For mature twelve to sixteen year olds – and any mothers wanting insight in to the psyche of teenage boys.
Also, in yesterday's (Monday's) Evening Standard, Hall reviewed Malorie Blackman's Checkmate. In an excellent, broadly positive single-title review, she took Blackman's editor to task for allowing some flaccid figurative writing occasionally to stall the narrative flow:
Blackman is a terrific thriller writer, driving her plots forward with skill and tenacity. It’s only when she occasionally pauses to admire the view, and throws in a badly turned simile, that the prose skids to a halt. How did a sentence like “my lower jaw hanging like a limp piece of wet lettuce” ever get past the red pen? Would that be Little Gem or Cos? you find yourself wondering. And I fear Blackman’s description of Sephy’s first sexual experience – a “single dazzling rocket bursting into a shower of silvery lights… followed by a whole volley of rockets one after another after another” - will be setting up more than a few teenage girls for disappointment.
This is good, critical reviewing at its best.
Children: High days and holidays - Sunday Times - Times Online
Nicolette Jones' summer roundup in the Sunday Times includes a recommendation for Boy2Girl by Terence Blacker, just out in paperback
Terence Blacker’s sharp-witted and contemporary Boy2Girl (Macmillan £4.99) for 11+ relates what unpredictable things happen when a new American boy at an English secondary school passes himself off as a girl for a dare. Under the humorous surface it is thoughtful and revealing about identity and relationships.
I've just read Blacker's latest children's novel, Parent Swap, which among other things is a bitingly satirical take on reality TV and is also both very funny and thought-provoking.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: Permanent Rose by Hilary McKay
In yesterday's Guardian, Diana Wynne Jones was depressed by Hilary McKay's Permanent Rose
As this is supposed to be a funny book, any distress is glossed over. At the bad times, we are told that the family is "stressed" or "arguing" or both, but no more. And Rose's actual name, the Permanent Rose of the title, is said at the end to be "A promise". I wonder why? Nothing has substantially changed. No guidance has been given. As a child of a dysfunctional family myself, I found it truly depressing.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week
Nicolette Jones has her qualms swept away by Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
Somewhere under the wild, rebellious surface are reactionary values: killing makes you feel bad, but sometimes it is appropriate revenge; mothers who make cookies are the ideal; prayer helps. But this skilled and compulsive tale is so involving about kids being brave against the odds that it sweeps away any qualms.... NICOLETTE JONES
Personal demons - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig reviews the latest crop of fantasy fiction, including Lord Loss by Darren Shan - "not for children under 12, and those who do read it should be immune to nightmares"
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
Jan Mark reviews The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
There is something hallucinatory, if not delirious, about this stylish, magical book, the sensation of tenuous recognition, of watching a dream slip away after waking. Then there is the fiddling - every chapter ends with appropriate sheet music for dance tunes - the prevalence of goats, any one of which might turn out to be a púka (member of the devil class, according to O'Brien), the ominous shadow of transience that always takes the young unawares, the air of intangible melancholy, all preserved from any suspicion of whimsy by the matter-of-fact voice of the author, her robust sense of fun, and the sheer energy of her writing.
