Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow
Snow’s drawings suggest a Dickensian town, and his caricatures with their gormless faces and his lovingly rendered machinery make this book (now a website and film) as much fun to look at as it is to read. NICOLETTE JONES
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reviews Odin's Voice by Susan Price:
This is harder, edgier, nastier than Price’s Sterkarm trilogy, with none of the comforting shimmer of magic and romance left over from the author’s forays into fairytales. Instead of corporate betrayal and manipulation, there is a strong sense of how untrustworthy girls can be to each other, pretending to be best friends while working to a different game-plan. By the end you care about both girls and hope they succeed in the promised sequels....
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
The deserving winner of the Macmillan prize for new illustration, Wolves uses a delightful melange of skilful drawing with a big soft pencil, textured gouache expressing rabbit fur, simple but cleverly self-referential text, and collage that includes a library ticket and a letter from the library (which can be extracted respectively from a pocket and an envelope). NICOLETTE JONES
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
KING MATT THE FIRST
by Janusz Korczak
"Challenging in its detailed exploration of cause and effect, and of strategy and diplomacy, this remarkable period curiosity still invites children to think for themselves." NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Don't go into the cave
Mark Lawson reviews Hawkes Harbor, S. E. Hinton's first novel for 17 years:
Apart from two short picture books for kindergarten children, Hawkes Harbor is the writer's first publication for 17 years, and she's now keen to broaden her appeal. This is billed as her first adult fiction, and a note on her website even warns adolescents against it. Not discovering this stipulation until after finishing the book, I was surprised by it. Hawkes Harbor has many classic elements of teenage fiction: the hero, Jamie Sommers, is an orphan who goes to sea and has adventures with pirates and a shark. While he also has sex with a number of young men, the encounters are described no more graphically than in the adolescent fiction of Judy Blume, and there's soon a crucial scene in which Jamie finds himself cold and frightened in a cave where he makes a terrifying discovery. The scouts' honour of book reviewers demands that Jamie's find in the cave should not be given away but, for this reader, it was of a nature that pushes the book even closer to the children's fiction shelves. It's enough to say that what comes out of the cave admits the novel to a certain gothic genre which, although it has attracted grown-up authors, is most credible in juvenile writing.
Highly recommended review...
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
It is hard to imagine anything more distracting than Singer’s descriptions of Cassina’s entry into other characters’ brains, and on one occasion her father’s lungs. This literal interpretation of the notion of empathy is a testament to the inadequacy of good intentions, turning the novel into a whimsical exercise that cannot be taken seriously...
A review of Nicky Singer's The Innocent's Story
Independent Online Edition > Reviews : app3
The Independent on Sunday ran a 'children's books special' yesterday which included:
a teen reviewer, Edward Malnick, reviewing teen fiction, and fining Kevin Brooks' Candy 'scarily convincing', Get Real by Mimi Thebo patronising and Riding Tycho by Jan Mark requiring 'strong concnetration'
Felix Reade reviewing fantasy and finding The Opal Deception lacking 'the imagination and originality of the previous Artemis Fowl books',Kate Thompson's The New Policeman 'beautifully original', K. M. Peyton's Greater Gains a 'fantastic read', while Angie Sage's Septimus Heap - Magyck did not impress - " I would not recommend this book to many, but for six- to nine-year olds (who do not recognise and therefore do not instantly dislike the clichés), it could be interesting."
Suzie Feay reviewing Tersias by G. P. Taylor and finding him excelling at metaphysical terror despite various lapses in style - "He is superb at creating atmosphere, so he can be forgiven his occasional adjectival and adverbial excesses and the odd gothic cliché. What can't so easily be forgiven, in his editor at least, is a clumsy mix-up of sliver and slither: "searching within for the strength to smash it to the ground and crush every slither of timber to the dust". It's maddening to see such an error in a book aimed at children."
Boyd Tonkin selecting 'Ten Best Books For Under-5's' and making This Little Baby by Sandra Lousada his No.1 choice
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Gardner’s is a tale of accelerated growing up, a drama of suffering and fear, loyalty and first love, all played out against a background of rich period detail. It is also the story of the growing pains of a nation — Britain — that went through its own fundamentalist phase. NICOLETTE JONES
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig, reviewing Raven's Gate by Anthony Horowitz
I find Alex Rider’s gadgetry more thrilling than precognition, and whenever this author plays to his strengths rather than describing mystical powers, the story rises another notch. It takes half the book before the tension explodes into the sort of chase scenes that makes this author a favourite with boys — but it is worth it... ...
