Reviews: December 2005 Archives

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Happily ever after

Readers of ACHUKAREVIEWS already know that DIna Rabinovitch thinks The Fairy Tales by Jan Pienkowski is the best collection of fairy tales of her time. In this Guardian piece she expands, at length, on why:

This is a book that children will want to read and touch, and from which they will absorb story-telling as if by osmosis. That is why it matters that such a collection as this exists. These retellings of folklore are the ABC of storytelling, and not to have a collection that can be cherished and can light the imagination is to miss out on the alphabet of creativity. Because there is a line to childhood that stretches back from today's kids with their backpacks traveling between two homes, through yesterday's evacuees, all the way to Hansel and Gretel dropping white pebbles along a path to light the way when grown-ups can't be trusted.

Telegraph | Arts | From poetry to periods

Dinah Hall's roundup in the Sunday Telgraph (Dec 13) is now online:

Teen Fiction

8 - 11 Fiction

Picture Books

The Globe and Mail: Meet Mr. Narnia

A review of The Narnian by Alan Jacobs:

eminently readable and thorough biography of Lewis

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | It took him years to write ...

Stephanie Merritt takes a look at Paul McCartney's anti-capitalist children's book, High in the Clouds

Scotsman.com News - Features - Top teen countdown

My Top Ten Teen/YA reads, as published in The Sctosman today. The piece also includes full reviews of Clay by David Almond and The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean.

TOP TEN 2005
1) Clay by David Almond (Hodder)
2) Tamar by Mal Peet (Walker Books)
3) Time Bomb by Nigel Hinton (Puffin)
4) Bloodsong by Melvin Burgess (Andersen Press)
5) Mudlark by John Sedden (Puffin Books)
6) The Wild by Matt Whyman (Hodder)
7) Candy by Kevin Brooks (Chicken House)
8) Face Value by Catherine Johnson (Oxford University Press)
9) Zoo by Graham Marks (Bloomsbury)
10) The Electric Telepath by Jan Mark (Definitions)

Christmas Books

Reviews of Christmas-themed books from the Washington Post

The Observer | Review | Books of the year: teenage fiction

Geraldine Bedell, in The Observer, praises the new novels by Frank Cottrell Boyce and David Almond.

All wrapped up for Christmas - Sunday Times - Times Online

I'm not quite sure how I omitted Nicolette Jones's end-of-year roundup in the Sunday Times last week, but here it is a week late.

Her recommendations for older readers include one for the new book by Patrick Cave, who is now contributing to achukareviews:

Challenging for young adults is the sequel to Sharp North, Patrick Cave’s futuristic fantasy. Blown Away (Simon & Schuster £12.99)about concerns danger and desire in a world of cloning and conflict, wasted by global warming. It keeps readers guessing as three separate narratives reach a satisfying connectedness in a story that is hip, sophisticated and compulsive.

Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times

Amanda Craig reviews Inkspell by Cornelia Funke:

Inkspell isn’t a book to recommend to every child. It is a novel of complex ideas, for a reader already in love with literature....

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The Innocent's Story by Nicky Singer

Diane Samuels finds that Nicky Singer's new novel, The Innocent's Story, never takes off:

The many passages describing the firing of the synapses of the brain become repetitive. The result is a stilted and claustrophobic atmosphere that makes reading the first hundred pages a chore. The second hundred pages become more intriguing, especially towards the end, but the story never quite takes off or carries the reader with it... I longed for relief from so many passages of prosaic point-raising and of being told flatly what was happening rather than being allowed to experience it with the characters...

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: Flush by Carl Hiaasen

Frank Cottrell Boyce reviews Flush by Carl Hiaasen

...You don't come across many political novels these days and when you do, you're often glad that there aren't more of them. But Hiaasen has somehow pulled it off, and I've been enviously trying to figure out his secret. The plot is tight and nippy, with a couple of good twists at the end. All of the characters are beguilingly convincing.... ...

Independent Online Edition > Features

Brandon Robshaw's review of teenage fiction in The Independent...

Carl Hiaasen's Flush "there's a repetiveness about the narration, a stressing of points that the reader already knows, which becomes irritating after a while"

Andy McNab's Payback "The style seldom rises above the competent, but it doesn't need to for this genre of book - it works entirely on gripping plot and authenticity."

Melvin Burgess's Bloodsong "It's a dirty, messy, sticky read. "

David Almond's Clay " weird, haunting novel for teenagers, the kind of novel Graham Greene might have produced if he'd written for this age-group."

Helen Dunmore's Ingo "all wildly implausible, but so gracefully written that one suspends disbelief not just willingly but eagerly."

Adele Geras's Ithaka "I found something to irritate me on every page."

and Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness "This is a literary novel of superb technique, and has more real excitement than any amount of shoot-'em-up action stories. The White Darkness is as good as it gets. "

350 Years of What the Kids Heard - New York Times

New York Times piece on 2471pp-long Norton Anthology of Children's Literature

It's a huge event, a real arrival of children's literature in academic studies," said John Cech, director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Although the academic study of children's literature is an exploding field, there are only a handful of Ph.D. programs in children's literature in English departments. One purpose of the anthology, said Mr. Zipes, is to encourage departments to add courses.

Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times

Brief rounduip recommendations in The Times