A review of Cloud World, a debut novel by David Cunningham:
The world is richly imagined and is recognisable as "steam-punk", a sub-genre of speculative fiction where the setting may be anachronistic, but certain alternative mechanical inventions have developed within the period's limitations. The nephologists and ornithopters of Cunningham's universe put Cloud World in the same broad tradition as China Miéville's New Crobuzon Trilogy, and Michael Moorcock's A Nomad of the Timestreams.... ...
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Although slighter than Holes, Small Steps still has Sachar’s familiar ease, intelligence, humour, suspense and humanity.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The Princess and the Pea retold by Lauren Child
Up until now the characters in Lauren Child's books have seemingly been free to wander at will. With her scrawly drawing, her skewed perspective, her riotous use of colour and her magpie habit of borrowing pattern snippets from all over the place, she has created some wonderfully entertaining spreads in which, as in a child's drawing, everything on the page vies for attention. But in her new book, The Princess and the Pea, she takes a new, more focused approach, and has come up with something entirely different....
Joanna Carey writing in Guardian Review about The Princess And The Pea.
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reviews A SIngle Shard by Linda Sue Park
And in The Guardain Julia Eccleshare writes: "There is a charming high-mindedness in A Single Shard as Linda Sue Park recreates the hardship and simplicity of the potter's life at a time when craftsmanship was valued but not rewarded."
This novel has a bleak, low-key opening that may put off impatient children, but an extraordinarily moving and delightful tale develops.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Cyrano by Geraldine McCaughrean
...This book’s strength lies in the poetry of McCaughrean’s language, the period flavour and the elaborate humou... NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Educating Bruno
Kathryn Hughes reviews John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas [see below for link to Boyne's explanation of how he came to wirite the novel]
One of the great triumphs of this book is the way that John Boyne manages the shift in register from the intensely concrete inner world of his child narrator - a place where an elder sister's pigtails or the corner of a bedroom window are branded on your inner eye - to something that borders on fable...
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig finds Uglies by Scott Westerfeld "one of the most original children’s novels, and SF thrillers, I’ve read for years."
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
This is an action adventure with lots of fights but, to Higson’s credit, death, even for the villains, is never trivial, and violence has lingering consequences. Many of the characters are more than stereotypes, with complicated motives and particular eccentricities....
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reflects on the vogue for vampires in recent children's fiction, with special reference to Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and Demons Of The Ocean by Justin Somper, with comments from both authors...
Recommended
VAMPIRES ARE STALKING the charts after a rest in their tombs. With Stephanie Meyer’s debut novel, Twilight, poised for bestsellerdom with its chaste yet intensely erotic description of a teenager’s love-affair with a vampire, Darren Shan’s 12-volume Saga of Darren Shan — of which the latest volume is Sons of Destiny — racing to the big screen and Demons of the Ocean, part of Justin Somper’s Vampirates series one of the top-selling titles of 2005, vampires are suddenly the next big thing.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Conspiracy of girl and gander
Jan Mark finds much to admire in Frances Hardinge's debut novel, Fly By Night, but thinks it lacks narrative drive:
Hardinge is a hugely talented writer of tireless invention and vivid prose. Her scenarios are wonderfully realised, as is the cod history which is not always as hilarious as it first appears, but it is this undisciplined talent which gets in the way of the action. Every incident and description is so embellished with similes and dependent clauses that the narrative is left hanging about like a disconsolate bloke in Miss Selfridge, abandoned outside the fitting rooms while the style lingers to admire itself in the mirror. At best Hardinge's writing puts her up there with Aiken and Leon Garfield in the recreation of an England that never was, but these writers peaked at a time when it was believed that children were not equal to the demands of long books. Now it has been established beyond doubt that they are, it need not be forgotten that they can still appreciate short ones.
For a more positive take on the book, read Mai Lin Li's achukareview...
Philadelphia Inquirer | 01/11/2006 | With 'Small Steps,' author stumbles
An online review of Louis Sachar's Small Steps
the book crashes headfirst into ABC Afterschool Special territory
The Observer | Review | Kate Kellaway: The stuff of nightmares
Kate Kellaway is unsure how children will react to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
after reading, I felt ambivalent. The Holocaust as a subject insists on respect, precludes criticism, prefers silence. It will be interesting to see what children make of it. One thing is clear: this book will not go gently into any good night.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
When A Zeeder Met A Xyder by Malachy Doyle ill. Joel Stewart
The Zeederzoo is female, small, bald and blue; the Xyderzee is male, tall, green and hairy. Both are lonely. This quaintly stylish picturebook is the romantic story of their search for a friend...
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - Book Reviews - Books - Entertainment
Australian review of John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Irish writer John Boyne's fourth novel is the first he has written for children. It's a touching tale of an odd friendship between two boys in horrendous circumstances and a reminder of man's capacity for inhumanity.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Spud Goes Green, The Diary Of My Year As A Greenie by Giles Thaxton
This is a book to inspire new year’s resolutions. It is a comic account of one boy’s resolve to be environmentally friendly, starting with a day in bed on January 2, and graduating over the year to more practical ways of saving the planet. It is rare for good advice to make you laugh... .... NICOLETTE JONES
