Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Making fiction about the Holocaust is always problematic. Authors who exploit the event primarily to invest their work with importance are beneath contempt. Yet, occasionally, solutions to the challenging question of how a children’s book might be produced on this subject do add to the empathy of a new generation without being a travesty. NICOLETTE JONES
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig has fine things to say about Seven For A Secret by Laurence Anholt and Jim Coplestone
Anholt’s bestselling Chimp and Zee books, and his dramatisations of the lives of Picasso, Degas and Monet, were outstanding in showing a child’s- eye view of family life and art, but this has a new depth...
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Mongrels and rabbits, witches and fairies
Julia Eccleshare recommends some recent titles for different agaegroups for World Book Day
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Avaunt, fuddy-duddies
Philip Ardagh reviews Peter And The Starchatchers in Tbe Guardian (a second week with children's books squeezed into a part-page)
When it comes to language, the authors play fast and loose with period and culture, too. We have a "gesundheit" and a "git" in there somewhere. But why should Barry and Pearson worry? It's not their job to satisfy us fuddy-duddies who were brought up on the wonderfully English middle-class diet of being taken to see Peter Pan in the West End every Christmas. They are out to appeal to a different audience. And the book goes to ingenious lengths to explain and establish all aspects of Peter Pan's later world, with which we're familiar. It is also very moving.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
the volume bursts with enthusiasm and apercus, undoubtedly offering something for everyone – and something for everyone to dislike, too...
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig is wrong about Alaizabel Cray being Chris Wooding's 'debut', but she's right to identify the realtionship between Storm Thief's main characters as a key element in his latest title's success:
Not everybody likes fantasies which combine dizzying imaginative detail with action-adventure, but for kids who find fiction second-best to PlayStation games, Wooding is ideal. His debut, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, went about as far as you could go in macabre fantasy without losing a young audience to full-blown horror; but what makes Storm Thief particularly appealing is the relationship between Rail and Moa....
Scotsman.com News - Features - Dangerous terrain
Dangerous terrain
TEEN FICTION
My latest batch of teen fiction reviews from last Saturday's Scotsman...
see also Kathryn Ross's roundup of younger fiction
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: Something Invisible by Siobhan Parkinson
Adele Geras appreciates the brivity of Something Invisible by Siobhan Parkinson:
Something Invisible is a very short book. There's a lot to be said for short books, and as far as children are concerned, in spite of the reading stamina that recent hugely fat fantasies have developed in the young, short is good.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
The Extraordinary Adventures Of Horatio Lyle by Catherine Webb
Defying current clich?of children’s fiction, the novel has evil forces that believe in restoring the planet to its natural state — even if that means murdering people — while the hero has faith in the industrical revolution and the potential of technology. Lyle is assisted in his helter-skelter adventure by a wealthy youth and by Tess, a delightfully cheeky child thief. Best of all is the detailed evocation of Victorian London. NICOLETTE JONES
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reviews the following titles, seeing signs that cats are newly ascendant over dogs in terms of children's fiction:
Lionboy (Lionboy: The Truth, Puffin), hot on the heels of S. F Said’s Smarties prize-prize-winning series about the fighting cat Varjak Paw (The Outlaw Varjak Paw, David Fickling), Kate Saunders’s Cat and the Stinkwater War (Macmillan), the hugely popular Warrior Cats series by Erin Hunter (Fire and Ice, HarperCollins) and Cat Kin (Lulu Press), an excellent debut by Nick Green
Andrew Cunningham, reviewing the book in The Telegraph on Saturday, welcomed the The Ultimate Teen Book Guide but voiced regrets over its length, the lack of colour inside and some of the wince-inducing commentary:
The guide's worst failing is the matey, mock-teenage tone too many of its adult reviewers affect. There's nothing teenagers despise more than adults trying to talk their language. One of the biggest offenders is Catherine Robinson, who peppers reviews with slangy terms stuffed with phoney teen-appeal, such as "seriously cool stuff!" and "lurve". Her comments on Rebecca (definitely in my all-time top 10) are particularly cringe-making: "One of my fave books ever - and if the ending doesn't leave you open-mouthed with disbelief… I'll eat my PC!"
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
This is certainly a book to look at and talk about before making your own versions of its maps. And, incidentally, it teaches children about basic counting, family relationships, colours and colour mixes, the meaning of traffic lights, the points of the compass and the language of a dog’s tail.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Filling in the Holes story
Josh Lacey reviews Small Steps, Louis Sachar's sequel to Holes...
The characters of Holes are complicated and contradictory; the prose is terse and witty and almost arrogantly self-confident; the plot is multi-layered, dodging back and forth in time and place, often forcing the reader to scamper desperately after the action, trying to catch up. Small Steps is more straightforward in every way. It's not as sophisticated or fascinating as Holes - but not many novels are.
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reviews Blood Fever, the new 'Young Bond' title from Charlie Higson
Amanda Craig thinks that Anthony Horowitz's "inventiveness, wit, plotting and characterisations set a standard that is practically impossible for any children’s thriller writer to match" - so hard luck, Charlie Higson, you simply don't compare!
what is missing is a taut style, a plot that makes sense, a character that readers get involved with and a genuine sense of menace. At 372 pages, Blood Fever is too long, padded with unnecessary conversations and leaden cliche...
