Reviews: April 2006 Archives

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

There used to be those hoardings welcoming you to Catherine Cookson and James Herriot Country, but I doubt any tourist boards will be erecting "Welcome to Kevin Brooks Country" signs. Brooks's West Country offers neither the rugged man-against-the-elements beauty nor the comfortable sunny postcard variety. The fictitious setting of Lychcombe is a soulless Dartmoor village dying on its feet. Here, people do terrible things, often for the most petty reasons and in the most off-hand manner.... ....

So begins Philip Ardagh's excellent review of an excellent book, The Road Of The Dead by Kevin Brooks.

Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week

The Year The Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass

Beautifully, powerfully and compellingly written, the novel is revealing about the attitudes of Afrikaaners and Anglo-Africans in the 1960s, is rich in Zulu stories and is extraordinarily moving

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | God and the bottle

Jamila Gavin reviews A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd:

Siobhan Dowd's novel was inspired by a true story, but it has the momentum and fascination of a detective story. In a densely woven tapestry of poetic language, sensations, and childhood experience, Dowd's characters stumble through life, bewildered and bereaved, accepting yet rebelling, reviving feelings and emotions that are most usually pushed into the back recesses of the mind in adulthood, or simply lost from memory...

Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week

THE AWFUL TALE OF AGATHA BILKE
written and illustrated by Siân Pattenden

The story unfolds with refreshing impropriety, eccentric metaphors, unexpected satirical touches and whimsical wordplay to a happyish resolution, and is entertainingly punctuated by the author’s quirky and stylish drawings of, for instance, a sunbathing meteor...

Tales with heaps of animal magic - Books - Times Online

Amanda Craig reviews two picture books:

JUNGLE PARTY by Brian Wildsmith

THE REALLY RUDE RHINO by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross

If Aesop was indeed a black slave, he was a particularly clever one to realise that he could get his ideas across best by dramatising the actions of beasts, not men. Two very different picture books featuring moral (or immoral) animals extend his wisdom on the limits of cunning and selfishness...

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | High anxiety in deepest Peru

Frank Cottrell Boyce on Evil Star the second title in Anthony Horowitz's 'Poer Of Five sequence:

The book is ambitious in a way that puts most adult novels to shame - dealing with world poverty and globalisation without ever seeming worthy or didactic. But it is much, much darker than Alex Rider. The Power of Five comics will be less Tintin and more like the doomy, paranoid Watchmen or something by the Hernandez Brothers.

Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sunday Ties Children's Book Of The Week

Edwardo, The Horriblest Boy In The World by John Burningham

Parents reading this at bedtime will be reminded how to forgive childishness and to treat children well. Endpapers with the title in many languages confirm that this is a message the whole world could take to heart. NICOLETTE JONES

The Stuff of Fiction - New York Times

Interview with Geoff Saunders, author of The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

Children's Books - New York Times

New York Times children's books reviews

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve

Josh Lacey is not disappointed by A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve, the final part of his 'Mortal Engines' sequence.

The last few chapters of A Darkling Plain are magnificent, drawing together everything that we have experienced over hundreds and hundreds of pages. The finale is moving. And the last cunning twist that ends the book might be a little tricksy, but it's also apt and beautiful and very satisfying. With this quartet, Reeve has created an extraordinary imaginative achievement. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

Independent Online Edition > Reviews

Review of theatre adaptatin of Neil Gaiman's Wolves In The Walls, showing at The Tramnway, Galsgow, until April 8th, then going on tour...

an exhilarating premiere for Featherstone's new National Theatre of Scotland, co-producing with Crouch's company Improbable. Recommended for everyone brave and over seven, it's adapted from the children's book by Neil Gaiman about a girl called Lucy whose family flee (at least initially) from their home when nightmarish wolves leap out of the walls..

Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week

Ghostboy and the Moonbalm Treasure
Richard Hamilton, Sam Hearn (Illustrator)

There is something old-fashioned about this enjoyable tale, not simply because it concerns the ghosts of a Victorian kitchen boy and his grandfather, who was a butler. It speaks to its young audience clearly, without postmodern tricks, or allusions aimed at adults reading aloud; it uses such tried and tested elements as vivid characters, a chase and a heart-warming ending.... NICOLETTE JONES

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Alice's adventures in Rotten Row

Early Victorian Illustrated Books by John Buchanan-Brown

Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons and Illustrations of Tenniel by Frankie Morris

both books reviewed in The Guardian

Passion catches fire among the Puritans - Books - Times Online

Amanda Craig reviews Forged In The Fire by Ann Turnbull:

It is hard to love Puritanism if, like many children, you love colour, music and a bit of luxury, but what is wonderful about Turnbull’s novels is that she takes you so deeply inside her heroes’ feelings that you increasingly sympathise with their beliefs.