The Observer | Review | Take a bow, Mr Isserlis
Kate Kellaway gives a new book about the lives of composers a rave review...
"From the moment I started this book, I was entertained and laughing aloud... ..."
Reviews: May 2006 Archives
The Observer | Review | He's in your face
Stephanie Merrit on the latest novel by Melvin Burgess, Sara's Face:
Despite its implausibility, the narrative gallop towards the grisly denouement will have readers sitting up half the night to finish it....
Reviews of other Young Adult novels in the same piece.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Children's fiction: May 27
Josh Lacey reviewed some recent boys' fiction in The Guardian, including McNab and Rigby'sAvenger:
It's all good dirty fun, assisted by lots of jargon, acronyms, gadgets and authentic-seeming procedures. Only one thing is really disappointing: the constant sadism of the plot and the carnage inflicted on the characters, particularly the grotesque piece of violence that ends the book...
You’re never too young for politics - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig on Anne Fine's latest novel, The Road Of Bones:
Fine, the former Children’s Laureate, has addressed many contemporary problems, from divorce to bullying, with a robust and engaging wit. This is a departure from form, an angry, biting book about the horrors of the former Soviet Union that will repel and confuse many children. Lacking sufficient plot or moral intelligence, Yuri becomes increasingly heartless, believing like those before him that the end will justify the means. Not, alas, in this case....
It's not clear from that penultiumate sentence whether Craig thinks the book or the character lacks plot or moral intelligence. Probably both.
Craig is a great enthusiast for children's books, but I do not trust her taste and judgement, nor do I care for her sweeping generalisations, such as (from earlier in the review, when she is discussing Voices by Ursula Le Guin) "It is not sex but death that is the preoccupation of all great children’s fiction, and authors ignore this at their peril."
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Grk And The Pelotti Gang by Joshua Doder
The book — Alex Rider for middle-school children — offers a smart, pacy, staccato style, empathetic characterisation of Tim (although the jacket makes him look too young), a likeable dog, enjoyably caricatured villains and a valuable warning about not wandering off in strange cities. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Down, but not out, in Paris
Just Like Tomorrow by Faiza Guene reviewed in The Guardian:
Faiza Guene's sassy monologue of a book has been translated from French with streetwise relish by Sarah Adams, who provides a useful glossary of Arabic and slang terms for the uninitiated. After all, this isn't just about the adolescence of Doria, unwanted female. It is also an irreverent evocation of living in an immigrant north African community in Paris viewed from the perspective of a first-generation French girl....
Good clean fun in the sewer - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig reviews Montmorency's Revenge, the fourth Montmorency title...
I missed the humour and the Buchanesque disguises of the earlier books, but the short, fast-moving chapters never flag and the melancholy whiff of real grief deepens Updale’s considerable gift for character...
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
LUGALBANDA: The Boy Who Got Caught Up In A Wa by Kathy Henderson ill. Jane Ray
Ray’s emotive and delicate illustrations, full of decorative pattern and gilded detail, borrow from ancient Sumerian artefacts, and the whole handsomely produced book is a valuable reminder that Iraqi civilisation is much older than ours. NICOLETTE JONES
The World Cup at their feet - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig reviews three football fiction titles....
Did you know that you can now filter ACHUKAREVIEWS by reviewer? Just click the reviewer icon at the side of the page.
We've used the page of our busiest reviewer, Jake Hope, as the example (above). His latest review is of Linda Newbery's new novel, but he's so fast there'll probably be a new review there by the time you visit!
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Childrn's Book Of The Week
How The Hangman Lost His Heart by K M Grant
This clever and entertaining historical black comedy is not for the squeamish. It opens with a precisely described beheading. Yet its wry tone disarms the horrors, turning it into a sophisticated fairy-tale. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | The ties that bind
Diane Samuels reviews The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass
What a wonderful debut novel Linzi Glass has written. Carefully, eloquently, immediately she draws you into the lives of a family in trouble within a fragmented society...
This is a new book with an old and wise heart. It may very well have the makings of a classic.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
JUST LIKE TOMORROW by Faiza Gučne
Just the thing for dog day afternoons - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig approves Joshua Doder's second Grk titel, Grk And The Pelotti Gang - as well she might, it's a great read.
Doder combines lightness of spirit with a sense of the dark things that adults to do each other....
