USATODAY.com - Young-adult fiction
Short reviews of YA fiction from USA Today.
Reviews: September 2006 Archives
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Hilary McKay is always funny, touching and surprising, and has depths of wisdom despite her lightness of touch. She makes us care about these characters as we would about what happens to members of our own family. There is a chance that this book may not be the last, which is fortunate, because we just don’t want to say goodbye to the Cassons. NICOLETTE JONES
Hear, hear - ACHUKA says 'Hilary McKay is great' too!
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Leonardo's helper
Mary Hoffman asks who is expected to read Theresa Breslin's The Medici Seal:
This is a very substantial read, full of detail from the complicated history of the period, which the author has taken pains to incorporate into the equally complex adventure story of Matteo and his friends. But it's hard to see how it will find its audience. The language is uncompromising - I even had to look up a word, "schiltron" not being part of my vocabulary. And the plot, with rapes, murders, battles and gougings, puts it firmly at the top end of the young market. Yet, even though this is clearly not a jolly romp for juniors, there is no hint of the real-life relationships with apprentices and other young men that Leonardo is known to have had. So who exactly is it for?
A fantastic story is hard to find - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig is hard-hitting about her dislike of G. P. Taylor's new fantasy The Curse Of Salamander Street:
OF THE 100 OR SO children’s books that I am sent each week, well over three quarters are fantasy. Where most critics blanche at the mention of two moons, hairy feet, wizards’ staffs and angels, I am an unabashed devotee of the genre, which makes me all the angrier at the bad stuff being published. The very worst is G. P. Taylor’s The Curse of Salamander Street. I am appalled at the way this author has managed to rise on a minimum of talent and a maximum of self- publicising stunts (such as his claim that he was defending free speech when ejected from a school reading for using foul language).
She much prefers The Hollow People by Brian Keaney, "a remarkable piece of writing, broodingly atmospheric and sympathetic towards its troubled teenaged protagonists."
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler
The theme of the book is how people fear difference, and if the plot is not always entirely logical, it is because Bowler pursues philosophical truths that go beyond logic. What absolutely drives this novel forward, though, is its gasp-inducing chapter ends, and its capacity to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. NICOLETTE JONES
Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | When is a dog not a dog?
Diane Samuels reviews Just In Case by Meg Rosoff
While Just In Case can feel episodic rather than fused by a fully flowing and galvanised narrative, it is none the less a vibrant, questioning and unpredictable read. At once great fun and rather disturbing.
Inside the real Lian Hearn - Books - Times Online
Inside the real Lian Hearn How, and why, does a conventional Englishwoman come to write bestselling fantasies about medieval Japan? Amanda Craig finds out...
Amanda Craig profiles Gillian Rubinsteinn a.k.a. Lian Hearn
4th part of the Tales Of The Otori - save 50%!
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Alone On A Wide Wide Sea by Michael Morpurgo
"Morpurgo does it again NICOLETTE JONES"
Rip-roaring adventures - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig enjoys Tiger! by Geoffrey Malone:
Geoffrey Malone, an admired writer of animal adventures, has turned his attention in Tiger! to the struggles of Kuma, a female in a reserve in central India. Kuma is about to give birth, and her story begins with her desperation to kill an antelope to gain the energy she needs. Malone describes Kuma’s careful tracking, her lucky kill, and her retreat to the secret cave she has found to give birth in clear, dramatic prose. Her story is one of heart-stopping courage and pathos, which adults may dismiss as anthropomorphism but which thrills the same way as London’s White Fang does.
The Japan Times Online - On the book trail
Two reviews from The Japan Times
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Can You Feel The Force? by Richard Hammond
