Christmas books for children | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
Julia Eccleshare picks some festive treats for youngsters
Reviews: November 2006 Archives
Here be dragons, lots of them - Books - Times Online
The seasonal cavalcade of multititled roundups has begun. Here Amanda Craig recommends fiction for readers aged 11+:
DRAGONS ARE THE demand of the day, and Carole Wilkinson’s Dragonkeeper (Macmillan, ?8.99/offer ?8.54) knocks scales off Christopher Paolini’s sub-Tolkien saga Eragon, which is being filmed for Christmas. ...
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Home Now by Lesley Beake
an important story without being conspicuously worthy, and it will add to the empathy and understanding of, for instance, any child currently collecting shoes for Blue Peter’s appeal for Aids orphans
Review: Henry Tumour by Anthony McGowan | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
Mal Peet reviews Henry Tumour by Anthony McGowan:
McGowan is excellent on the anxieties of teenage life and writes scalpel-sharp dialogue, especially the ongoing internal debate between Hector and the amoral, self-serving lodger in his head. Henry's voice is perhaps the richest pleasure in the book, veering unpredictably between gross lasciviousness, erudition, modern slang and Jacobean verse... ...Henry Tumour is a dirty, delicate and uneasy novel that dramatises some big issues. Excellent.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt
This picturebook is a rallying cry against our health-and-safety culture that won’t allow children to take risks for fear of harm... Original and entertaining, this is not the same old nuts. NICOLETTE JONES
Review: Ophelia by Lisa Klein | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
For Adele Geras the style of Lisa Klein's Ophelia spolied an otherwise fascinating read:
The language Klein uses is a problem at times. She scatters many quotations from Hamlet, and it's fun to spot them. On the other hand, she's trying to show us that everything is happening a long time ago, and this leads to a kind of grandiloquence, a stiffness and formality that make it hard on occasion to get close to the characters. This, for instance, is Ophelia talking to Hamlet: "In due season, all that lives returns to dust, making the earth fecund with life. Smell how the air tonight is pregnant with the flowers' blooms and their bee-sought sweetness." There are too many clich? and a plodding weight to the prose, but this won't stop readers revelling in a fascinating sidelight on Hamlet.
The future imperfect - Books - Times Online
Amanda Craig prolfiles Scott Westerfeld, author of the 'Uglies' trilogy:
That it is children’s authors rather than adult ones who address the big questions about the way we live now is beyond question, but few have captured the Zeitgeist quite like Scott Westerfeld.
Children's book of the week - Sunday Times - Times Online
Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week
Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher
...Intelligently and elegantly written, with pace and suspense, varied and convincing dialogue, and big themes of loyalty, sacrifice and emotional growth, Stoneheart will make readers see London with new eyes. NICOLETTE JONES
Make sure they aren’t art-less - Books - Times Online
For 17 years, the author and painter James Mayhew has introduced children of 3-plus to works by Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Leonardo da Vinci and many more through the agency of his mischievous Katie, who can enter famous paintings, causing havoc while Grandma snoozes. Mayhew’s lively pastiches are a lovely way to start a lifetime of enjoying art: if you want to know what made Mona Lisa laugh, ask Katie...
