Reviews: February 2007 Archives

Scotsman.com Living - Books - Dubyas at the back take note

review of Zenith by Julie Bertagna

...With allusions to the French Revolution and America's Founding Fathers, Bertagna elevates the novel to something more than a post-apocalyptic high-seas adventure. As Fox stays behind wondering "what would revolution really mean?", Mara begins a journey to a brave new world in which there is a chance of putting the excesses of the past behind her. Charting a course somewhere between Noah's Ark and Lord Of The Flies, the author maps out the possibility of hope....

Written in blood | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

"... no one can accuse Cornish of jumping on the [fsantasy] bandwagon to make a quick buck. The Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy has been 12 years in gestation, with Australian illustrator-cum-author Cornish filling at least 28 notebooks along the way. This is clearly a labour of love," says Philip Ardagh in his review of Monster Blood Tatto ("a series title that reads as though it came out of a focus group") by D M Cornish.

‘A person’s a person no matter how small'-Arts & Entertainment-Books-Children-TimesOnline

World Book Day is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the 50th birthday of Dr Seuss’s classic children’s book The Cat in the Hat, says Amanda Criag in The Times...

achukareviews

We don't often give them but The Astonsihing Life Of Octavian Nothing gets five gold chicks. See the review page.

Guilty pleasures | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

Apart from a few 'curmudgeonly' reservations, Mal Peet hails The Black Book Of Secrets by F. E. Higgins a 'bravura debut':

Higgins's prose has terrific verve, with glittering descriptive flashes. (Lembart Jellico, a stranger to sunlight, has white skin with "a slight shine to it, like wet pastry".) The underlying seriousness of the tale, its Catholic subtext, is offset by Dahl-like humour ("A hanging was as good as a holiday. The crowds enjoyed the spectacle almost as much as the poor fellow on the gibbet detested it." Nice verb, that "detested"). Nor will my quibbles deter Higgins's intended readership (children of 10 or thereabouts). I have no doubt that they will love this book. How could they not? It has got grave-robbing, pies with dead rats in, a murder plot involving a fake burial, a villain whose reek rises from the page, an enigmatic hero and a supporting cast of vivid grotesques, plus a psychic and lethally poisonous frog. I think Higgins might well be on to a winner here. At the very least, it's a bravura debut.

When reality bites | Review | The Observer

Stephanie Merritt reviews some recent teenage fiction...

also

Kate Kellaway reviews picture books

Children's book of the week-Arts & Entertainment-Books-TimesOnline

Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week

Ottoline And The Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell

... the fun of this book is not so much the plot as the fine artwork in detailed black and white (with spots of red) of buildings (including aerial cross sections and maps to pore over), over-the-top characters and settings such as stage sets.... NICOLETTE JONES

Review: Fluffy by Simone Lia | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

The adventures of Simone Lia's Fluffy, an all-too-human rabbit, charm Carrie O'Grady

Right with the programme-Arts & Entertainment-Books-Children-TimesOnline

Amanda Craig is a Jimmy Coates fan...

DESPITE THE SEARCH for the next Anthony Horowitz or J. K. Rowling, children’s publishers often fail to realise when they have struck gold. They pump money into solemn, literary offerings by established authors which no normal child is going to hanker after and leave the rip-roaring read to fend for itself. Joe Craig is a case in point. His Jimmy Coates series is about a twelve-year-old boy, who thinks he is normal until he discovers that he is only 38 per cent human.

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

Sunday Times Children's Book Of The Week

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retold and illustrated by Marcia Williams

Children will snigger and be seduced: this is a delightfully cheeky way to get an education... NICOLETTE JONES

Bought and sold | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

Diane Samuels reviews Dirty Work by Julia Bell, a previous 'ACHUKA Choice' title:

...the growing relationship between the two adolescents, both emerging against the odds as young women of courage, provides a strong backbone to the tale and enables the reader to engage imaginatively. Bell avoids getting to grips with the grittier and more intimate details of life as an underage forced sex worker, the uneasy inevitable result of grappling with adult territory for a pre-adult readership. That apart, the sense of authentic detail - cheap underwear falling off the skinny frames of the girls, the types of cars the pimps drive, the descriptions of typical trafficking methods and routes - does not feel like journalism but serves to give some edge to what is essentially a rite-of-passage tale.