Recommended Imaginaria entry about the superb Italian illustrator Roberto Innocenti

The Dragonfly Pool reads like two stories in one: the tale of Delderton and the children who learn to be themselves under such teachers as Matteo, whose biology classes can take place at 4am; and the story of Bergania and unhappy Prince Karil, who finds secret solace by the pool of the title, hidden in the forest. But the parts are knitted together by their celebration of humanity NICOLETTE JONES

Part of the pleasure for the reader lies in the well-loved themes of overcoming difficulties, of making do (for instance, in a wonderful description of making a doll's cot and bedding out of an orange box) and of knowing that all the young people's dreams are going to come true and that love will triumph. ADELE GERAS

see previous entry for Amazon link

Despite its length (at least 200 pages should have been pruned off) this is a thrilling, richly detailed story that rips along to a hair-raising climax in which Henry and his sister are imprisoned in a cellar and about to be murdered. Several times, I found myself crying; only the greatest authors of children's fiction share this ability to touch the heart.

Every email sent to us in the previous 10 day period was lost.

Whilst the process of moving hosts has been stressful and maintenance-intensive (sitting in front of the screen while file FTPing), it is also exciting - the start of new ACHUKA life.

Onward, with new Heart.

Diane Samuels reviews Toby Alone by Timothée de Fombelle, translated by Sarah Adams

A big story about tiny people, this first volume of Timothée de Fombelle's award-winning two-part French saga takes the notion of discovering the universe in a grain of sand and applies it to a tree. Toby, the eponymous hero, is 13 years old and only a millimetre and a half tall; for him the distance from root to topmost leaves is an epic trek. This Lilliputian world is the setting for an ecological allegory, a microcosmic exploration of humanity's relationship with nature and a rites-of-passage adventure story...

I am happy to report that the whole site has now been reinstated on a new more powerful server. I am personally finding the site responds a lot more quickly and everything seems to be functioning well. But when a site is moved from one platform to a slightly different platform I'm aware that somethimes internal links can become garbled, so please report anything that you find not working properly.

I'm not aware of anything Big & Bloggable that has happened in the past week, but if there was anyhthing that you think should have been reported here, give me a nudge.
I'll be catching up with the weekend reviews shortly.

I'm very partial to a fig roll or two - indeed, I survived many a weekend as a university student on a packet of rig rolls, a loaf of bread and some peanut butter - so this article caught my eye.

If the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can trigger a tornado in Texas, then it is perhaps no wonder that Britain's current fig roll shortage can be traced back to wasp problems in Turkey. We were alerted to the absence of the legendary biscuit by a concerned reader. Further investigation revealed that supermarket shelves are indeed empty. Some branches of Sainsbury's have even put up notices, informing customers of the current crisis, which began with hard times for the pollinating fig wasp of Anatolia...

Unfortunately I'm not able to think of a children's books connection. Perhaps a blog reader can oblige?

From the photography point of view I'm looking forward to the new FT Weekend format to be launched this Saturday:

The larger-format magazine will slash the word count of its stories and let the pictures speak for themselves. "It is quite a bold statement for us to say that we are going to plunge into photojournalism," says Barber. "If I have an ambition it is that the FT can tell stories with photographs," adds Davis....

but good to read also that "Book reviews (presumably including children's reviews) will move from the magazine back to the newspaper, this time in the Life & Arts section..."