children's & YA recommendations on the go
Philip Reeve tells Girls Heart Books why he has become a digital hermit during the first part of 2014:
…for the moment I’ve stopped using Twitter and Facebook. It wasn’t that they were distracting me from writing – I work in a souped-up shed in the garden where there’s no internet access. It was worse than that! They were distracting me from reading.
The second Oliver and the Seawigs book is going to be set in Space, Sarah McIntyre revealed on her blog yesterday:
Sarah McIntyre’s blog post about being shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards.
Do read the full blog post, which is fully illustrated with photos and drawings related to her Seawigs partner, Philip Reeve, to the other shortlisted titles and to the judges.
You co-wrote a book – Oliver and the Seawigs – with Sarah McIntyre; considering this was your first collaboration, tell us about the writing experience of this book.
I have collaborated with an illustrator before – the brilliant David Wyatt on Larklight , which was a real privilege. But that was a pretty traditional writer/illustrator collaboration, and David’s style was very close to my writing. Whereas Sarah and I have very little in common; she does lovely, funny picture books and comics, and I’m writing these great tangled complicated novels. But we met at the Edinburgh International Book Festival a few years ago, and got on so well that there was no question of us not working together. And it’s been great, because trying to do a story that suits Sarah’s style, and incorporates a lot of her ideas, makes me try new things; it’s easy to repeat yourself as a writer, but working with Sarah makes my imagination jump the tracks a bit, which is always good. And it’s very much a joint effort: it’s full of Sarah’s spirit, and wouldn’t exist without her. Also, Sarah is great at the performance side of things; dressing up and putting on a good live show at book festivals and school events. So we’ve been swanning about in costume and singing songs and things, which takes me right back to my early days performing comedy skits; it’s a lot of fun! (Well, it is for us, I don’t know what the audience makes of it!)
Have you decided what your next novel with Ms. McIntyre will be about?
It’s already written, and waiting for her to illustrate. It’s called Cakes in Space , and is about a girl who’s on a long space voyage with her family. They’re all asleep in cryogenic pods, but hers goes wrong and she finds herself awake in this silent spaceship in the middle of nowhere, having to deal with cake-related mayhem. We liked that idea of being awake when everyone else is asleep – which is a big deal if you’re a child. And of course it riffs on all the SF movies I remember from my teens – 2001 and Alien – but nobody will notice because McIntyre will work her stripey magic on it and make it look brand new!
via Rachel Herriman.
Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, reviewed by S F Said
Also selected by Nicolette Jones as Sunday Times CHildren’s Book of the Week
The bare bones of the story hardly do justice to the experience of reading this book. Its appeal lies in its details, which show an irrepressible imagination, much like that of a wide-eyed child explorer who can’t help looking at the world and wondering "what if … ?" The Rambling Isles are a fabulous creation, and while the concept strongly recalls the ambulant cities of Mortal Engines, it’s played in a lighter key here. Comedy, puns and wordplay are threaded through the story, as when Oliver names the Rambling Isle "Cliff".
There’s just as much humour and detail in the artwork; McIntyre’s illustrations make even the seawigs seem believable. She brings enormous energy to the proceedings, palpable not just in her realisations of the characters and settings, but also in her layouts, which are bold and dynamic, using every inch of the page. Sometimes they erupt into full‑blown comics, conveying dialogue in speech balloons that float happily amid the text.
It’s in such interactions between images, words and design that the magic resides. You can see it in the chorus of mermaids whose upside-down faces crowd almost all the text off the page; or the manic sea monkeys who come bouncing out of seaweed, anarchically disrupting the story’s flow. Such creative integration is a joy for the eyes, and the book is a tactile treat as well, beautifully produced on high-quality paper. It effortlessly switches between portrait and landscape formats, and uses double-page spreads to great effect.
The whole thing offers an experience that is immersive, richly textured and enormous fun. It’s a great example of what illustrated children’s novels can achieve, and it would be wonderful to see more publishers following its lead.
via Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre – review | Books | The Guardian.