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Irish Times Reviews

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Sara Keating leads her Irish Times piece with a review of In The Key Of Code  by Aimee Lucido.

In The Key of Code (Walker Books, £6.99, 10+) takes a totally original approach to the verse novel, using the language of music and computer code to carry the story. Emmy is the daughter of struggling musicians who have moved to California hoping for a big break. Unable to make instruments sing the way her parents can, Emmy feels like an outsider in her family, and her status as the new girl only heightens her alienation. At her new school, she is the “only one in a room full of duets trios symphonies singing a solo”…. … In the Key of Code is thoroughly original in both concept and execution, and it manages to sneak in an empowering history of women’s involvement in computers too.

See what other books are reviewed in the piece here >>> https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/children-s-books-in-the-key-of-code-breaks-new-ground-1.4037729

 

Picture Book Reviews – New York Times

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Five new humorous children’s books offer young readers a plethora of pleasure, plus pants for potatoes. Though very different from one another, four of the five feature classic children’s book imagery in one form or another. The fifth features, as I said, potato pants….

Books reviewed:

KING ALICE (Feiwel and Friends, 32 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), Matthew Cordell

INTERRUPTING CHICKEN AND THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE (Candlewick, 48 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8), David Ezra Stein

JUST ADD GLITTER (Beach Lane, 32 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8),  Angela DiTerlizzi and the illustrator Samantha Cotterill

THE WALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BOOK (Dial, 40 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), Jon Agee

POTATO PANTS! (Holt/Christy Ottaviano, 32 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8), Laurie Keller

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/books/review/matthew-cordell-king-alice.html

Classics Revisited For Modern Times

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Young adult books reviewed by Fiona Noble:

Titles featured

 

Books of the Month / September Roundup / Children and Teenagers

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Titles featured in Imogen Russell Williams’ September roundup in The Guardian:

 

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Rauf

Into The Jungle by Katherine Rundell

Peril Paris by Katherine Woodfine

The Clockwork Crow by Catherine Fisher

Killer T by Robert Muchamore

The Survival Game by Nicky Singer

She Is Fierce ed. Ana Sampson

I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree edited by Fiona Waters

The Legend Of Kevin by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre

Athena by Imogen and Isabel Greenberg

The Dam by David Almond and Levi Pinfold

Dave The Lonely Monster by Anna Kemp and Sara Ogilvie

Angry Cookie by Maria Karipidou

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/29/childrens-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels

Guardian Monthly Roundup – August

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Imogen Russell Williams’ August roundup led with two historical novels:

There’s a rich harvest of historical adventure for readers of eight-plus this month. Set in the late 18th century, Catherine Johnson’s Freedom (Scholastic) is the powerful story of Nathaniel, brought from Jamaica to England solely to tend pineapple plants aboard the ship by masters who have sold off his mother and sister. Believing that all slaves are free on English soil, Nat looks forward to making his fortune and buying back his family; swiftly disillusioned, he begins to plan his escape. At times harrowing (especially during its description of the Zong court case in 1783, dealing with the murder of 133 slaves at sea), the story is also filled with humour, compassion and hope – humanity’s worst and best, shown side by side.

Candy Gourlay’s Bone Talk (David Fickling) is set in the Philippines at the end of the 19th century. Ten-year-old Samkad, of the Bontok tribe, is desperate to prove himself against the enemy Mangili. Seismic change is coming, however, in the form of other invaders, offering contempt and treachery along with gifts of sweets and guns. Can the Bontok survive the Americans, as well as the Mangili? Gourlay’s evocative writing grips from the outset.

>>>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/25/childrens-and-teens-roundup-the-best-new-picture-books-and-novels

Observer Review Roundups

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A multiple prize-winning hit in Wegelius’s native Sweden, this extraordinary book acquires a passport full of stamps – Portugal, Egypt, India, Greece – as it masterfully juggles skulduggery and malaria, accordion-making and aeronautics, fado and pastries, police corruption and at least two love stories. To say anything more would spoil what is a rare treat: a book you want to thrust into the hands of children and adults alike.

said Ktty Empire of The Murderer’s Ape (Pushkin £16.99) by Jakob Wegelius in her roundup of older children’s fiction in Sunday’s Observer….

>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/10/fiction-older-readers-harry-hill-mira-bartok-jakob-wegelius-reviews-kitty-empire

Picture Books

> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/10/picture-books-roundup-review-a-christmas-carol-quentin-blake-judith-katinkas-tail 

Teenagers

>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/10/teenage-books-reviews-roundup-lydia-ruffles-linni-ingemundsen-sally-gardner-sarah-crossan

 

 

The best children’s and YA books of 2017 – Irish Times

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Sara Keating (younger titles) and Claire Hennessy (YA) select their favourite books of 2017…

There are expected inclusions, but also some less-mentioned titles, as in this section of Claire Hennessy’s choices:

For high-concept plots supported by exemplary writing, look no further than the glorious page-turner that is MA Bennett’s S.T.A.G.S. (Hot Key Books, £7.99). Not clicking? Try Kendra Fortmeyer’s Hole In The Middle (Atom, £7.99), where teenage ‘emptiness’ is made literal, or Aaron Starmer’s Spontaneous (Canongate, £7.99), in which leaving-school-blues collide with spontaneous combustion, or Adam Silvera’s They Both Die At The End(Simon & Schuster, £7.99), which posits meeting the love of your life the day you’re both scheduled to die.

Saving lyrical wonderfulness for last: the Irish authors have it. Sarah Carroll’s The Girl In Between (Simon & Schuster, £7.99), Moira Fowley-Doyle’s The Spellbook of the Lost and Found (Corgi, £7.99) and Deirdre Sullivan’s Tangleweed and Brine (Little Island, €16; illustrations by Karen Vaughan) offer up haunting and stunning takes on what it means to be a teenage girl.

full piece >>> https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-best-children-s-and-ya-books-of-2017-1.3311245