January Children's & Young Adult Highlights
It’s great to see an author-illustrator partnership taking off and I think that’s the case with Clare Freedman and Kate Hindley. Their first book,
, was really good fun and several customers told me it was their pre-schooler’s favourite. The latest,
, is a heart-breaker (probably more so for the adult reading it) but nicely uplifting. Warm and lively illustrations, and the cover alone put a smile on my face.
Staying on the theme of ‘child finds potential pet’ is A Tale of Two Beasts which amusingly delivers the message that there are always two sides to every story. The enthusiasm of a little girl who finds a strange beast in the woods and makes him her pet is turned around when the beast tells his side of things (he saw it as kidnap and assault).
If you had or have the non-sleeping kind of children, you will love Goodnight Already in which wide-awake Duck endlessly torments sleepy Bear. Will it make your children go to sleep? Of course not, but it’ll be fun trying.
Three new books for 6-10 year olds now - one dark, one daft, and one darling. I’ll start with the daft:
The Super Amazing Adventures of Me, Pig
. It’s the second book in a series but it could be read as a stand-alone, although I think children will get more out of it by starting with the first,
The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig
.
If you’ve been watching Broadchurch you may have perfected your over-the-top West Country accent, in which case you’ll be perfect for reading this one aloud because Pig’s grammar bears a resemblance (“Hello. Me I is Pig! I is 562 sunsets old!”) Although I’m the sort of insufferable mother who corrects her children’s grammar at the dinner table, I could never deny them the joy of meeting innocent but dangerously ignorant Pig and his very astute friend Duck.
In the first book Duck saves Pig from certain death when the farmer wants to fatten him up for butchery, while in the second the farm has been taken over by vegetarian farmers, Mr and Mrs Sandal, but unfortunately they own a devious cat who wants Pig out of the picture. Some of us will be reminded of the lovely relationship between Wilbur and Charlotte, duck replacing spider in this case (but don’t worry, for those of you who like me are still not quite ‘over’ the Charlotte thing, there is nothing traumatic here, it’s pure fun).
The darling of this group is Letters to Leo. Another dog story, and a very good one that a strong 7 year old reader will enjoy right up to 10 and 11 year olds. The main character is an upbeat but level girl, not too precocious, not too goody-goody. Beneath her chirpy letters to her new dog Leo we glean a few sad details - she’s lost her mother (this is neither dwelt on nor glossed over) and she’s having trouble connecting with her new grade 4 teacher and proving her worth in class. What’s really beautiful are her observations of her father - a man who worries a lot and tends to get uptight about everyday things (like a new puppy, for example, which is why many of the letters contain firm instructions to BE GOOD and NOT DISTURB DAD). But eventually Leo works his way into the dad’s heart, and I’m confident that this book will do the same to you.
As for the dark, the author John Bemelmans Marciano will not be new to you if you love the Madeline books because while his grandfather Ludwig was the original author, he continued the series with Madeline at the White House and Madeline and the Cats of Rome, among others. But his first novel, The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield, is more Lemony Snicket than Madeline (see A Series of Unfortunate Events). If your children like despicable characters and macabre endings, they’ll enjoy finding out what happens to a boy who takes eight of his cat’s spare lives so that he can live dangerously and make death a series of adventures. Sophie Blackall’s illustrations suit the tone perfectly.
by George R.R. Martin (
) is a not too text-heavy, very well-illustrated fantasy about a girl who saves a kingdom. Or there’s the wordier
which will either delight Harry Potter fans or make them yell ‘what a rip-off’, although that tends to be said of anything with an enchanted forest and a training academy and I don’t think Rowling would claim to have invented either of those.
For teens there’s The Door That Led to Where, a mystery that tears into the past by the Carnegie-medal winner Sally Gardner, or This Shattered World which is the second book in the sci-fi love story that began with These Broken Stars (reviewed here). Nick Lake’s There Will Be Lies is fast-paced and thrilling, and our reviewer was so moved by All The Bright Places (about teen suicide, which is one of the dominant themes I’m seeing for YA this year) that she urges parents to read it as well as teens (reviewed here). On a much lighter note, your teen might prefer the follow-up to The Intern by Australian magazine industry expert Gabrielle Tozer, Faking It.
is by Frané Lessac who has collaborated with her husband Mark Greenwood on several excellent illustrated narratives based on Australian history (see
,
,
). This one is Frané’s love-letter to a country she was not born in but which she has come to call her home. It works on a few levels: as an alphabet book, as a book of facts about cities and landmarks (about 8-10 facts per page), and as a beautiful picture book.
And finally you may have read an article in The Age yesterday about a nine-year-old boy who rode his pony 1000 kilometres in 1932 so he could see the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. That story is the basis for Lennie the Legend, a really inspiring book for age 7 and up.
