I believe we have to make this official; Bookwitch loves Hilary McKay. You know, in a pure, innocent kind of way.
I also need to have a shorter way of saying ‘this isn’t a book I would generally have picked up.’ (I’ll work on that. Acronyms on a postcard if you’re feeling clever.)
Practically Perfect is a princess book, clearly aimed at younger girls than me. (It says 7-9 on Hilary’s website.) But if it keeps the attention of someone elderly, it’s doing a pretty good job.
This is both a typical princess book, and it isn’t. To start with the princess is a Queen. She is ten years old. She is willful, but quite nice. She has Ladies-in-Waiting. And a Cook, and a Prime Minister. A Donkey. A best friend who likes to dig.
Practically Perfect begins with a poet who lives in the cupboard under the stairs, and ends with a happily ever after. That bit was never in doubt, but you couldn’t be sure of the way there. I mean, who’d dream up buttered cooks?
I loved it! I wasn’t expecting to get started on Hilary’s younger fiction, but there might be no stopping me now. Anyone who can get away with double brackets has my vote.
Reviewing Between the Lines a while ago, I was thinking some more about this fantasy idea of getting lost inside a good book. Or a bad book, for that matter.
I mean, I obviously don’t know whether it is really possible. Maybe Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer made it up? But if it is possible, it’s interesting. And what difference would you experience if it’s War and Peace in paperback, totally un-illustrated and just hundreds and hundreds of tightly packed pages of small printed words?
Or even worse, what might happen if you only had an ebook to hand? You go and lose yourself in a story inside an electronic book. There might be pictures, and there will be words. Many or few; it all depends on what the story is.
The thing about ebooks, though, is that they usually contain lots of books. So, maybe you lose your grip on a particularly slippery word, and before you know it, you are somewhere else. Start off inside Five on a Treasure Island (do you get eBlytons?) and you’re having a jolly old time with those gold ingots. But as you descend once more into the cave, you suddenly end up in Kidnapped. Or one of the complete works of Trollope. (Someone close to me went crazy and bought the affordable, complete works of several old literary heavyweights, so it could easily happen.)
I expect untold amounts of damage could be done if you ‘read between the lines’ in an ebook. And I can’t work out if it’d be harder or easier to fall out of one of those stories. An ebook seems more sealed up, doesn’t it? With pages made of paper you stand more chance of dropping out.
You’ll be surprised to find that the Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer interview is here already. (I do have a bad track record…) There are some really nice photos of the two ladies, and they admit to not always having seen eye to eye. Jodi might have started out thinking she’d be boss, but reality proved different.
Sammy’s fondness for Liz Kessler’s books gets a mention, and Mr van Leer got a brief grilling, to see if there was anything he could add to the writing partnership between the ladies of the house. He could.
I thought that Sammy might have expected only bad things about writing, with a mother who goes off to type all day long, but apparently the only thing she was aware of was how glamourous it all was. Until she tried it herself.
And if you want to read Between the Lines (and why wouldn’t you?), go carefully. There are vague spoilers in the interview. So perhaps half close your eyes?
The double mother and daughter thing was too good an opportunity to miss. And a first time is always special, and no matter how many more times you do something, the first one is the only first one you get. So when Jodi Picoult returned to Manchester on Sunday, to sign new book Between the Lines, co-written with her daughter Samantha van Leer, I knew I wanted to be there, and I knew I wanted a chat with the two of them, and I knew I wanted my trusted photographer to make a better job of taking pictures than I have managed in the last two meetings with Jodi.
It all came true, including my weird dream from a few weeks back. (So don’t tell me I’m not a witch.) Basically there were no people waiting at the Arndale. In my dream it had to do with being Good Friday, but in real life the queue had to stand inside WHS, instead of outside. So the fans were all there. Phew. (And I know it’s not Easter.)
Glad to see the fans were as keen as ever, and happy to lay their hands on this great new fairytale-meets-real-life novel. Mum Jodi might have helped write it, but the idea was all Sammy’s. We watched as each fan (and there were a good number of men) sat down next to Jodi and Sammy for a photo and brief chat. Couldn’t help noticing Sammy is lefthanded like her mum, and no doubt she will soon be the second fastest signer in the west.
There was a cute baby, as always.
And then it was my turn. Jodi almost lied, saying it was nice to see me again. (It was obviously nice. It’s the again I don’t believe she remembers.) And at least I got my interview in before the BBC this time. If you’re up early, try Monday’s breakfast show for their version.
Sammy and Jodi had a tea engagement with another mother and daughter team, who had won a meeting with the two writers in a competition. (See, it is a marvellous idea.)
Our own luck held, and we finished in good time for the mcbf finale, which didn’t come a moment too soon. Any later and James would have expired. As it was, all major players were still upright when Carol Ann Duffy and her best friend John Sampson told the sad tale of The Princess’ Blankets. It was my third time, but it’s still good. And this time I was sitting in a great seat upstairs at the Royal Exchange, while my photographer had the time of her life, clambering all over the central space capsule.
Carol Ann issued orders not to tell her how the tennis was going. John played his unusual instruments and pretended to be Mozart again. We in the audience got to do our shouting, and this time I was Picasso. After the poor Princess had warmed up, Carol Ann read us a new book called The Gift.
And finally, James and Kaye could stand in the limelight and declare the last eleven days over, and John provided a classy trumpet solo to mark the moment. It has been really good. Rest a while now, and then get on with planning 2014! You know you want to.
This is one anthology that I won’t be able to carry around with me in order to catch all its participating authors for autographs. Many are dead, and anyway, there are so many of them. Many means good, because there is a tremendous variety and choice, and once you’ve read what you fancy, you might pick something you don’t. That way you discover that is actually also perfectly fine.
You don’t always get anthologies intended to be read aloud, which of course doesn’t stop you from doing so. Short stories and excerpts and poems are just right for that bedtime read, when you are praying you won’t be sitting on the edge of the bed half the night. This book obligingly tells you how long you can expect to spend reading each contribution, so no nasty surprises.
The royalties for this collection of good reads go to The Reader Organisation, which has as its aim ‘reading and health.’ Very nice to see those two words used together. I frequently sit down with a book even when far too many little jobs and crises scream at me that my attention is of the utmost importance. I know that I will feel so much better after a read.
Foreworded by Michael Morpurgo (naturally) and with blurbs by Philip Pullman and Stephen Fry (two men whose voices I just love listening to), the book begins with Instructions by Neil Gaiman. I mistakenly thought he was needed to tell us what to do, but it was actually a proper poem.
Many of the stories in here are ones I have already read, as part of the novel they hail from or as works in their own right. They have, for instance, had the good taste to pick my favourite Shaun Tan story, Broken Toys. There are excerpts from Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase as well as Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce.
You have Shakespeare and Kipling, Stevenson and Larkin, and even good old Anon. I haven’t read them all. Yet. This is another of those volumes I want to keep somewhere near, just to dip into. The pile for dipping is getting taller, but that just can’t be helped.
I will want to dip.
(Apologies to all those, dead or alive, whose names I haven’t listed. They are many. And how marvellous to be able to share classic writers in an easy bite size form with a child.)
How about a fantastic new fairy tale written by bestselling adult author with her teenage daughter? If you have an open mind you will think this is great and a wonderful achievement, and you’ll want to read it, and when you do, you’ll find a lovely multi-dimensional fairy tale about a handsome prince and an ‘ordinary’ girl, where neither the route taken nor the goal reached at the end is what you thought it would be.
We are talking about Jodi Picoult, who writes a novel every year, and does a lot of research for every one. She also has several children, and I think a husband who folds the laundry, or some such thing. That must be why she felt she could squeeze in writing a book with her daughter Samantha ‘while she had nothing better to do.’ The idea for the plot was Samantha’s, and it took them a couple of years to write Between the Lines.
Basically we have a (wise but cowardly) prince in a fairy tale, and as you know, when a book isn’t being read, the characters in it have their own lives and can do what they like, rallying to their positions when a reader opens the book. And this prince (Oliver) wants to get out of his book, and when he finally discovers he can talk to (and be heard by) a teenage girl (Delilah), they fall in love and then they try to come up with a way for Oliver to get out.
Told on three levels, the fairy tale, Oliver’s ordinary life and Delilah’s life, we meet the characters from the fairy tale both as the characters they are supposed to be, as well as who they are in their spare time.
And I just love Socks, the prince’s faithful horse!
At one point I did wonder if I should side with Delilah’s mother who thinks her daughter has become unhinged, talking to a children’s book. No one else seems to hear Oliver, although it doesn’t help that he clams up when others are near.
You wonder how on earth this can be resolved, and I very much doubt that anyone can guess correctly. It’s different, and it’s a great deal of fun.
Illustrated throughout with lovely pictures by Yvonne Gilbert and Scott M Fischer. Just think, if the pictures weren’t there, Oliver and Delilah wouldn’t be able to meet, or fall in love.
This lovely couple who sound like they belong together, are actually two main characters in two new picture books. Picture books that I was all too ready to ignore, but then I read them, ‘just in case.’
Good thing I did. And because Thursday next week is worse than buses that come in threes, I have to start now. You’d have thought that publishers would have published so much before Christmas that they could take a break, but here they go again.
Ladies first, and Ella also happens to be a Cinderella Ladybird. Ella. Cinderella. Witty. And sweet. Also red and spotty, in the most beautiful way.
This Cinderella cooks and cleans, but she meets no prince. This time lover boy is an artist called Pierre, and the romantic setting is Paris. And as I said, Ella is spotty, and she wears glasses. But romance will always conquer.
Eric is an accidental hero. Or perhaps not. That would suggest he isn’t brave. People around him call him names and he feels worthless. But when the monster comes, it’s Eric who saves the day. He and the monster have quite a lot in common. Being a dummy or a dope or a dunce needn’t be bad.
We can all do with friends.
Ella, by Alex T Smith, and Eric the Hero, by Chris Wormell. Two nice books.
The trainee witch once (almost twice) worked in a bookshop in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This was in the days of Christmas Eve getting the Saturday treatment, shop hour wise. So we closed at twelve, and I recall I had a Saturday bus to catch soon after, where I was the only passenger, on the last bus for a couple of days.
Where was I? Oh yes, in the bookshop, before the last bus. It was quite nice working on Christmas Eve (well, one had a Mother-of-witch doing the kitchen stuff at home…), and something I noticed was that the world is full of people who don’t shop until there are mere hours between the buying of and the opening of presents. It takes a cool and steady mind to be that late.
They come in and spend anything, just to get the deed done. And obviously they require wrapping and all that.
According to Son it seems the wellknown online bookshop can offer the same these days, as long as you live somewhere civilised. Order on Christmas Eve morning and have it delivered that afternoon. It will cost you, but as I said, the Christmas Eve shopper can afford it.
What I’m trying to say here, in a roundabout and waffley way is that you could still manage to buy Magic Beans. I’m truly sorry for being so late mentioning this perfect Christmas book, but I’ve been feeding the cake brandy. And various other minor things.
In Magic Beans you have absolutely the cream of children’s authors doing their thing with classic fairy tales. Adèle Geras retells the The Six Swan Brothers. It’s wonderful with such sibling love. But I wonder what happened to the old King and his witchy wife? It’s funny how Princes and Kings wander around finding themselves wives all over the place.
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Henrietta Branford before. Here she retells Hansel and Gretel, without too much gruesomeness. And why do witches and stepmothers get bad press all the time? Berlie Doherty’s The Snow Queen is icy and season appropriate. And below you can listen to Jacqueline Wilson talking about Rapunzel.
Other particpating authors are Anne Fine, Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Kit Wright, Alan Garner, Gillian Cross, Susan Gates, Malorie Blackman, Linda Newbery and Tony Mitton. And since it’s not only writers you get, every single fairy tale has been illustrated by some pretty creamy artists like Debi Gliori, Ian Beck, Lesley Harker, Nick Sharratt, Patrice Aggs, Peter Bailey, Nick Maland, James Mayhew, Siận Bailey, Ted Dewan, Michael Foreman, Sue Heap and Bee Willey.
By good fortune I have also just found out that some of these stories can be bought as ebooks, so if you’re really desperate…
Don’t say I haven’t provided a useful suggestion. And if you were to go for the old-fashioned dead tree version you get a nice, fat volume with pictures. I’ll even wrap it for you. If you come here, that is.
By the time I picked this book up, I’d almost overdosed on myths and traditional stories and fairy tales, but wanted to take a look at The Kingdom Under the Sea by Joan Aiken and with illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski. I could skim it.
That’s what I thought. It only took me a little of the first story to be hooked. That’s the thing with Joan Aiken. She didn’t do things the way others do them.
To begin with, none of these stories were of the same old, same old kind. Nothing wrong with well known tales, but new (to me) traditional ones are more refreshing. They are all in the same vein that I remember from my childhood collections, but new and very well told.
It’s always the youngest son or the prettiest but poorest girl who are true and good. Why this is so I have no idea. There is a wonderful tale about a poor knight and his many animals. That story didn’t go in the expected direction, and was so much better for it.
Perhaps there is too much killing, even when done by the good characters, but it sort of belongs in this type of literature. (Witches don’t absolutely have to be bad…)
And as if Joan Aiken’s stories weren’t enough, we get beautiful illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski. Many of them are black silhouette ones, which somehow make more of an impact than a colourful and detailed ordinary picture would. You can see the warty, crooked nose of the witch so much better. (Ahem.)
This is the second recent reissued collection by Joan and Jan, and I adore these books. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go shopping again. This is perfect Christmas present stuff.
This is one book you can’t buy for Christmas, because it’s not out yet. But if the 5th of January could somehow be jiggled round to come before Christmas, I would suggest you buy a copy of The Feral Child for someone you know, and one for yourself. Unlike many books for 9+ this one is enjoyable for adults.
So there was no cause for me to worry. But one does, anyway. What if this new – first – book by someone who frequents this blog were to turn out to be boring or badly written? But Che Golden writes books the way she comments on blogs; intelligently and with wit and humour.
The book has a very strong first chapter. You just want to go on. There is nothing wobbly about this beginner.
I am quite fond of Tír na nÓg, although I have to say that Che has put some vicious faeries in her version. (For visiting purposes I’d much rather go to Kate Thompson’s Tír na nÓg, where the people are inept but friendly in a charming Irish sort of way.) But if they weren’t unpleasant there would be no adventure.
Maddy is a second generation Irish English girl, who has come to Blarney to live with her grandparents when her parents died. As we all do, she discovers that the lovely holiday destination is much less fun when you have to stay forever. She’s very unhappy, and her cousins aren’t too friendly towards her, either. ‘Dealing with prats like Danny, one of the nastiest people you could meet this side of an ASBO.’
She likes her toddler neighbour Stephen best, and when he’s snatched by a faerie one night, and taken to Tír na nÓg, Maddy sets off to rescue him. Unfortunately she can’t shake off her cousins, so they end up coming along on this dangerous journey. Some people – like Maddy’s grandfather – believe in faeries, but most people in Blarney don’t.
The Feral Child is a fantastic read, and has a nice Irish feel to it. I’m becoming increasingly partial to Irish books. It’s the first of a trilogy, and I’m looking forward to more Maddy, and wondering what on earth she can get up to next time. Will it be back to known enemies, or will she discover new ones?
The name’s Hurt. John Hurt. Well, that was a bit of a let down. I seem to recall being in tears when David Tennant bowed out as the Doctor. This evening I felt nothing. I’d vaguely wondered if Clara would … Continue reading →
