School daze

This post is part of Playing By The Book's I'm Looking For A Book About... feature. Do please have a look at the other posts about going back to school, or starting school! If you're a teacher, a parent, or a student teacher, you'll be introduced to some fabulous books to inspire you.

Image: waterstones.com

Flora Fox is disgusted. Her parents are going to Italy for three months to help her grandmother, who has fallen and broken her leg, and after a disastrous summer holiday at Casa Boffi, have decided to send their daughter to a progressive boarding school instead of taking her with them. Furious, Flora is on the train when she falls asleep, and seems to hear voices chanting a strange rhyme. When she awakes, she is wearing an uncomfortable school clothes, including enormous knickers (of course Penrice Hall has no uniforms), and her mobile phone, iPod and laptop are all gone. She discovers that she has been switched with another girl called Flora, summoned by three St Winifred's schoolgirls from 1935: sweet but dim Dulcie, bright Pogo and charismatic but spoilt Pete. The girls have found a spell book in a mysterious closed room, and this is the first successful spell they've tried. Flora must survive mean girl Consuela Carver, fearsome Latin teacher Miss Harbottle and huge knickers, and work out how she can get back to the 21st century.

I really enjoyed this book. I've written before about why I love school stories, particularly the Chalet School, and Beswitched has all the best elements: the emphasis on character development, the opportunities for girls to be heroic, a rescue and resolution coming through conflict.  I particularly liked that Flora is not a particularly admirable protagonist to begin with, but the changes in her character don't come through punishment, as poor Eustacia from the Chalet School books, but recognising the unattractive aspects of her character in Consuela and Pete, and her influence on their characters has some unexpected outcomes. It is also a very funny book.

It would be a great book to read with children before they start a new school; Flora makes some mistakes in a strange new situation, but she survives and ultimately triumphs. Highly recommended to 8+, and to fans of time slip novels, particularly Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes. One word of warning- there are some minor swears (bloody, damn and bollocks) which are totally in keeping with Flora's character and development, but you may want to make this a discussion point about the time and place for such language with children if you're reading it with them, or decide on the appropriate age for this book accordingly.

Guest Blog: Olympic Reading by Tom Palmer

 I'm delighted to have a guest post from Tom Palmer, author of great thrillers for older readers and adventures for younger, based around football and rugby. Tom has fantastic resources on his website for teachers, parents and children, and wrote a great free story based on Euro 2012 football championship. He is passionate about getting children and families excited about reading. Do check out the Free Reads section of his website! Thank you, Tom!

Free Olympic football wall chart from coventry2012.blogspot.co.uk

The Olympics is a great opportunity to get children reading for pleasure. And there is no better time for the Games to be taking place than during the school summer holidays.

Parents know that children’s writing and reading skills can slip back during the six week break in July and August.

 If an Olympic athlete was to stop training for six weeks, it would take them months to get back to their previous fitness and skill levels.

The same can be argued for children. Research has shown that if you keep children interested in literacy during the summer, over their whole school career they can be as much as three years ahead of their peers who did not.*

I’ve put together some tips for parents who want to use the Olympics to keep their children reading for pleasure. I hope it helps.

One. Read about the Olympics yourselves. If your children see you reading about something, they are more likely to read about it too. Find bits you think they’ll be interested in and draw them in.

Two. Leave newspapers, magazines and books about the Olympics around the house. Perhaps on the sofa or wherever you are going to be watching the games. Charts. Lists. Pictures. Anything that you think will attract their attention.

Three. Deliver an Olympic Games newspaper supplement or magazines to your child’s bedroom door on the morning of a big competition. Try and find a copy of the children’s newspaper, First News, which is bound to feature the Olympics strongly.

Four. Print off interesting articles/profiles/wall charts and stick them up around the house. On the fridge. In the toilet. On their bedroom wall.

Five. Go to your local library, bookshop or newsagents with your children and browse the Olympics reading sections that are now stuffed with materials. Let your child choose something to read about the games. There is some really good non-fiction around, from biographies of sporting greats to guidebooks to the games aimed at kids.

Six. Have a look at the new Olympic fiction by authors like Owen Slot, Robert Rigby and others. It is easy to find in bookshops, libraries and online at the moment. If your children are still happy to, read it with them at bedtime in chunks.

Seven. Create some kind of prediction game in your household where you all have to guess who is going to win a game, competition or race. Encourage the children to read the Olympic pull-outs from newspapers, that should give them an idea of who the favourites are. Keep a tally throughout the Games to see who wins. Provide a prize.

Eight. Find out if your local library is doing any Olympic events. Many are. Author visits, activity days and other such things are planned nationwide. Visit your council website, find the libraries link and they should have a list of their summer activities. There will probably be summer craft activities too.

Nine. Find a good website about the Olympics and have it as your home page if you have a computer at home. There is lots of excellent journalism on the internet about the Olympics.

Ten. Join the Summer Reading Challenge, a six-book reading quest for children in libraries throughout the UK, where children can earn bronze, silver and gold stickers for reading books over the summer. More info at www.summerreadingchallenge.org.uk. While you are there look at the sports section. Has one sport in particular excited your child? If so, libraries have great sections of ‘How to Play’ books on their shelves.

I hope some of this helps. If it does and your children like football, there are lots of free football literacy activities and free stories on my website at www.tompalmer.co.uk. Check out the Free Reads and Schools & Library sections.

Tom Palmer writes sports fiction for Puffin Books, HarperCollins and Barrington Stoke. Tom is running 28 Olympic reading events in libraries during the summer across England. Find out where and when at his blog www.footballdetective.blogspot.com.  You’ll be very welcome.

* Sadly I cannot find the references for that research, so you’ll just have to take my word for that.

Happiness is sharing books

Image: doublecluck.co.uk

Once a month, I help to organise the children's book group at my fantastic local independent bookshop, Big Green Books in Wood Green, North London. It's on the last Saturday of the month (although next month it's the second to last), and all keen readers 9-14 are very welcome. I love doing it, it makes me enormously happy to eat biscuits and talk about a book with keen, intelligent readers. This month we read Undead by Kirsty McKay.

The children choose the books, which is fantastic as they lead me to read books I often wouldn't read otherwise. Undead is not a book I would ordinarily have chosen to read, but it is hugely enjoyable. Bobby has just moved from the US (where her mum has been working) back to the UK. Just before term starts, she goes on a skiing trip to Aviemore, Scotland with her new classmates. It's a disaster. She's marked out by both her American accent and by her proficiency in skiing, and has had a thoroughly miserable time. So, when the coach taking them back home pulls into a service station, she decides to stay on the bus. A boy in her class, Smitty, is banned from leaving the coach too as he has been caught drinking. The rest if the group rush for the cafe (and the man dressed as a carrot giving out free juice), and so far- so awful. Until they see a figure racing through the snow. It's blonde mean-girl Alice, with horrible news. Everyone is lying in the cafe, dead, including the teachers. However, they don't stay quietly dead. Soon Bobby, Smitty, Alice and the only other survivor, geeky Pete, are escaping their zombie classmates in the Scottish countryside, with no adults, weapons or mobile phone reception. Will they survive? 

We loved this book so much that next month we're reading another zombie book: Charlie Higson's The Enemy.

Sharing books is a wonderful thing to do. Reading is a solitary pleasure, and that for me is a delight- my working life is intensively people-focused, and much as I enjoy that, I need time and space alone to recharge my batteries. However, I get so much delight from books and reading, I want to pass it on to other people. I do that through my job- lecturing student Primary teachers in the teaching of English- and in my personal life. I've pledged to share 20 books this year to help celebrate Bookstart's 20th anniversary. I hope that you will, too, through recommending books to friends, family and work colleagues, through tweeting book recommendations (perhaps with #bookstart20 hashtag), on your Facebook page or in person. But please do. It will help Bookstart to secure future funding, to continue providing packs of books for new babies.

Image: guardian.co.uk

A Face Like Glass- Frances Hardinge

Image: panmacmillan.com

I am a big fan of Frances Hardinge. There are links to my interview with her for Playing By The Book and a review of Fly By Night here . It is always with trepidation that I pick up a new book by an author whose work I've admired so much, but I'm very grateful that I managed to get a review copy at the Federation of Children's Book Groups conference last month.

After a cataclysmic war and climate change, a city has retreated underground to the caverns where they have stored food, and developed a new city, Caverna. At the beginning of the novel, Master Grandible the cheese maker is tending his cheeses when a small girl pops up in a barrel of curds. Since it is the name of the cheese he is making, he calls her Neverfell and looks after her, but there is something so strange about her face that he makes her wear a velvet mask- unlike all the other residents of Caverna, whose faces are blank unless they buy expressions from a Facesmith, Neverfell is incapable of dissembling. Not only does her face show everything she is feeling, she blunders about court telling people what she thinks as soon as it comes into her head.

Caverna, we learn, is ruled by the Grand Steward, who is preserved by the True Delicacies- food with almost magical properties (cheeses that are hallucinogens amongst other things)- and an army of food tasters. After Neverfell runs away from Master Grandible's tunnels, she becomes involve with the Childersin family, master vintners, and particularly Zouelle who creates the alchemy involved in mixing the True Wines. There are wines that help you forget or remember, and Zouelle carries one with her at all times. The Childersins take her in after she is released from arrest on suspicion of being an assassin, and after an accident at a state banquet, she is taken on by the Grand Steward as a foodtaster. However, beneath the factions at court and the daring exploits of master thief the Kleptomancer, there is something else going on- is it a plot to take control of Caverna? and can Neverfell survive?

This novel is as rich and perfumed as the food and court life it describes. When I started reading it I found it almost too rich, being able to only read a couple of pages at a time. But this morning I have read half the book at one sitting, greedily gulping down Hardinge's opulent prose. I highly recommend it for readers of 11+, as I do her other novels. She's a fantastic writer.

Happy 50th birthday, The Phantom Tollbooth

Image: harpercollins.co.uk

Last year Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth turned 50. It is the story of Milo, a normal boy who discovers a mysterious package in his bedroom. Milo is not interested in anything. When he is in, he wants to be out; when he is out, he wants to be in. But he summons up the energy to open the package. Inside, he finds a toy tollbooth. He gets into his toy electric car (of which he is bored) and drives through the tollbooth, and is transported to a magical land: the Kingdom of Wisdom, through which he travels with Tock, the watchdog

Image: carlemuseum.org

to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the Air. 

The comical characters (my favourite is Faintly Macabre, the Not-So Wicked Which), word play and literal exemplifications of idioms- for example, Tock can carry Milo through the air, since "time flies"- is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, and also the recent China Mieville  Young Adult novel Un Lun Dun. 

Image: Norton Juster at Foyles, 26th April 2012 (photo by me)

I went to hear Norton Juster talk about The Phantom Tollbooth with author and journalist Nicolette Jones at the famous London bookshop Foyles. He was a superb raconteur, who explained that his love of wordplay came from his father. He said that he was much like Milo as a child, often bored at home and uninterested at school. However, he said that he felt that the need to entertain himself as a child made him creative (he was an architect as well as an author) and stated his concerns about today's over-scheduled children, who rarely have time to play freely. Interestingly, Juster also stated that he is synaesthesic, associating colours with numbers. One of the characters that Milo encounters is Chroma the Great, the conductor of an orchestra that plays the colours of sunset.

I have loved this book since I was 9. I bought my third copy yesterday, as my previous two copies have fallen apart. I don't think I fully understood all the puns and wordplay then, but I loved the strange characters and the map at the beginning of the book! (All fantasy books should have maps, in my opinion). I hope that you read it and discover it yourself. The 50th anniversary Harper Collins edition that I bought has an introduction by the late Diana Wynne Jones, which was a lovely discovery.

Life in Wartime

Last weekend I went to the fascinating Churchill War Rooms. It is a fascinating, claustrophobic place, showing the difficulties the men and women of Churchill's staff worked through (not least working with the famously irascible Churchill!) I thoroughly recommend it. It made me think about novels to support children's empathy with people living through the war.

Books such as the amazing Goodnight Mr Tom, Carrie's War and The Machine Gunners need no introduction, and Niamh's guest post on Out of Hitler's Time needs no addition. However, there are two other books I'd like to mention for teachers or parents who would like a story to help develop children's understanding of Britain during World War Two.

Image: hive.co.uk

Lenny Levy's father has gone to war. Before he leaves, he gives his son a brass badge with the lion and unicorn, symbols of Britain. Missing his dad, the badge comforts Lenny through the bombing of London. Then he is evacuated to the country, to a big house, where he is the only Jewish child and the only boy. He also wets the bed, and is teased for it. But he finds a walled garden with a unicorn statue, where a wounded soldier called Mick helps him understand that there are different kinds of bravery.

This is a beautiful picture book, a format often (erroneously, in my opinion) thought appropriate for younger children. It is best suited to 7+, and I think that the period detail in the illustrations would help children empathise with Lenny missing his parents and feeling unwelcome in a new environment. It is a book that I would definitely give to 9+ children learning about World War 2, and also those facing difficulties settling into a new environment. 

Image: hive.co.uk

In present day London, Mallie Kelly takes an after-school job in a pet shop so that she can buy her mother a present. Sarah Kelly, Mallie's mother, is an artist who no longer in love with art. The book alternates Mallie's story with that of Tony and Alice, two children who are evacuated to the Lake District during the war. Mallie and Tony's stories become intertwined as the novel progresses, coming together over a drawing of a girl with a rabbit. Adult fans of children's literature may be able to predict the twist, but I doubt child readers would. It's a great book for 8+. I think it would help children realise that people live through a number of historical eras- in this case, the story covers figures from the late nineteenth century to the present day. I loved it! It is published by the wonderful Frances Lincoln, notable for their commitment to celebrating cultural diversity. I recommend exploring their list of picture books in particular. 

Cats and More Cats

A reminder: the Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress giveaway ends on 19th March!

I am a cat lover. My family has always had cats, and I have a lovely, rather elderly cat called Spike.

Here he is doing what he does best: sleeping on the back of the sofa.

Recently I have read three books about cats. I briefly met Tom McLaughlin at the Big Green Bookshop where he was doing an event for the children. A group of small children were waiting with rapt attention for him, so I got hold of a signed copy of The Diabolical Mr Tiddles. It is wonderful.

Image: amazon.co.uk

Harry longs for a cat, and when he finally gets his heart's desire, he names his new friend Mr Tiddles. He loves his pet and pampers him, giving him delicious food, attending to his comfort and entertaining him. Mr Tiddles wants to repay Harry's care, so starts bringing him increasingly extravagant presents, including cake, a train set, a rock star guitar, a grand piano and finally a horse! Harry becomes suspicious, and follows Mr Tiddles through the town. I can imagine the double page illustration of the town with Mr Tiddles' route in a dotted red line being a favourite with young readers. The route takes in a museum, a space centre and even a Western ranch! - which begins to give us a clue where these presents come from... And we finally catch up with Mr Tiddles outside a very important building, where an important person helps to resolve the story. I urge you to make sure you look at the end paper of this lovely picture book; it really made me giggle. The illustrations are incredibly detailed, with a lovely old fashioned cartoon quality without being grotesque. Highly recommended for 3+.

Image: amazon.co.uk

Comedian Natalie Haynes' first novel for children, The Great Escape, will not be her last I hope. 12 year old Millie is rather fed up. Her dad has just lost his job as a computer programmer, and is helping his friend out with his window cleaning business. Millie goes along with them to wash the windows of a laboratory to avoid being looked after by a nosy neighbour, and is astonished to see a cat escaping from the lab. She is even more astonished when the cat talks to her. It appears that the lab has been fitting the cats with voice boxes, and Millie, her friend Jake and his pre-teen hacker brother Ben must carry out the detective work to find out why, stop the testing and rescue the cats. Max the cat is suitably sardonic, and the book is very funny. While Natalie Haynes clearly has strong opinions about animal testing (the book won an award from animal rights charity PETA) this is not a polemic, but a witty, exciting adventure mystery. It would be a great read for 9+. This book does seem to be out of print, but is widely available from online stores.

Image: penguin.co.uk

I don't think I have ever had as many positive tweets about a book as I have about Barbara Sleigh's Carbonel. First published in 1955, it is the story of Rosemary, who lives with her widowed mother in a boarding house. They don't have much money, and Rosemary's mother supplements her pension by taking in sewing. During the summer holidays, while her mother is sewing at the house of the wealthy Mrs Pendlebury Parker, Rosemary decides to set herself up as a cleaner to help out financially.  Because she knows she won't be able to take one out of the house, she buys a broom from an untidy looking woman in a market. She buys a cat from the same woman, and is shocked to discover that not only is he a talking cat, but the Prince of Cats, enchanted by the untidy woman- Mrs Cantrip, a witch. Rosemary has broken part of the enchantment, but not all of it, and she and Mrs Pendlebury Parker's nephew, John, set out to break it.

This is still a great read. Part of the joy of the book is the freedom that 1950s children had: Rosemary and John buy and cook sausages on a gas ring and take the bus to a local cathedral town to find Mrs Cantrip's cauldron, as well as other unsupervised adventures. Sleigh's descriptions are also a joy; she describes Rosemary's plaits as flapping like "the blades of an old pair of scissors" as she hops up the kerb. As @mokuska reminded me, Carbonel is in the great tradition of grumpy magical helpers, like E. Nesbit's Psammead, and he reminded me of the magical characters of another favourite mid-20th century children's fantasy writers, Elisabeth Beresford. I wrote about her here.

This novel was followed by two more about Carbonel: The Kingdom of Carbonel and Carbonel and Calidor. Sadly they seem to be out of print but are listed at a reasonable price in the usual online shops. I have read Carbonel aloud to children of 7+, and confident readers of that age and above would enjoy reading it themselves.

Guest Post: Judith Kerr's Out of Hitler's Time by Niamh Arthur

Today I have a guest post from Niamh Arthur, aged 10. She is writing about Judith Kerr's trilogy, Out of Hitler's Time.

Image: borders.com.au

When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit is one of my favourite books.  Anna is a 9-year-old girl in 1930s Germany.  She soon has to move away because her Jewish family think that Hitler will win the elections.  They go through many countries.  I like this book as it shows how her life would have been – frustrating, scary and secret.

Image: amazon.co.uk

Bombs on Aunt Dainty is the second book in the trilogy.  Anna now lives in London but her family cannot afford the hotel, so Anna has to get a job.  She goes to secretarial school, but soon has to move to the countryside.  This book is very good at explaining how terrifying and sleepless living through the blitz would have felt.

Image: harpercollins.co.uk

A Small Person Far Away is the final book in the series, it takes place after the war.  Anna’s mum is ill with pneumonia in Berlin, so she has to leave London, her husband, and her new job.  This book is set out differently to the other books as it is like a diary written in the third person. The chapters are different days which makes some very big chapters.  I did not like the way it was set out.  There were a few places where it would have been better to have split it into new chapters.

Despite that, this is my favourite series of books because her description of how Anna feels is amazing and the plot is very well thought about.

Thank you Niamh! This is a wonderful guest post. I haven't read A Small Person Far Away but you have convinced me to look out for it. The BBC's amazing Desert Island Discs archive includes a programme featuring Judith Kerr, which can be found here. She reflects on her own childhood, which was the inspiration for this trilogy.

Guest Post: Ravana, the Ultimate Bad Guy by Sarwat Chadda

I am delighted that Sarwat Chadda, author of the fabulous Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress, has agreed to write a guest post about the ultimate bad guy, Ravana. I wrote about it here. 

Image: students.ou.edu

Ravana is the biggest villain of Indian mythology. He’s Satan, he’s Loki, he’s Hades all rolled into one. I love him.

                Indian mythology is quite unlike what’s available in the West. The boundaries between good and evil, morality, are bound by the notions of dharma, of right living. A warrior’s dharma is to kill his enemies so can achieved Heaven through war, through committing what we would view as evil deeds. One of the greatest epics of India, the Mahabharata, has a central moment when the hero Arjuna faces his enemy, made up of his own kin. Before him are cousins and friends and grand-parents that he must slay and he hesitates. It is only when his charioteer, the god Krishna, explains the nature of dharma does he resolve to fight.

                So it is with Ravana. It is his destiny to fight, to terrorise and to make war. And he relishes it. There is no doubt, not angsty whining about how unfair the world is. He seizes the world and shakes it by the throat. He has all the ambition and blood-lust and ruthlessness of any Roman emperor. He is villain writ large, writ epic.

                I love the larger than life villains because their excesses, their love of chaos, we enjoy, albeit perhaps with a frown of disapproval while secretly wishing we could be so free. They allow us, humanity, to indulge in our darkest dreams.Who wouldn’t want to be Dracula, to have power over death itself? Or the grandeur of Darth Vader? The Devil has the best tunes and the best lines. Just ask Milton.

                Heroes are measured by their bad guys. The tougher the better. They define them. The Batman and the Joker. Holmes and Moriarty (who, if you recall, only appeared in one story ever. Now name me any other of Holmes’s opponents. Not so easy, is it?).

                Ravana is the demon king. He kidnaps the princess Sita and unleashes a war with Sita’s husband, Prince Rama. The pair are destined to face each other and their story, the epic the Ramayana is one of my favourites. It’s wildly magical as gods and monkeys and demons and the king of the birds aid or hinder Rama in his search for his wife. The story ends, of course, with a massive battle. The city of demons, Lanka, burns and Ravana defies the gods, fate and Rama ‘till the bitter end, unrepentant up to the moment of his death. His colossal evil and colossal charisma dominates the tale. He has ten heads, twenty arms and once enslaved the gods themselves. Rama has his work cut out for him.

                I’ve taken the legend of the Ramayana as the basis of my new book, Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress. Fundamental to Hinduism is the concept of rebirth. From that idea it was a simple one to imagine that now, thousands of years after his death, Ravana is about to be reborn. But as villains come back, then so do heroes. Ash Mistry thinks he’s just a normal 13 year old boy. A bit lazy, a bit chubby and, if we’ll be honest, a bit cowardly. But it falls to him to stop Ravana and he’ll need the aid of the gods to do it. He’ll have to become more than he is and discover his destiny. His lessons will be harsh and there will be blood along the way, a lot of blood. So, if you’re interested in a tale beyond the boundaries of the west and the familiar myths and monsters of Europe, I might just have something for you.

Image: welovethisbook.com

Thank you so much Sarwat! Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress was published on 1st March, and is available from Waterstones, Amazon  and of course independent bookshops! If you would like to win a signed copy, please leave a comment letting me know who your favourite villain is and leave an email address where you can be contacted. A winner will be chosen on 19th March.

Diversity in fantasy fiction

Image: laurenbeukes.bookslive.co.za

I am currently reading the wonderful adult speculative fiction novel Zoo City by South African writer Lauren Beukes. Set in an alternative version of Johannesburg, it is the story of Zinzi Lelethu December, former journalist and junkie, now a finder of lost things and 419 scammer. In Zinzi's world people who have killed are "animalled", carrying around an animal familiar as a manifestation of their guilt. Being animalled also confers special powers. This the result of a plague that spread from Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It's a truly wonderful book, I strongly recommend it, and one of the aspects I enjoy the most is the clearly identifiable African setting. The ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness that Zinzi needs to survive  as well as the use of African languages: Nigerian pidgeon as well as a variety of South African languages and African French make the fantastical seem plausible.

The image above is created by a South African artist, and I think captures the spirit of the book perfectly. Zinzi's Sloth is not like Lyra Belacqua's daemon (visible soul) Pantalaimon from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials; he is a permanent embodiment of her guilt, and like guilt, is a heavy load to carry around.

I have been thinking a lot about diversity in children's literature recently. It is something that has always been important to me since I started teaching nearly 20 years ago (wow! How did that happen?). It re-appeared on my radar firstly due to reading the forthcoming novel by Sarwat Chadda, Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress. It was so heartening to read a fantasy featuring a British Asian protagonist with fantasy derived from Indian mythology rather than European, and made me wonder why US-based authors Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (author of The Conch Bearer) and Nnedi Okorafor (author of, amongst other books, Akata Witch) are not published in Britain, where we have so many children with Indian and African heritage. I wrote about them here. More of Ash Mistry next week.

Secondly, someone tweeted a link to this blog post on the shocked reaction of fans of the forthcoming Hunger Games film to the casting of an African American actress to play Rue. One of the contestants in the Hunger Games, Rue, is clearly described in the novel as a black girl, so it is depressing that so many (white) readers assumed that she is a white character. Rock star Lenny Kravitz has been cast as Cinna. Cinna's description in the novel is less precise than Rue's but there is no reason why a character described as having close-cropped dark hair and golden-brown eyes should be automatically be played by a white actor. I have often wondered why in post-apocalytic novels and films, both British and American, it should be assumed that only white people survived.

And then I heard Trish Cooke, British author of So Much and actress of Dominican heritage, speaking on Radio 3's The Essay on her experiences of learning to read from books only featuring suburban white families, such as in the Peter and Jane books. None of the books she read featured children growing up in  families such as hers; black, working class, with 8 children and living on a council estate in Bradford (coincidentally, the same estate as the one featured in the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too (sweary clip, watch out if small people are around!). Tricia explained in the radio programme that after a while, she started to feel that there was something wrong with her family, and it changed her from being a lively, confident girl to being quiet and unwilling to contribute in lessons at school. She was determined that her son should not have the same experience, leading her to write picture books featuring families like theirs. They are beautiful, warm stories featuring loving families; I adore them.

It seems to me that we are fortunate to have so many amazing picture books showing diverse families, including culturally diverse backgrounds, single parents, children living with grandparents- but this not being the central point of the story. However, it is disappointing that in fantasy fiction for the age range known as "middle grade" in the US (roughly 8-12) which has been a best selling genre, when minority ethnic characters appear at all, they often appear as colourful backgrounds rather than as active participants in the story- for example, Parvati Patil and Lee Jordan in the Harry Potter series who are so under-developed as characters that I struggle to name them. The only non white character developed to any degree is Cho, Harry's first girlfriend, who is mainly noticeable for her drippiness.

Does it matter? Well, as I see it, if we are concerned about the number of books that children read, then we really need to ensure that there are books that children want to read, books that reflect them and their experiences- and books from a variety of genres. Novels with diverse characters need not always be social realist. Also, white children need to see positive representations of children from other cultures, particularly children growing up in fairly mono-cultural environments. There are of course wonderful publishers such as Frances Lincoln and companies such as Letterbox Library that celebrate diversity and seek out authors to write books doing so, but more needs to be done. Perhaps the advent of digital publishing will mean that there will be more opportunities for more variety of stories to be told.

The exception to the paucity of fantasy novels published in Britain with minority ethnic characters are of course Malorie Blackman's amazing Noughts and Crosses, which is due to be dramatised on Radio 4 next Saturday. The excellent comic book blog New Readers... Start Here has a series of great posts about diversity in comics, including some great ones about Characters of Colour.

EDIT: I have realised that I left out Salman Rushdie's amazing Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life, both wonderful, fantastical stories using references from the Arabian Nights and Indian mythology, but with a warmth and playfulness that I find missing from his novels for adults.

Clever girls and loving mothers

Image: en.wikipedia.org

Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me is the story of sixth grader Miranda, growing up in 1979 in New York City. The story specifically mentions Amsterdam Avenue, which I believe is Upper East Side- in the 1970s this was a working class neighbourhood. She lives in a shabby apartment with her single parent working mother, and her best friend Sal lives in the same building.

One day while walking home from school, Sal is punched in the stomach without any forewarning by a boy who is a stranger. He runs away from Miranda and locks himself in his apartment. Then Miranda and her mother's spare key goes missing, and Miranda starts to receive mysterious letters from someone who seems to be wanting to warn her of something coming in the future.

This is a wonderful book, cleverly wrong-footing expectations from elements of a realist family story (Miranda's shifting friendships, the relationship between her mother and mother's boyfriend Richard, her mother's determination to appear on a game show) by the mystery and Science Fiction elements, which are foreshadowed by Miranda's refusal to read anything but Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which I wrote about here. In fact, many expectations are wrong-footed: the troubled boy who punches Sal in the stomach is the one who understands the time travel in A Wrinkle in Time, but the girl Miranda perceives as a stuck up airhead, Julia, is the one who explains it, albeit by the use of her diamond-chip ring!

Image: mrbsemporium.com

David Almond's My Name Is Mina is the prequel and companion book to the award-winning Skellig, which I wrote about here. In Skellig, Mina is Michael's friend, who is able to see the wonder in Skellig and explain it to Michael. This novel starts:

My name is Mina and I love the night. Anything seems possible in the night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. It's dark and silent in the house, but if I listen close, I hear the beat beat beat of my heart. I hear the creak and crack of the house. I hear my mum breathing gently in her sleep  in her room next door.

12 year old Mina tells her own story (as does Miranda) but it is not a straightforward narrative. Miranda is addressing the person sending her the mysterious letters throughout When You Reach Me, but Mina is addressing herself through her diary, story writing and poetry. Mina is an intelligent and creative thinker and a gifted writer, through which Almond (a former teacher) makes some pointed comments about the rigidity of the school curriculum and the obsession with testing, targets and results in the English education system.

Like Miranda, Mina is growing up with a single mother, but unlike Miranda, remembers her father who has died. In a passage where Mina describes running out of school where she is being teased, she goes into a tunnel under a park, into the Underworld where she is planning to seek Hades and Persephone and ask for her father back. I am not ashamed to say that this passage (written in the third person as Mina seeks to distance herself from it) drove me to tears on a packed train to Brighton. However, five minutes later some word play made me laugh out loud. 

Throughout the novel Mina, from her vantage point in her favourite tree, notes the nesting, laying eggs and hatching of baby blackbirds, heralding the coming of spring after a long north of England winter. As Spring arrives, so does a boy and his family in a house opposite, and Mina feels ready to leave the safety of her tree and choose interaction with children of her own age. 

I read these wonderful novels one after the other, and noted in both a tender and loving relationship between the girls and their mothers. The relationships are not always perfect, and in both books there is a recognition that a strong relationship between mother and daughter is not enough for either mother or child. In both cases the girls recognise that their mothers need to be more than simply parents (important though this is) and both girls eventually seek out new friends, frightening though this is. In When You Reach Me, indeed, Miranda is beginning to think about boyfriends, although this is not a big part of the novel.

These are fantastic books. Although it would not be necessary to enjoy When You Reach Me to have read A Wrinkle in Time, or My Name is Mina to have read Skellig, I hope that readers will go on to seek out those marvellous books too. Both books are suitable for readers 10+ due to their complexity.

In My Name is Mina a teacher sings the Scottish miners' lullaby Corrie Doon, which I think is a beautiful expression of love of a father for a child and also linking the ideas of death, loss, underworld and rebirth. 

Heavens Above

Last April, I visited the London Book Fair. While I browsing the Australian publishers' stand, a book caught my eye.

Image: penguin.com.au

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of Jen Storer's Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children. The story of a mysterious red-haired orphan, found by truck driver Albie Gribble after she has been dumped in the River Charon. Something nasty is in the water, the evil Matron Pluckrose is after her when she is betrayed to the Home for Mislaid Children, and even worse, she has been born without a Guardian Angel. How will Tensy survive the awful Home, with its murderous crows and mysterious Watchers? And what is the evil Thing living in the cave?  But all is not what it seems, and with the help of some rather unreliable angels and some of the other orphans, Tensy can show just what a special little girl she is. This is a beautiful looking book, and would be a great read for fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I just hope that it gets a UK publication soon. There's a great trailer here.

Image: bookdepository.co.uk

"It was a dark and stormy night", begins Madeleine L'Engle's award winning fantasy/ SF novel. (For Wikipedia's round up of other books riffing on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's famously purple prose opening line, see here.) A mysterious woman turns up at Meg Murry's house, Mrs Whatsit, who is a friend of Meg's gifted little brother, Charles Wallace. After drying her feet and eating a sandwich, Mrs Whatsit tells the Meg's mother "there is such a thing as a tesseract". The following day Meg learns that the tesseract is what her scientist father was working on before he disappeared. Meg, Charles Wallace and a popular boy from Meg's school, Calvin O'Keefe, go to visit Mrs Whatsit, where they meet Mrs Who. That evening, Charles Wallace tells Meg and Calvin that they must go with Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who to rescue their father. They meet the Mrs Whatsit's third friend, Mrs Which, and travel through the tesseract, the wrinkle in time, to the planet Uriel where they learn about the threat from the evil Black Thing. They learn that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which are angels, who help them travel to another planet, Camazotz, controlled by an autocratic mind reader, IT, where the children must battle to save their father.

First published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time is considered a classic in the USA. It is interesting to compare the portrayal of angels in the book with those in Tensy Farlow. The three Mrs Ws remind me strongly of Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid and Mother Carey in Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies: 

Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid by Jessie Willcox Smith

not because they are strict, didactic and punitive, but because they are they holders of knowledge and power. The children must learn from them (particularly Mrs Whatsit) to obtain their desire, as Tom must learn from the fairies in The Water Babies. The angels in Tensy Farlow are fallible beings, unreliable and confused. The power (although not the knowledge) lies with Tensy and her ability to inspire others to act for themselves. This is an interesting contrast. L'Engle was an Episcopalian, a commited Christian- however this has not stopped the books being on the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books, for its unconventional approach to religion.

I would recommend A Wrinkle In Time and Tensy Farlow for 9+. A Wrinkle In Time and other books about the Murrys are still in print in the UK.

There's a ghost in my house...

I recently finished the wonderful new book by Cathy McPhail, Out of the Depths. Set in a Scottish school, it is the story of Tyler Lawless, who sees dead people. The story opens wonderfully: "I saw my teacher in the queue at the supermarket last Christmas. Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. She'd been dead for six months."

Image: catherinemcphail.co.uk

Tyler's ability to see ghosts is not necessarily a positive thing though; it gets her in trouble at one school, the reputation of being a self-dramatising liar, and jeapordises her ability to settle at her new school. St Anthony's Academy had been a Catholic boys' school, though it is now coeducational and multi-faith. On her first day, she notices that the statues of the saints appear to be moving. Even more strangely, she sees a boy in her classroom that nobody else has noticed. Her new friends tell her about the murder that happened at the school years ago, of a troubled boy called Ben Kincaid. Tyler realises that the boy she can see is Ben. Then he asks her to help him... A gripping story; the final twist I really didn't see coming. I can't wait for the next one!

Image: orchardbooks.co.uk

Another great series about a girl who can see ghosts is Fiona Dunbar's Kitty Slade. Fire and Roses is the second in the series; the third, Venus Rocks, has just been published. Kitty is now home schooled by her Greek grandmother (events in the first story means that she can't stay at school!) In this story, Kitty and her family are visiting an old family friend. Strange Poltergeist activity at their house leads Kitty to discover that they are under a curse because of their ancestor Sir Ambrose Vyner. Another ghost, John Wilkes, a fellow member of the Hellfire Club (a drinking club that invoked Bacchus and Venus and engaged in various practices designed to shock society) appears to Kitty, and she must solve a mystery to break the curse and ensure her friends can stay in their home. Much of the action of the book takes place in and near the Hellfire Caves in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, South East England; a great feature of the book is that young readers will learn some of the history and geography of the area alongside enjoying the story. 

This book is lighter in tone than Out of the Depths; Fiona Dunbar aims to write stories similar to the Famous Five; I felt it was more like Nancy Drew crossed with Scooby Doo. Very enjoyable.

Out of the Depths I would recommend to 11+, and Fire and Roses to 10+. Two very enjoyable books.

The title of this post is from the Northern Soul classic, R. Dean Taylor's Ghost In My House.

Young bookworms

Image: coolspotters.com

I have written here about encouraging reluctant readers, but a conversation on Twitter with @ActuallyMummy, @LesleyAnneWeir, @Playbythebook and @BroughtonLass made me think about the opposite problem: how do you find reading materials suitably challenging for a 7 year old reading well in advance of their chronological age?

The temptation can be to encourage children to read increasingly difficult books. However, books for older readers can be unsuitable for children in plot, content and ambiguity; young children expect resolution, goodies rewarded and baddies punished. Books for Young Adult readers rightly address the concerns of their readers: relationships, which may include sex, politics, racism and violence. These are clearly not appropriate for young readers.

Image: lemonysnicket.wikia.com

Equally, I frequently see comments on the Amazon forum and on newspaper websites from adults claiming that they just went straight from reading Enid Blyton to Dickens. In my opinion this is equally inappropriate. I was assessed at 9 as having a reading age of 14 (after refusing to learn to read until I was 7). Indeed I read Wuthering Heights at 10. It put me off reading classics for years. (I have often been puzzled by people pushing Wuthering Heights at young girls. Far from being a romantic hero, Heathcliff is a murderer, domestic abuser and the desecrater of Cathy's grave! I can only assume they're remembering the bowdlerised Laurence Olivier film). Even some classic children's books such as Little Women and What Katy Did may not be appropriate: we tend to forget that they were the Young Adult books of their time.

So, my fiction suggestions.

1. Historical fiction. Rosemary Sutcliff's books for younger readers, such as The Armourer's House, and Cynthia Harnett's The Wool Pack, are wonderful. There is a lovely blogpost on The Wool Pack from DoveGreyReader here. Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse was my favourite as a child, and recommended to those who like their history with some fantasy; equally Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. Good readers have their comprehension skills challenged as they have to think carefully about the historical background.

2. Fantasy fiction, carefully chosen, may be a good option. Eva Ibbotson's fantasy fiction for younger children and Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series are good options, as well as the first three Harry Potter novels. (Some parents may consider that the later ones are not appropriate for their children; some will not be unduly upset, but others may find them frightening, as well as very long!) I particularly enjoyed Lucinda Hare's Dragonsdome Chronicles novels last year, which combine the close relationship between children and animals that I enjoyed in pony books as a child.

3 Animal stories, such as those by Michael Morpurgo, Dick King-Smith and Lauren St John are very enjoyable. Some parents may consider some of Michael Morpurgo's books too challenging for younger readers, but the synopses on the website should give a good indication for your children.

4. Classic children's books. The Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, Noel Streatfeild's novels (and children who enjoy them may like Lyn Gardner's Olivia books) and Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons may be enjoyed by younger readers. The narrative drive of the stories may over-ride the historical setting and unfamiliar language.

I hope that these suggestions are helpful; thank you to the tweeters named above for their suggestions which inspired this post!

Seasonal reading 2: Grimble at Christmas

Image: childrensbookshop.com

Sir Clement Freud, chef, theatre impressario (he launched the Royal Court Theatre Club, a cabaret club, which later became the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London), journalist, Liberal MP, TV and radio personality and raconteur, wrote two short children's books; Grimble and Grimble at Christmas. Richard wrote about Grimble in his guest post here; and I will write about the very funny second story today.

Grimble's parents are very vague (they forgot to give him a first name, they're not sure when his birthday is, so he is "about 10", and will often forget to tell him they're going away, so he has to look after himself), and in this story he is convinced that they have forgotten about Christmas. Grimble plots to make enough money so that he can buy presents, a tree and, most importantly, Christmas dinner for himself and his family. Grimble sets himself up in a toast-making and delivering business, delivers Christmas trees and is even sent a pound note by his aunt (Grimble at Christmas was published in 1974!), but just when all seems lost, he receives a wonderful Christmas surprise from an unexpected source.

I first encountered this book 20 years ago, as an adult. It was a childhood favourite of a friend of my sisters, who gave it to her. This is very definitely a much-loved second hand copy; priced 10p, it is very creased and the pages are yellowed. Children's books very often migrate to my bookshelves from my family's, and I read it, giggling. This is a very funny book, with Freud's dry wit and love of food evident on every page. It is only 5 chapters long, and would be a wonderful book to read to children 7+ in the run-up to Christmas. Children 8+ would enjoy reading it themselves, but may need prices of items explained (for example, a loaf costing 6p!)

Seasonal reading 1: Winter Holiday, by Arthur Ransome

I loved the Swallows and Amazons series of books as a child. The Swallows (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) and Amazons (Ruth- known as Nancy- and Peggy) are the protagonists of the first two books, Swallows and Amazons and Swallowdale, are middle-class children who attend boarding school, and the books are the stories of their summer holidays in the Lake District. Their adventures sailing on the lake and on the fells are sanctioned by Nancy and Peggy's mother, Mrs Blackett, and the Swallows' mother Mrs Walker is reassured by the famously sanguine telegram from Captain Walker, the children's father- BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN. The children are initially at war with, then aided and abetted by, the Amazon's Uncle Jim, known by the children as Captain Flint, since they spent Swallows and Amazons being pirates.

The fourth novel in the chronology of books, though the third set on a lake inspired by Coniston Water, it is the first appearance of the D's, Dick and Dorothea Callum, who are spending the last week of their Christmas holiday on Dixon's farm. Mrs Dixon was their mother's nanny. The children's parents are going abroad on their father's first foreign posting. The children have no experience of sailing, but are experienced skaters; Dick's main interest is in Science and at the point the story opens, he is involved with astronomy. Dorothea is extremely imaginative, a keen reader and storywriter (though in a less irritating way than the unfortunately-named Titty). They become friends with the Swallows and Amazons, making an igloo from an abandoned hut, cooking out of doors and skating on the beck. The children know that a great freeze is forecast; they are re-imagining the landscape as Polar explorers and lament the fact that they will be returning to school before it comes.

A reprieve from return to school comes when Nancy develops mumps. Since the children must remain in quarantine for a month to ensure that they are free from infection before returning to school, Peggy moves to Holly Hawe farm with the Swallows (Mrs Walker and baby Brigit is in Malta with their naval Captain father) and they invent ways to communicate with Nancy via coded pictures and symbols on flags. On a trip to High Greenland (a snow covered fell) they find a sheep nearly dying, trapped on a narrow ridge. Dick (using his knowledge of gravity and pulleys) rescues it with help from Titty, Roger and Dorothea, and in gratitude Mr Dixon and Silas, his shepherd, makes them a sledge. He becomes very involved in their exploits, giving them sheepskins and rabbit skins to make hats and mittens with. The final adventure of the story, when the less knowledgeable Ds misread a signal from Nancy and set off alone in a snow blizzard, is truly thrilling. It is also gratifying for more bookish readers that Dorothea's romantic, storytelling feeling of what is fitting for explorers to do leads to their rescue.

Image: conistonwildlife.org.uk

This is a wonderful seasonal re-read. The wintry landscape is well evoked, it's beauties and dangers are evident. Many 1930s children's stories make the contemporary reader cringe (witness @knownasbowman's tweeting his reading of Biggles novels), but I was relieved that this wasn't the case with Winter Holiday. The children are middle class and attend boarding school, but Ransome portrays the Dixons, Silas and the other Cumbrian people, and their dialects, that the children encounter with respect. In particular I enjoyed the way that Mr Dixon and Silas enters into the polar explorer spirit with the Ds, so that they can join in the exploration on equal terms. A few years ago papers on Ransome's time in Russia reporting for the radical Daily News on the revolution and the Bolshevik government were released. MI5 considered his reports unduly sympathetic, although his politics remain unclear. However if he did have left wing sympathies it may explain this book's freedom from contemporary class prejudice (though I remember some condescending attitudes in Coot Club- perhaps more recent re-readers can enlighten me?). All in all, curl up with this book if you are 9+ and enjoy with hot chocolate, looking through the window at the cold outside. I think it would be a great read-aloud to 7+ as well.

Under the sea

Image: jwwaterhouse.com

Mermaids are fascinating. They seem to symbolise both the seductive beauty and danger of the sea, the borderline nature (or liminality) of the coast- of the earth but moulded by water; and also our human condition: do we belong to the natural, animal world, or are we separate? Stories of love between humans and merpeople can be the ultimate in doomed love; how can people who live in different elements ever marry? It's a compelling story, that has been told and retold since Homer's Odyssey.

Image: Waterstones.com

I have read two books recently that retell (in different ways) Matthew Arnold's The Forsaken Merman. Firstly, Liz Kessler's The Tail of Emily Windsnap. Emily lives on a boat in a seaside town with her mother. Despite them living so close to the sea, her mother has never allowed Emily to learn to swim. During a swimming lesson, Emily finds out why: as soon as she hits the water, her legs fuse to a tail, and she becomes a mermaid! Believing that her mother is terrified of water, she doesn't tell her of her discovery; instead she puts her new tail to the test, swimming further and making a new friend. However, she discovers that merpeople are forbidden to have contact with humans, and that her mother is being betrayed dreadfully by someone who has a reason to keep it that way... A great, fun read.

Image: Waterstones.com

The EDGE: Rivets series is an exciting-looking range of books for readers who are not yet ready for the challenge of sustained reading that novels for readers 8+ can present. Katherine Langrish, a writer I really admire, has retold the story of the Forsaken Merman from the point of view of Mara, the daughter of the merman and Margaret, the human woman who has left her family and returned to land. Mara journeys to find her mother and bring her back. Told in simple yet beautiful language, it's a compelling read. Highly recommended.

I'd recommend both books for 8+,  Forsaken particularly for children who enjoy stories but find reading quite daunting. And the title of this post? The jaunty song from Disney's The Little Mermaid, of course!