Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf by Catherine Storr

Review by Liam R, age 6, and Claire R (Mum).

Liam - I think this book is very funny. One of my favourite parts is when Wolf tries to plant normal objects in the garden to make them grow, but he doesn't realise that a piece of a ladder won't grow into a big ladder! That made me laugh very hard.  I liked the chapter where Wolf thought he was invisible, because he was doing lots of silly things and thought no one could see him.  The Wolf does lots of silly things and is very naughty but I really liked him.

I read some of the book by myself and sometimes Mum read it to me. I'm going to take the book to show my teacher when I go back to school.

I think that other boys and girls should read this book as I think they will really like it.  I really enjoyed waiting to see if Polly would get eaten up by the Wolf.

Claire -

This book has been a pleasure to read with both of the boys (aged 6 and 9).  I like to read aloud to Liam and he always enjoys listening to stories where there are opportunities to bring the story characters to life with interesting voices and Wolf is definitely one of those characters!

The book is split into lots of short stories for easy reading and while each one carries a similar theme of whether Wolf will ever catch Polly, the content is imaginative and varied as he tries every trick in the book.  While Wolf is the 'baddie' of the stories, the way the stories are written make him seem very human and quite endearing at times and adds to the charm - Liam found himself wanting Wolf to catch Polly before the end of the book!

All in all a highly recommended read both for children, and for parents. I can guarantee that this book will be a favourite to go back to over the next few years.

And the winner is...

LiveOtherwise! Congratulations, please email me your postal address to fantasticreads at gmail.com and I'll put the prize in the post as soon as possible. Hope you like it!

The Prince of Mists by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, trans Lucia Graves

This post is my response to the Mostly Reading YA Translation Month.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is most well known, of course, for The Shadow of the Wind, also translated by Lucia Graves, but his first four books were Young Adult novels. The Prince of Mists was his first novel, published in 1993, followed by The Midnight Palace (1994), Las Luces de Septiembre (The Lights of September, yet to have an English edition, 1995) and Marina (also yet to have an English edition, 1999). The Prince Of Mists was published in English by Orion in 2010.

13- year-old Max Carver lives in an unnamed city. One day in the early summer of 1943, his father, a watch maker, comes home and announces to the family that they are moving to the coast. On arrival at their new home, his younger sister Irina insists on adopting a stray cat she finds at the station, and Max notices that the station clock appears to be going backwards. The new house also seems to have a strange atmosphere: it hasn't been lived in since the former occupants' son, Jacob Fleischmann, had drowned in 1932.

Not long after the family arrive, Irina has an accident that results in coma, and she and the parents have a long hospital stay. Max, his older sister Alicia and their friend Roland discover that the sinister Prince of Mists has a terrible grievance against the Finkelsteins and is out for revenge.

This is a fast paced, absorbing read, atmospherically set on what I assume is the Northern Spanish coast (there is mention of the channel and trade with Northern Europe via the sea). Some aspects don't quite hang together for me: it wasn't entirely clear what the Prince's powers were, where he came from and why, for example, and the purpose of the backwards-running clocks- but there are some terrifying moving statues. As a debut, it is impressive, and I can't wait to read Ruiz Zafon's other Young Adult reads.

Graves' translation is excellent. It is exactly as a good translation should be, in that it is unobtrusive and naturalistically rendered. An article on her childhood and life in Majorca with her father, poet Robert Graves, can be found here.

London Bookfair 2011

Monday 11th April to Wednesday 13th April was London Bookfair at Earl's Court Exhibition Centre. It''s a great opportunity to go and see what's out there in the world of books, what will be released and some interesting new marketing.

This alarmed me terribly, until a friend told me that former WAG (this stands for Wives and Girlfriends, as the partners of sportsmen are termed; funnily enough the partners of Paula Radcliffe and Victoria Pendleton are not called HABs) Michelle Gayle- yes, Hattie from EastEnders- has run a lot of workshops with teenage girls to try to raise their aspirations beyond marrying a rich man. I downloaded the first chapter from here: http://www.prideandpremiership.co.uk/ and it strikes me as being a version of Bridget Jones Diary rather than Pride and Prejudice. It is being released on mobile phone; you can receive it by texting Pride to 60300. I think that this is an interesting marketing move, likely to appeal to the teenage girls that this book is aimed at.

I am only sorry that my rather poor iPhone photo of this beautiful picture book from Tara Books can't do it justice. While publishers are creating books that feel this good, I cannot see eReaders taking off for young children. The paper is glossy and thick, and the cover is cloth, and feel wonderful as well as looking beautiful. I can imagine creating some fabulous artwork with children based on the illustrations. The Sacred Banana Leaf is a trickster tale from Indonesia (other famous tricksters are Anansi from the Caribbean and West Africa, Clever Tortoise, also from West Africa, or Br'er Rabbit from southern USA). Have a look inside- the illustrations are beautiful, in a style of painting from South East India, where Tara Books is based. Another book by the same author, Nathan Kumar Scott, is Mangoes and Bananas. Zoe from Playing By The Book introduced me to Tara Books, and in her excellent blogpost about another of Tara's books, Do! All of these books are highly recommended. You can order direct from Tara, or from Amazon. Or I'll bet your local bookshop would order them for you.

I was really pleased to see that Walker Books is reissuing Berlie Doherty's  Classic Fairy Tales. It is richly illustrated by Jane Ray, and goes back to the original versions of the tales (Grimm, Anderson, Afanashev etc) rather than the Disney versions that many children consider the "correct" versions. Of course, the Grimm tales are from the oral tradition so are subject to change from country to country, but the original versions were much less "pretty" than the stories children hear today. This book is glorious and a real investment for parents or teachers- children will love it and want to hear or read it again and again. Berlie Doherty is a wonderful writer; she has won the Carnegie medal twice (for Dear Nobody and Granny Was A Buffer Girl, the story of several generations of a Sheffield family). My personal favourite of her work is Children of Winter, about the Derbyshire village of Eyam, which in 1666 cut itself off from the outside world when a traveller to the village infected it with plague. It was dramatised by BBC radio; listen out for it on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

While wandering about I came across an Australian Publishers stand, where this caught my eye:

This book was nominated for a number of children's awards in Australia, and received good reviews, but unfortunately hasn't got a UK publisher. I've ordered it from Australia (gulp) and will report back. I'm intrigued by another use of social media by children's/ Young Adult publishers (Pride and Premiership has its own Facebook page, for example)- the Youtube trailer. I think that this is fabulous- it builds anticipation and interest the way film and TV trailers do. I think it would be brilliant to have children in school making trailers for their favourite books- much more interesting than writing a book review!

Finally, I got a couple of uncorrected proofs from a kind lady at Frances Lincoln (there were far fewer freebies than I remember from previous visits!): Too Much Trouble by Tom Avery, which was the winner of the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices award in 2010. It's the story of Emmanuel and his brother Prince, who escape from a war torn central African country to London, but don't find a safe haven and are soon lost and alone on the streets of London, and The Rabbit Girl by Mary Arrigan, which is set in present day London and wartime Lake District and looks intriguing.

After all this, it was lovely to meet Zoe from Playing By The Book, and we staggered to Drummond Street, behind Euston Station, under the weight of book catalogues and had a delicious vegetarian curry at the venerable Ravi Shankar bhel poori house. A superb day out.

Tiffany Aching- an appreciation

I have long been a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. I think that as a fully realised alternate universe, it works brilliantly. Fantasy novels, particularly comic ones, must have their own internal logic, and the rules can be broken, but not so much that it breaks the reader's belief in it. Pratchett does this with incredible skill.

Longterm fans of Discworld will remember that in Discworld, according to Equal Rites, girls are witches and boys are wizards, and there are no exceptions. Boy wizards go to Ankh Morph to the Unseen University, and girl witches are apprenticed to another witch. Witch magic (despite the best efforts of Mrs Letice Earwig to "professionalise" it) is practical, focussing on healing, animal husbandry and looking after the sick, poor, elderly and unfortunate.

Tiffany Aching, in The Wee Free Men, first of her series, is nine years old. She lives on The Chalk, her family are sheep farmers and she is still mourning the death of Granny Aching, a formidable woman and well-respected shepherd. Tiffany is a very intelligent girl, largely ignored in her numerous family since she is capable and trustworthy. She is a very good dairymaid. She has read all the books her family have (a yearly almanac, a book of fairy tales, The Flowers of the Chalk, Diseases of Sheep and a dictionary which she has read from beginning to end since nobody told that this is not how a dictionary is used. Hence she has an excellent vocabulary but often pronounces words wrongly.)

The book of fairy tales came in handy, as she recognises Jenny Green Teeth and defeats her at the beginning of The Wee Free Men in a particularly ruthless way. This attracts the attention of both the Nac Mac Feegles, a gang of disreputable, vaguely Scottish "Pictsies" (thrown out of Fairyland for drunkenness, thieving and fighting), and Miss Perspicacia Tick, an itinerant witch finder (to recruit young witches) and teacher. Teachers in Discworld are like travelling showpeople- they turn up in a village, set up a showground and teach in return for food. However they are regularly chased from villages at dusk, for fear of chicken-stealing. Tiffany is too young at 9 to be apprenticed, but she travels to Fairyland to rescue her little brother Wentworth and on the way, also the Baron's son Roland, thereby also attracting the attention of Granny Weatherwax.

The four novels following Tiffany's adventures ( The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full Of Sky, Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight) revisit her every two years: she is 11 in A Hat Full Of Sky, apprenticed to Miss Level and encountering some delightful other young witches, 13 in Wintersmith and 15 in I Shall Wear Midnight. One of the joys of Pratchett's novels are the names- to my mind he is on a par with Dickens in that respect. Annagramma Hawkin, Petulia Gristle, Dimity Hubbub and Gertruder Tiring are fabulous names. Another is the re-encountering of characters from other Discworld novels: Granny Weatherwax, Mrs Earwig, the Nac Mac Feegles and the Wintersmith are recurring characters. I would argue that rather than "adult" and "juvenile" novels, all Pratchett's novels can be enjoyed by all ages; readers who are more sophisticated and widely-read in the fantasy genre can enjoy the parody aspects, while less experienced readers enjoy the humour, characters and absurdities of Discworld.

Pratchett has a great deal of respect for his female characters, both young and old; Tiffany is a great female hero (not just an honorary boy as many female heroes in children's fiction tend to be), her thought processes are particularly interesting. What might be termed her "metacognition" (reflecting upon her thoughts, then reflecting upon her reflection) is particularly interesting and would be a fascinating basis for thinking skills lessons with 10-14 year olds. I find his commentary on fairy tales in The Wee Free Men interesting as well- the treatment of women considered witches in fairy tales, on The Chalk and in 17th century Europe and North America is a theme of the novels.

Finally, Pratchett brings aspects of both "high" and "low" culture  into the novels: part of Fairyland is a representation of Richard Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke (minus a Nac Mac Feegle making an obscene gesture, of course!) which can be seen at Tate Britain. While searching for the Tate link, I came across this Queen song that I had never heard. One of my favourite exchanges in the novel, perhaps a comment on our present popular culture, is this one between Tiffany and Miss Tick:

"...Are you listening?"
"Yes," said Tiffany.
"Good. Now... if you trust in yourself..."
"Yes?"
"... and you believe in your dreams..."
"Yes?"
"... and follow your star..." Miss Tick went on.
"Yes?"
"...you'll still get beaten by people who spend their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye."

There is now an illustrated version of The Wee Free Men, which I will be looking out for (my copy is a very bashed Random House copy). I'm a little concerned, as I have my own idea of Tiffany's (very ordinary) appearance, but the jacket looks great:

Terry Pratchett won the Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. A full list of his children's fiction can be found here. His novels have frequently been dramatised on BBC Radio 4, and available as audiobooks (Mort is particularly good). One of the great things about these novels is that, in an era with increasing polarisation of the genders in publishers' marketing (I've written more about this here) is that they are enjoyed by both boys and girls; any upper Primary teacher will tell you how hard it is to interest boys in reading novels with a girl protagonist, but Pratchett can do it. I take my pointy hat off to him for that alone.

Farewell to Diana Wynne Jones

The death of Diana Wynne Jones was announced yesterday. Her fans can't have been entirely shocked, as she has been having treatment for cancer for two years, and in August she had decided to discontinue with her chemotherapy.

Diana Wynne Jones was born in 1934 in London. The family was evacuated to her father's family in Wales, then to the Lake District and to York, and after the war ended, the family moved to Essex. Her childhood was not a happy one; she describes her mother as unloving and her father as mean, but she was very close to her sisters, Professor Isobel Armstrong, and Ursula, an actress. Jones wrote over 50 books, and won the Guardian Children's Book Prize in 1977 for Charmed Life, amongst other awards.

I first read and loved Charmed Life in the late 70s, but my favourite of the novels is Howl's Moving Castle. Sophie Hatter lives in Market Chipping in the land of Ingary, where fairy tale conventions (such as witches, seven league boots and spells) are accepted in an otherwise ordinary market town.

Sophie is the eldest of three daughter of a prosperous milliner. Her mother died after giving birth to Lettie, the second daughter. Mr Hatter married one of his shop assistants and had another daughter, Martha. In fairy tale, this should make Sophie and Letty the Ugly Sisters, but in fact they are pretty and despite usual childhood squabbles the girls get on well together and with their step mother.

Unfortunately the expectation of Ingary is that, in line with fairy tale norms, Sophie and Lettie will fail with any endeavour they undertake, only for Martha to succeed. Lettie rails against this unfairness, but Sophie is the sensible older sister, well accustomed to looking after her sisters. Lettie is considered the beauty, Martha is considered intelligent, and Sophie is dutiful and good at sewing. When their father dies, leaving far less money than expected and the girls have to leave school, Lettie is placed in an apprenticeship with a Cesari's bakery, and Martha with Annabel Fairfax, the witch. Sophie feels this is only right; Lettie being the second sister and unlikely to make any success, she is better off being in a place where she can marry an apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha on the other hand can learn a useful trade and meet influential people who will help her seek her fortune. However the girls decide to switch places, a fact which becomes significant later in the book.

Sophie is to stay at the hat shop and eventually take over, and since she knows she will not have adventures, she settles down to learn the hat business, and since she is bored and lonely, she imagines little stories about the hats and tells them. However, she becomes discontented and loses her temper with a customer, who unfortunately is the Witch of the Waste. The Witch puts a spell on her, turning her into an old woman, and not wanting to alarm her family she runs away.

Sophie sees the Wizard Howl's castle moving towards her. Howl has a reputation of literally stealing girls' hearts- he is heartless. Sophie however feels that, as an old woman, she is not at risk of hurt from him and she goes to the castle as a caretaker. The castle is powered by a fire-demon, Calcifer, also under a spell, and the real work is done by Michael, the apprentice.

There are two repeating themes throughout the novel. One is that people are truly not what they seem; Sophie, Howl, Calcifer, Martha and Lettie are just some of the characters whose appearance or natures are changed by spells (there are others, but they are significant to the plot.) Both Sophie and Howl must learn each others' true natures in order to save each other. The second is common to many of Jones' novels: doors and openings to other lands. Howl's castle has four doors, opening to Kingsbury, the capital of Ingary, one to Porthaven, by the sea, one to Market Chipping, one to Wales (where Howl is Howel Jenkins) and one is the front door.

Sophie is a very loveable character. Initially diffident and lacking in self confidence, her transformation into an old woman shows that she is in fact tenacious, courageous and loving. This is in contrast to Howl, who cares little for convention and the opinions of others, but is finally willing to put himself in danger for the people he loves.

This is a funny, entertaining novel. It was adapted by Studio Ghibli into an anime film, which takes most of the central themes of the book but of course is not a totally faithful adaptation: some characters are conflated and some plot aspects are omitted. The novel for me is far more satisfying.

Diana Wynne Jones was a highly influential novelist. She was at Oxford at the same time as some other incredible children's fantasy writers: Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Penelope Lively, and was taught by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein. However, she published her first novel 10 or more years after the rest of her generation, which may explain why, although she had a great deal of critical success, she was never as widely read as the others. After the publishing phenomenon of Harry Potter, Jones' books, many of which were out of print, were reissued. She was very gracious about the debt Rowling owed to her, but her lack of acknowledgement. Neil Gaiman wrote about his great friend, who he was very open about crediting, here.

I wrote about another of Jones' books, Witch Week, here.

Edit: The Guardian has now posted an obituary on its website.

Hand in Gove

Michael Gove has been inspired by a Charter School in Harlem, New York, to say that State educated children should read 50 books a year once they are at Secondary school. In my opinion there should be the space in the curriculum (at both Primary and Secondary school) to read more, but I am not in favour of proscribed book lists, and it seems that the revised National Curriculum for England and Wales may have booklists.

I was thinking about my own reading when I was 11. I have a diary from that age, where I listed some of what I had read over the past year. The list included:

Smash Hits magazine
Jackie magazine
Carrie by Stephen King
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
Strangers at Snowfell by Malcolm Saville
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein (I read this in English lessons, much to my disgust since I had read it before with my dad)
The Otterbury Incident by C Day-Lewis (this was in English lessons at school. I hated it and have never read it since)
Emily by Jilly Cooper
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Watership Down by Richard Adams- I had been to see the film
Tarka The Otter by Henry Williamson (Another read at school- I got in trouble for reading ahead of the class)
The King of the Barbareens by Janet Hitchman (This may have been a school read. I remember nothing about it except the title)

As you can see, quite a variety, and like many young readers I switched from approved "literature" to material adults would have tolerated (magazines) to books that would have been considered too unchallenging (The Little White Horse) to books that definitely would not have been approved- Jilly Cooper and Stephen King.

I was tormented at school with A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines. It is undoubtedly a brilliant book, but it meant absolutely nothing to my classmates and I growing up North West of London in the early '80s. Unbelievably I don't think my teacher made any links between Billy's situation growing up in a mining town in Yorkshire in the 1960s and the closure of the mines in the early '80s. I don't remember watching the film at school. However, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, from the Deep South of USA in the 1960s, resonated with me, growing up in an area painted with swastikas and National Front slogans following the riots in many inner city areas in the 1980s. (I am not suggesting that the Home Counties were like Alabama, of course, but the central message of respect for difference translated to the late 70s/ early 80s, when skinhead attacks and black football players being greeted with monkey noises and bananas thrown at them were common).

If the list is going to be a suggestion of the range of books children and young people should encounter at schools, as an entitlement, then I am in favour of this- what I have omited from my list is the inexplicable number of Westerns and Steinbeck we read in my second year at Secondary school (I remember Shane, The Red Pony, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, mostly because I loathed them and have never willingly read or watched a Western since); I was miserable in English Literature that year. Young people should be entitled to be introduced to Western and American literary classics, but also poetry and literature from other countries, biography and autobigraphy, diaries and letters, realist and fantasy novels, modern drama. And crucially, schools should be free to choose the texts that are most appropriate to their students and their situation.

Parents also have responsibility for their children's reading development, ensuring that they belong to the library and are allowed to choose books for themselves. Of course, parents need to model reading behaviour as well. However, children and young people must also be allowed free rein to read what they like. If this includes blogs, magazines, intructions for games, comics and graphic novels, song lyrics, Justin Bieber's autobiography, supernatural romances- does this count in Gove's opinion? Maybe given some adults' aversion to reading we should be impressed if they're reading anything at all.