story time books

Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox was performed as a play on Thursday 15 March at Capital E. We have copies of it as a board book for remembering after the performance. Even without the performance, a great little book.

The Highwayman’s Footsteps by Nicola Morgan is a novel based on what might have happened around the story of Alfred Noyes’s poem The Highwayman. For 12 and over, but suitable for younger readers who are capable, it’s a very good read. It’s exciting, emotionally true, and very political about the abuse of power, and people’s resistance to that.

Set in Stone by Linda Newberry won the children’s section of the Costa Book Awards (previously the Whitbread). It’s another for the teenagers, quite a sophisticated read, set in the late 19th and early 20th century with a sort of dual naive narrator structure. Neither of the two narrators knows all the facts, and the full story emerges only slowly. A very interesting read for older readers, very well written.

The Great Chocolate Cake Bake-off by Philippa Werry (a Wellington writer) would suit 10 year-old and up. It’s a funny and gentle story about a boy coping with the fact that his family is rather different (his mother dead and his father a sculptor who uses recycled materials), learning that perhaps he can be good at some things. A younger brother, an annoying girl-next-door who refuses to be intimidated by the in-crowd round out the main characters, and it’s good character-driven writing.

Sebastian Darke: Price of Fools by Philip Caveney is new in paperback. For readers 10 or 12 up, it’s an adventure story with some fantasy elements like elves, a manling, and a talking gruffalope, (a beast of burden who prefers to be thought of as a partner) but the emphasis is on the characters and the action rather than the strangeness, so it may well appeal to those who don’t usually like fantasy. Sebastian is attempting to take on his father’s role as a jester and it has some amusing comment on the nature of humour. It certainly made me laugh.

The Transformation of Minna Hargreaves is new from Fleur Beale. Minna is a nearly 15-year-old whose father announces that the family is going to live for a year on a conservation island in Cook Strait. That’s bad enough for someone whose social life is just beginning to be meaningful, but their year is also to be filmed for a reality TV show. Her parents’ relationship is under pressure, her brother is a “stoner”, and there’s lots happening before they go and once they’re on the island. Language and mature content means it’s for older readers, but a very interesting book about a teenager under pressures of many sorts. Isolation, reality TV, conservation, relationships, families, are all themes explored. Of course it’s even closer to home than most New Zealand books, being set in Wellington and Cook Strait. Fleur’s previous book A Respectable Girl is also wonderful and shortlisted for this year’s NZ Post Book Awards.