story time books

We will close tonight after a very busy and successful year. Thank you to all customers, individuals, schools and preschools, and we wish you a Merry Christmas, happy holidays if you are lucky enough to have them, and a wonderful 2009. We will be closed for our own holiday until Monday 12 January. Please contact us then if you need any help finding books to start the new year. We hope to see old friends and new faces next year, and to help you find the right book for the child or children you want to see with a love of reading. It’s been a huge pleasure and privilege to do that for the last two years, and we hope to continue for a long time yet.

Antoinette Portis’s Not a Box is critically acclaimed and much loved, and this successor is just as good. It’s the same concept, an off-page voice saying things like “What are you doing with that stick?” and the next page showing that it’s not a stick, but a whatever the child is imagining. Another fantastic book which says more than many novels with very few words and deceptively simple illustrations. Hardback only at this stage, but a lovely gift. These books and others like them are celebrations of the imagination of children, and of their creators.

Another trilogy which has become a sequence. This is the fourth book in Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses series. It’s another novel for teenagers which could equally be read by many adults: it has a plot which hurtles along at a frantic pace and yet the characters feel real enough to care about. It can easily be read without the previous volumes, but knowledge of the characters’ previous experiences no doubt adds other levels. Some noughts are still using violence to achieve their aim of equality with the darker-skinned crosses, and Callie Rose and Tobey are caught up in events in different ways which impinge on their relationship. I don’t want to give away any plot details, but lovers of the earlier books won’t be disappointed, and others may discover the sequence for the first time. Definitely a young adult read with violence and sexual content.

This is a great New Zealand picture book by Sally Sutton with illustrations by Brian Lovelock. It tells the story, in rhyme, with lots of onomatopoeia, of a road being built. “Plan the road. Plan the road./ Mark it on the map./ Hammer in the marking pegs./ Ping! BANG! TAP!” Each stage of making a road is on a double page spread with text with rhythm and rhyme, and dynamic, colour-filled illustrations with heaps to look at. The people are male and female, pakeha, polynesian and asian, and the dedication from Sally Sutton: “For Alice – why should the boys have all the fun?” reminds us that machine-madness is not just for boys, though it’s certainly more common among them than among girls. A beautiful hardback book from Walker Books Australia. I’m not sure at what stage of the year this was published, but someone asked me to get it in and I decided to order extras, and I’m certainly glad I did.

This Australian novel by Sue Lawson has been available since the middle of the year, but is one that slipped onto the shelves unread. I noticed it last week, and have now read it. It’s one of the best I’ve read all year, a great story, very well told. Like Mistik Lake, (by Martha Brooks) which I reviewed here in May, it’s about the way in which suppressed aspects of the past keep surfacing in different generations. Darcy is left with her miserable grandmother and quiet great-grandmother when her mother has to go off to do more study for her nursing career. While she’s staying with them she has a school assignment to do finding out a personal aspect of the second world war. What she discovers in her research is a little-known aspect of Australian military history, but in the process she discovers a lot about her family and herself. The book is finely crafted, with Darcy’s current troubles and the story of her great-grandfather in the second world war twining around each other in an interesting way. As I’ve mentioned before, in a review of Susan Cooper’s Victory, when an author writes two stories, in different times, often one of them has more appeal or resonance for a particular reader than the other, but I wanted to know how both stories turned out, and that’s a tribute to Lawson’s skill. This is a very good book for readers from intermediate age upwards, though probably more for secondary readers because of the sophisticated structure. I loved this book and will be recommending it.

Kath Bee, Nelson-based children’s singer/songwriter, recorded a CD of kids’ songs a couple of years ago called Dragons Under the Bed. It has been very popular, and Kath is in demand as a live performer. Now she’s produced a second CD which is if anything better than the first, showing off her versatility and lovely voice, and her empathy with the small  people she sings for . There are funny songs, action songs, quiet contemplative songs, a poem and a lullaby. Great backings add to and don’t detract from the songs.  A lovely present for a child you know, one which will grow on them and you as you listen. I’ve played it a dozen times and like it more each time, always a true test of music.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is mentioned in at least one of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and now we can read it for ourselves. According to the Introduction, these stories are as familiar to magical families as fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are to muggle children. The writing is a lot tighter than in some of the Harry Potter books: it has to be to tell each story (there are five of them) in less than 20 pages, especially when there are illustrations too. But the morality of the Potter books is there, warnings against arrogance, use of magic for personal advancement or enrichment, the abuse of power, and so on. As the Introduction says: “Beedle’s stories have helped generations of wizarding parents to explain this painful fact of life to their young children: that magic causes as much trouble as it cures.” And there are other connections to the Hogwarts stories: the tales each have a commentary by Professor Dumbledore, and  have been translated from the original runes by that clever student Hermione Granger. There are also footnotes by JKR herself explaining some aspects which may need clarification for muggles. All royalties go the theChildren’s High Level Group, a charity set up by Rowling and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, who provides a thank you from the group at the end of the book. This will be enjoyed by most who have read the series, and others who have not yet got to the point of reading some of the massive volumes there will enjoy reading these or having them read to them. Like traditional fairy tales, some are rather gruesome, so read them before reading them to younger children, some of whom will cope fine, and some of whom might be terrified.