story time books

Cressida Cowell and Neal Layton have produced a third Emily Brown book. It’s always a slightly nervous moment opening a third book about a character as wonderful as Emily. Will it be as good as the others? Will it live up to people’s expectations? Speaking for myself, Yes and Yes!!  Emily and Stanley are exploring with their friend Matilda the elephant. Just as they are steering over the last rapid of the great Zambezi River the emergency phone rings. It’s Matilda’s mother, worrying a whole lot of motherly unnecessary worries. Emily tells her politely not to use the emergency phone except in real emergencies and hangs up. In the land of the dinosaurs a few days later the same thing happens, then on the peak of Everest. Then when Emily and Stanley are searching for diamonds in the deepest-most caves of the earth (just near their sofa) Matilda, chastened into submission, waits for the phone to ring, but it doesn’t. So, a sick and sad elephant being a real emergency, they ring Matilda’s Mummy who doesn’t answer, kidnapped by a great, grey busy-ness which won’t let go. So a rescue ensues, and a delightfully naughty ending.  Just as wonderful as the first two Emily Brown books, and that’s wonderful indeed. Hardback only at this stage at $35, and worth every cent.

Book 9 of the Ranger’s Apprentice series by Australian John Flanagan is here, and it won’t disappoint the many fans of this series. The same main characters, who continue to develop,  the same narrative tension, the same values that have been present throughout the series are there again. As with many series, this book could be read without knowledge of the previous volumes, but there are references to earlier events which will mean much more to those who have read others. The events of this story follow the last volume, and Halt, Will and Horace are in hot pursuit of the false prophet Tennyson, who evaded them previously. Tennyson still has with him the two remaining Genovesan assassins, so care is necessary for survival, and the tension is high, for characters and readers. These stories rely on plot, so I won’t reveal more, but this is a great read for series readers, and will almost certainly convert some more. Ideal for readers of ten and over.

One website describes Clare Chambers, author of this novel, as “an outstanding new voice in girls’ fiction”. I’d agree with the first bit, but hate it when reviewers ghetto-ise fiction by gender. The author has written adult novels before, but this is her first for younger readers.  What I really liked about it is the main character (and narrator)’s combination of cleverness and naievety. Robyn, fifteen, tells of being bundled off to Brighton with her gorgeous and knowing older sister Rachel after sinister happenings at home. They stay with an aunt who leads an interesting life and much of the interest is in the difference between what Rachel and Aunt Jackie see, and what Robyn doesn’t. It’s very funny in parts, and I thought beautifully written, and it makes the reader think about the beauty and danger of innocence. Some reviewers have recommended it for readers as young as eleven, but I think most eleven-year-olds would miss a lot of it, so see it as a teenage book, ideal for bright girls.

There are lots of readers who love a good story about dragons, but there are few writers of stories about dragons as good as Philip Reeve. The Daily Telegraph said, ” … the emotional journeys of his characters are enthralling, never sentimental and always believable”, and the Independent, “Reeve’s villains are never wholly bad, nor his heroes wholly good, and his messages linger long.” Like his other books, this one is a cracker of a read. Ansel, the mute boy who is servant or apprentice or companion to Brock, the dragon slayer is another wonderful creation, a child with more wisdom than many of the adults he encounters. Brock is a decent but cynical man who takes advantage of others’ credulity to make his living without doing much more than reinforcing their prejudices. When they meet up with “Father” Flegal, a rather venal self-appointed mendicant friar who is similarly inclined to fleece people through their own stupidity, and go up a mountain and find a girl not much older than Ansel who has been left as a sacrifice for the “dragon”, the human cast of main characters is complete. But dragons don’t exist, Brock has convinced Ansel, who was inclined to believe that anyway. So just what is the beast on the mountain? At only just over 200 pages including Reeve’s own illustrations for each chapter it’s a shortish book by modern standards. The cover says 8+, but there’s a lot that older readers will get that younger ones won’t, so it’s a great read for a wide range of readers. I enjoyed it immensely.

Kate DiCamillo has written several award-winning children’s books including The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Tiger Rising and The Tale of Despereau, and it would be surprising to me if this one doesn’t win some more awards. It’s a story which almost begs to be read aloud because it sounds so beautiful, but only to one or two people at a time, because it’s a small book and the illustrations by Yoko Tanaka add to the atmosphere the words create. Orphan Peter Augustus Duchene, who, although only ten-years-old, is training  with a slightly demented old soldier, goes to the market one day to buy bread and fish, but instead spends his master’s florit with a fortuneteller. She tells him that his sister, previously believed dead, is alive and that an elephant will lead him to her. And from there the magic begins. The characters are wonderfully eccentric, the language poetic, and much of the book is an extended meditation or prose poem on the phrase,  “What if”. There are other phrases which recur like musical motifs or themes, and the whole becomes a wonderful reading experience. A truly beautiful book,  not to be skimmed, as every phrase should be savoured.

Seventeen more stories about those unlikely friends, Snake and Lizard, from the pen of Joy Cowley with illustrations by Gavin Bishop. As in the first volume which won the New Zealand Post Book of the Year in 2008 there’s a great deal of philosophy and wisdom here in deceptively simple humorous stories about two creatures with very different outlooks and even values who nevertheless manage to put their friendship above their differences. Each has strengths, each has weaknesses, and they have similarities and differences which are cleverly emphasised in the illustrations which use the (mostly) muted palette of the desert in which they live. Warm, witty and wise and another wonderful book from Gecko Press..