Deakin Newsletter of Children's Literature July-August

Insect Detective
Steve Voake
Illustrated by Charlotte Voake
Candlewick/Random House. 2010  

Steve Voake's book is a young beginner's guide to insects, offering just enough information to spark interest and giving clear explanation. "If it has six legs it is an insect. If it doesn't.....it isn't."

The secret to investigating insects, he says, is to know how to look, and he adds a straightforward guide to these studies. A scratching noise by a fence could be a wasp scraping at the wood to make pulp for a wasps' nest. To find an ant's nest just follow an ant - patiently - waiting while they communicate with each other, being patient while it goes the long way round, but knowing that, in the end, it will go to the nest.

He shows how insects disguise themselves, why ground beetles are a friend to the gardener, how, as a nymph sheds its skin, a dragonfly appears. All the hints and snippets of information are designed to help a child become an insect detective.

Charlotte Voake illustrates the search with natural soft-toned colour and delicate detailed line. Text and illustration make this guide for young children both informative and inviting.

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Yucky Worms
Vivian French
Illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg
Candlewick/ Random House.
2010  

Grandma digs up a "slimy, slithery, wriggly worm" in her garden and her young grandson responds with an exclamation of disgust. He wants it thrown away. Grandma, however, uses the incident to explain what a good friend the worm is. She puts it onto the earth and they watch it quickly disappear, "pointy end first". Where it goes and the way its body moves through the earth gives a golden opportunity for the lad to learn a great deal about the worm. Grandma describes its anatomy, explains how it eats up rotting leaves and dead insects, leaving worm casts that fertilize the soil. Interesting facts make the worm even more engaging - it cannot see, and it has five pairs of hearts. Its long body has ridged muscles to help it push through the earth and bristles to help it stay in place.

The young reader will find this a lively introduction to worms, full of intriguing detail. The illustrations are clear and informative describing the structure of the worm, while Jessica Ahlberg's busy flourishing garden helps to emphasize the importance of the little creatures to successful gardening and agriculture.

This is a very effective and attractive introduction to worms which not only clearly explains their importance but also encourages children to appreciate them and treat them with respect. Jessica Ahlberg's illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to Vivian French's text.

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Instructions
Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Charles Vess
HarperCollins
2010 

By its format, this is a picture book, but the "Instructions" will have more meaning for those children who are sophisticated enough in fairy tale experience to be able to pick out not only Red Riding Hood and Cinderella's pumpkin coach, but also the Goose Girl and the Frog Prince depicted in Charles Vess' first full double-spread.

The book can truly be enjoyed on at least two levels. Firstly a youngster can enjoy and appreciate the good advice based on the successes and failures of many fairy and folk tale characters. "Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing". The old woman sitting under a twisted oak may ask for something, so, Gaiman advises, give it to her. Be polite to the twelve months of the year, do not trust the youngest princess, and remember your name. Here adults will quickly spy references to fairy tales from the past.

The book subtly offers advice on life, too, for older children. After all many folk and fairy tales are tougher in their original form, adapted from legends and stories told around the fire for adults, and their implied advice is to be adapted to life, so Gaiman's "if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it" is a moral lesson for life as well as a safeguard in a tale, and "Do not be jealous of your sister: know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as are toads and frogs:" is a warning against being envious, for who knows the price another pays for their good fortune.

The subtitle, “Everything You'll Need to Know on Your Journey" sums it all up, be it an amusing and challenging romp through fairy tale, or a preparation for dealing with life. For either, this is a wise commentary illustrated with grace, humour and a sense of mystery lying behind the obvious, for the illustrator appears totally in league with its dual interpretation. Highly recommended.

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My Heart is Like a Zoo
Michael Hall
Greenwillow/HarperCollins
2010 

Michael Hall's introduction to our emotions centres on the heart. He expresses each feeling in a reference to an animal - a heart that is " silly as a seal”, “snappy as a crab”, “jumpy as a frog”, “frightened as a rabbit". Each emotion is depicted in an animal whose form is made up, in illustration, by heart shapes.

Clear , bright colour, clean lines, and shapes interlocked in these heart-dominated groups, allows for young children to investigate , not only emotion, but also form, design and colour; and when that palls, they can count the hearts. There must be hundreds of them. At the end of the day all of the animals crowd the shelves of a little “zookeeper’s" bedroom.

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Forever Friends
Carin Berger
Greenwillow/HarperCollins
2010 

Carin Berger is a versatile illustrator; working in collage she incorporates various textures and papers into her work.

In Forever Friends she tells the story of a friendship. A little blue bird calls out from the blossoms on a branch," Hello! Come play!" and the little bunny, sleeping in a log below, responds. They play through spring, summer and early autumn until the blue bird has to fly south. He leaves the promise that he will return. The rabbit waits patiently until spring when the bird returns with his invitation to play. Their friendship has survived their separation, as joyfully as ever, for "They were forever friends".

The story line is very simple and direct; the lovely illustrations show us the details of flying and swooping, running and leaping through the seasons while the background is filled with elegant irises, chains of flowers, the loneliness of barren trees and the glory of vigorous golden daffodils.

This essence of real friendship and the grace and beauty of creatures and nature, depicted in Ms. Berger's elegant and sensitive line, make a delightful experience for little children.

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Caterpillar Dreams
Jeanne Willis
Illustrated by Tony Ross
Andersen Press/Random House
2010  

Hidden in the leaves of two flowers are two little caterpillars. Calling each other "sister", they dream of the time that they will become butterflies. They settle down together to wait out the winter. When the first sister awakens, however, she is alone. She searches through the summer skies and dreams through the summer night until dawn brings them together. "One was a moth and one was a butterfly. Different dreams, but just as beautiful." The gentle lesson is this, we cannot all be butterflies, and the world needs moths too. The love can continue and the gifts are as valuable.

This gentle thoughtful picture book is illustrated by Tony Ross in gentle tone and child-like pictures. I particularly enjoyed the bees as they leave. They are portrayed naturally, but they leave equipped with their luggage

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Raven Speak
Diane Lee Wilson
Simon and Schuster
2010  

Asa Coppermane stands on the shore, watching her father and the men folk of their Viking settlement set off in their craft into bitter winter weather, in search of food for the community. Left behind are the women and children, many sick with fever and desperately short of food. As the chief's daughter, Asa is in charge, but her father has also left one man behind, Jorgen, the clan's wise man. He has intended this man to be a comfort to those left behind, but Jorgen is ambitious and, doubting that the other men will ever return, he makes his first move for power. He demands that Asa give up her horse, Rune, to be a sacrifice to the gods and to be, then, a source of food for the group.

Asa knows that the community will need a fast horse, and she is deeply attached to Rune. When Jorgen comes to kill Rune, Asa fights him off and flees with the horse. In desperation she makes her way along the cliff edge until she and Rune find shelter with a one-eyed woman and her two raven companions. Here Asa finds protection and strange advice.

Diane Lee Wilson conjures up a convincing world. These Vikings are not the fierce raiders, but rather a small clan, now only of women and children, clinging to a cave in the rugged cliffs. Their safety and well-being challenged even more by the ambitious Jorgen, they must rely on the courage and determination of 14-year-old Asa and the advice and support she receives from an old one-eyed woman. Her character is the one suggestion that Asa has more than human help - but the author never emphasises the possibility of other-world intervention. Asa's intelligence and courage must guide the action, however helpful an old one-eyed woman and two ravens may be. This decision makes the unusual just a hint more mysterious, an interesting contrast in this vivid and compelling story.

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Enchanted Glass
Diana Wynne Jones
HarperCollins
2010 

Professor Andrew Hope is driving home from university in the evening when a figure dashes into the glare of his headlights. He brakes hard, skids to a stop, and is relieved to see the figure of his grandfather. "Well, at least I did not kill you, or did I?", for he suddenly realises that he can see the whole white line of the road through his grandfather's body.

He drives to his grandfather's home, for he knows now that he is dead.

Andrew has inherited Melstone House and its boundaries, boundaries that must be walked regularly to preserve their power - for Andrew's grandfather had been a magician.

Andrew has also inherited a housekeeper with whom he has a regular battle over where the furniture should be, and whose revenge is to keep cooking him constantly bad cauliflower cheese. He has a gardener who grows huge leathery vegetables, a transubstantiating dog, and a 12-year-old orphan, Aidan Cane, who turns up seeking sanctuary from bewitched stalkers.

It is Diana Wynne Jones delightful gathering of weird and wonderful beings set in a harmless-seeming setting - a typical English village near a university. The whole is complicated by the sinister wealthy Mr. Brown who begins to encroach on Andrew's domain and the persistent mischief of Puck. Andrew's conflict with Mr. Brown finds him rediscovering the magic he learned in his youth and the significance and power of the coloured glass panels above his door.

Expertly woven---nonsense, magic, humour and drama lead us to an uproarious village fete. It is Diana Wynne Jones at her magical finest - a book to thrill, enchant, and make the reader laugh out loud.

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Darklight
Lesley Livingstone
HarperCollins
2010  

This is the second novel in a trilogy. The first, Wondrous Strange, has just won the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award.

By the end of the first novel Kelley Winslow has met Sonny Flannery, learned that she is a Faerie princess stolen as a baby from her real mother, Queen Mab, and she has helped to protect Central Park and the mortals therein from the vicious Wild Hunt.

Kelley is now in New York, rehearsing Romeo and Juliet, and missing Sonny who, sent back to the Otherworld, is embattled with the Hunters who still survive, and with Queen Mab. A vicious attack sends Kelley back to the Otherworld, separated from Sonny, but protected, at Sonny's request, by Fennrys. When they eventually come together it is to find that they are entrapped in the machinations of the Faerie courts and that an ancient and dangerous magic threatens all.

A thorough understanding of faerie and folk tradition gives a solid reality to the machinations of the faerie realm and to the beings and powers that form the combative forces. This deception and violence rings true, for, in tradition, these beings are no delicate butterflies in human form, but powerful forces of nature. Lesley Livingstone brings this world vividly alive while making her young lovers and their friends and supporters feel solidly contemporary. Again this is a gripping and thoroughly enchanting fiction.

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Folly
Marthe Jocelyn
Tundra Books
2010  

"[T]he honestest, the most disinterested...." It is the Eighteenth Century and Horace Walpole writes to Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, in praise of the depth of kindness, concern and charity shown by Thomas Coram, a man so concerned about the fate of abandoned children that he sought to found a Hospital - a place of shelter. There were serious difficulties at first, but George II came to the throne and with him the sympathetic and compassionate Queen Caroline and Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital came about.

As in Javila Gavin's Whitbread Award-winning book, Coram Boy, the foundling hospital has an important part to play in Marthe Jocelyn's novel, Folly.

Folly, "a lack of good sense ", underlies the experience of Mary who is apparently telling, or writing, her story to someone. Woven between the chapters of her tale are the stories of three others - Eliza, Oliver and James. It is the late 1870's , Mary's mother has died and she has been bringing up her siblings until she acquires a stepmother, and rapidly finds herself packed off to make her own way in service in a London home. Try as she might to adjust to her place we see her learn some bitter lessons. Eliza's story winds through this. Another servant in the house she, too, makes foolish judgements and becomes one of the sources of Mary's downfall.

James and Oliver's stories take place in the late 1880's. Oliver is a teacher at the Foundling Hospital, one who has been a boy in the home himself, one who tries not to feel or be involved, but one who naturally cares. Lastly there is James whom we meet in 1884 as he joins the hospital, now old enough to be taken from the family who has fostered and loved him, and taught a trade at the Foundling Hospital.

Mary's story, beginning in 1876, is paralleled with James' story, told in the mid 1880's, the two interweaving the dramatic reason and effect of Mary's "lack of good sense" in an evocative, engaging and thoughtful story.

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The Necromancer
Michael Scott
Delacorte/Random House
2010  

The Necromancer is the fourth book in Scott's series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. The twins, Josh and Sophie Newman, have finally made it home. Neither of them has yet mastered all the magic’s they need to protect themselves from the Dark Elders. Scatty is missing and Dr. Dee is still following them. They are beginning to question whom they can truly trust. Perenelle is free from Alcatraz and Dee, having failed his Elder, is now prey to the creatures who had been hunting Nicholas Flamel.

Dr. Dee has a scheme in mind. If he has the Codex and control of the beings at Alcatraz he can control the world. He needs the twins and their power and the help of the Archons. He needs to train a necromancer. Either of the twins will do.

As Dee schemes to take over the world, Perenelle and Nicholas are growing older. Joan and Scatty are missing, and Scatty's powerful twin, Aoife, has arrived on the scene, full of vim and fury.

Michael Scott's tale is becoming more complex as new and powerful beings join the cast. A working knowledge of historical and metaphorical beings will be useful to a reader. A new reader to the series must also take the tales in order, one by one, while enthusiasts will see a complex and fascinating pattern emerging. Someone here is a liar - but who? The Necromancer needs careful reading to follow all the plots and sub-plots, but it is a highly imaginative and gripping experience.

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The Last Summer of the Death Warriors
Francisco X Stork
Scholastic
2010  

Pancho has always faced life head on, but his latest fight has ended with him in an orphanage home, St. Anthony's. He cannot settle, he is grieving his father's death and the murder of his mentally challenged sister, found murdered in a hotel room. Consumed by grief for his father and sister, he finds it difficult to attempt any relationship.

D.Q., Daniel Quentin, has a potentially deadly form of brain cancer, but the ravages to his body do not affect his bright philosophical mind. He sees in Pancho's suppressed anger and sorrow a spirit to respect and respond to. A bond forms, slowly and painfully, but strongly. D.Q. needs the support of Pancho's physical strength and vitality while, in return, Pancho needs D.Q.'s affirmation of life, the Death Warrior Manifesto- "love life at all times and in all circumstances".

Pancho, with the gentle guidance of Father Concha as St. Anthony's, becomes an aide, a close friend to D.Q., supporting him at the home, accompanying him to a clinical trial arranged by D.Q.'s mother, being with him through all the bitter decisions, and sharing with him, uncomfortably, their joint love for Marisol, for D.Q. tries desperately to claim love in spite of the disease which is attacking body and mind. In the end Pancho, himself, must also deal with something that is a persistent anguish, an overwhelming desire to avenge himself on his sister's murderer, only to find, in the end, the effect D.Q.'s philosophy has had upon him.

Francisco X.Stork has already, in Marcello in the Real World, proven his ability to search the soul and skilfully and dynamically present the power of good, the power of love. This he accomplishes once more in this portrait of D.Q. and Pancho as he explores ethical dilemmas, innate desire for survival, and the redeeming power of virtue and love.

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Tillie and the Wall
Leo Lionni
Dragonfly Books/Random House
2010 

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Let's Make rabbits
Leo Lionni
Dragonfly Books/Random House
2010 

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Nicolas, where have you been?
Leo Lionni
Dragonfly Books/Random House
2010 

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Three of Lionni's wise little picture books have been reprinted in paperback in a comfortably-sized 9 inch by 7 inch edition.

Tillie and the Wall tells the story of a little mouse who is curious as to what lies on the other side of a fence - and finds out. Tillie is the youngest, the smallest, and a girl - but she shows imagination, determination and character.

Nicolas, Where Have You Been? finds the mice indignant at the birds, who seem to have found the best berries - and eaten them, "Down with the birds!” However Nicolas, seized by a large bird, finds himself dropping through the air and into a nest where he is cared for, fed lots of sweet berries, by the mother bird and her fledglings and returns home to set the mice to rights and stop a war.

Let's Make Rabbits finds a pencil and a pair of scissors create a rabbit each - one a pencil drawing, the other a mix-and-match of bright prints. The little rabbits eat the pencilled and cut-out carrots that their creators provide, but, when the pencil and the scissors disappear, the rabbits are at a loss until they spy a real carrot. When they eat this, they too become real.

Leo Lionni presented so much wisdom so simply and directly. It is a delight to find new editions of his tales, especially Let's make rabbits, not often found, and so profound.

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The Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles
Rosemary Sutcliff
Oxford University Press.
2010 

Includes:
The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)
The Silver Branch (1957)
The Lantern Bearers (1959)

Oxford University Press has just issued a single paperback edition which includes Rosemary Sutcliff's three outstanding novels set in Roman Britain.

Early in the 2nd Century AD the Ninth Legion, stationed where the city of York now stands, marched north to deal with an uprising by the Caledonian tribes. It was never heard of again. The Eagle of the Ninth is the story of Marcus Flavius Aquila, eighteen years old, who has asked for a posting in England. He wants to discover why his father and the entire legion, with its bronze and silver Eagle, has completely disappeared. He is dedicated to restoring the honour of both his father and the legion.

The Silver Branch continues the story as two descendants of Marcus - cousins Justin and Flavius, revive the Lost Legion of the Ninth and, with their band of outlaws, take vengeance on the murderer of Carausias, Emperor of Roman Britain.

In The Lantern Bearers eighteen-year-old Aquila sees the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. The troops are re-called and Aquila is ordered to leave the country that is his home. When a Saxon raiding party attacks his family farm, kills his father and carries off his sister, Aquila deserts the Roman army to seek revenge.

The first book in the series, The Eagle of the Ninth, has just been filmed, the film to be released this autumn/fall.

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The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Illustrated by Inga Moore
Candlewick/Random House
2007 Paperback edition 2010  

This is a paperback edition of the Inga Moore illustrated The Secret Garden first published in 2007. Inga Moore has captured in her illustrations the essential story of a neglected unloved child being brought back to life and vitality, and a sickly boy restored, as they bring a lost garden back to life.

From the moment we see the pale lonely child gazing between barren trees to a robin on a branch the pictorial journey of Mary from neglected orphan to healthy child has begun. The illustrations depict the change overseen by this robin, the bird that leads her to the garden and watches over the transformations to come. He is the spirit that initiates the action as Inga Moore's garden comes into bloom.

The child is truly Mary, while Inga Moore's Dickon embodies in figure and gesture the healthy vigorous lad who loves nature and who guides first Mary and then Colin into bringing the garden back to life. With the return of the garden vigour and hope return to the whole household.

These are lovely, moving and insightful illustrations which capture and elaborate upon Frances Hodgson Burnett's story of renewal.

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Science Detectives
Dr. Mike Goldsmith
Oxford University Press.
2010  

Dr. Goldsmith has written many books for young readers, introducing them to various aspects of science. Here he examines the contribution of forty scientists, examining science as philosophy through Aristotle to Pythagoras, Archimedeas and Avicenna to the work of Barbara McClintock, Jonas Salk and Tim Berners-Lee.
These men and women he regards as detectives, trying to solve the mysteries of the physical, and frequently suffering not only prejudice, ridicule and uncertainty, but even threats to their freedom and their lives.

Each scientific explorer is placed within his period with his difficulties and his triumphs spelled out. William Gilbert demonstrates his work on magnetism to Elizabeth I, Galileo faces the Inquisition, Leeowenhoek the draper becomes fascinated with what the microscope reveals, Jonas Salk defeats polio, and Tim Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web.

This is an accessible account for intermediate age children, introducing each scientist and his work, but not overwhelming with detail. It is a clear, generously illustrated and inviting introduction to some of the great names of science.

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Polar Bears
Norbert Rosing
Firefly Books.
2010  

Packed with engaging and informative photography, Norbert Rosing's celebration of polar bears is a notable introduction for children. Some of these photographs must have taken hours to capture - mother bears sheltering their cubs, playing with them, lifting them over high snow banks that are obstacles on their way from their dens to the sea ice.

The brief comments accompanying the photographs are informative and to-the-point. Bears hunting, sheltering from the cold, tackling great slabs of sea ice in search of a seal's breathing hole, or playing with a sled dog, all captured with an understanding eye and perception , all designed to inform and make ever more real their subjects. A section of the book introduces the polar bears Arctic neighbours - seals, beluga whales - here a striking photograph of them gathering in Cunningham Inlet to give birth, great walruses, arctic fox and caribou.

This introduction would be an excellent addition to any school library and a delightful introduction to polar bears for any child intrigued by animals.

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The Salmon Bears: Giants of the Great Bear
Ian McAllister & Nicholas Read
Rainforest: Orca Book Publishers
2010  

The Great Bear Rainforest stretches from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the southern tip of Alaska, and from the Pacific Ocean to the lower reaches of the Coast Mountains. It lies in the temperate zone, a combination of mountain, forest, bog and glacier, and it is home to the black bear, the Spirit bear, and the grizzly.

This is a very difficult area to access, but Ian McAllister has given us that access with striking photographs of the bears in their natural environment. Kermode or Spirit bears are actually black bears, and a mother may give birth to both white and black cubs but, because of its appearance, the white Spirit bear has gained a special reputation.

The authors take young readers through the year, describing the changing environments, how the cubs develop, the food resources and many of the creatures that co-inhabit the area. We discover how the cubs are raised, what food sources become available- I did not realise that bears ate the roots of the notorious skunk cabbage- and we follow the pattern of the seasons and how it affects the behaviour of the bears. "A male grizzly's territory can encompass hundreds of square kilometres- the equivalent of multiple river valleys- because it takes that much land to feed him. "Because of the work of First Nations and environmentalists, the Spirit or Kermode bear is now an international conservation symbol.

Evolutionary biologists have one story as to why the Kermode are white, First Nations legend has another, of Raven turning every tenth black bear white as a reminder of the last Ice Age. However and why ever it happened, and with due respect to the grizzly, the Spirit Bear has come to embody the Great Bear Rainforest.

This is an excellent, very readable introduction to The Salmon Bears and the Forest, packed with information, generously illustrated with meaningful photographs, and a powerful plea for the forest's preservation.

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Guardian Children’s Book Awards
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/29/guardian-childrens-fiction-prize  

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New Zealand’s Post Children’s Book Awards
http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/winners-2010 

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Carin Berger  

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Neil Gaiman: Ray Bradbury made me want to write 

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