Recent children’s books
Juliet Townsend
The bookshop shelves are stacked with the usual bewildering array of children’s books this Christmas, and the first striking fact is what good value they have become, largely because, like almost everything else, most of them are now produced in the Far East, from Thailand to Cochin. The average price of a lavishly illustrated book for young children, £10.99, has remained the same for several years, and even elaborate pop-ups, like Francesca Crespi’s The Nativity, published by Frances Lincoln and printed in China, only costs £12.99. It was good to see a version of one of Arthur Ransome’s Old Peter’s Russian Tales being reprinted in a lively version for young children. Little Daughter of the Snow is retold by Shena Guild and illustrated by Tom Bower (Frances Lincoln, £10.99). A childless old couple make themselves a little daughter out of snow. At first she delights everyone as she plays and dances with the other children, sustained by a diet of ice porridge, then spring comes, with sadly predictable results. All that is left is ‘a pool of water, a fur hat, a little coat and little red boots’. Also derived from a classic from the past is Fig’s Giant by Geraldine McCaughrean, illustrated by Jago (OUP, £12.99). This is the story of Gulliver seen through the eyes of the intrepid little — very little Lilliputian girl, Fig. The text and pictures are lively and humorous and would appeal to readers of 4-6. Another amusing book for children of this age is Baby Brains Superstar, written and illustrated by Simon James (Walker Books, £10.99). ‘Before Baby Brains was born, Mrs Brains played classical music on headphones to the baby inside her tummy’; this results in a musical prodigy, who has mastered every instrument while still in nappies. His career culminates at a live rock concert, where he inadvertently composes and performs the world-wide hit ‘I want my Mummy!’ Loch Ness Ghosts (translated by Antonia Perkin from Les Fantômes au Loch-Ness by Jacques Duquennoy (Frances Lincoln, £9.99) is an idiosyncratic and charming little book for young children about four friendly ghosts and their search for the Loch Ness Monster — a good bedtime story for 3-5year-olds. My last picture book is written and illustrated by Judith Kerr, creator of the famous Mog. Goose in a Hole (HarperCollins, £10.99), follows Katerina the goose and her family when they try to find where the water has gone from their pond. Their quest takes them to some unexpected places, including the hippo pool at the zoo, before they eventually surface to general acclaim in the mayor’s bathroom.
Horrid Henry has long been a favourite with readers who prefer an anti-hero; a sort of modern cross between William Brown and Dennis the Menace, who wages an unending guerrilla war against his priggish younger brother, Perfect Peter, and whose conversation consists largely of cries of ‘Yuck!’ ‘Zap!’ and ‘Gross!’ Francesca Simon’s text is as witty as ever in this latest collection of favourite stories, Horrid Henry’s Wicked Ways (Orion, £10.99) and Tony Ross’s bright but slightly sinister illustrations are the perfect accompaniment. In one story, ‘Horrid Henry and the Mummy’s Curse’, Henry shows an unhealthy interest in embalming. He would have enjoyed the gruesome description of the mummymakers in Pharaoh’s Egypt by Mick Manning and Brita Granström (Frances Lincoln, £10.99), a short, well-illustrated introduction to Rameses the Great which will be enjoyed by readers of 6-9.
I Believe in Unicorns by Michael Morpurgo (Walker Books, £7.99) is about as far away as one could get from Horrid Henry. It is a gentle, beautifully written story set in an unnamed country in the Balkans where Tomas falls under the spell of the Unicorn Lady, who tells wonderful stories in the local library, seated on a carved, recumbent, life-size unicorn. When war comes to the town and the library is bombed, it is she and the children who have to rescue the precious books — and the unicorn. Gary Blythe’s fine illustrations help make this a high-quality little book.
Jacqueline Wilson’s latest teenage novel, Love Lessons (Doubleday, £12.99), deals with the sensitive, in fact almost taboo subject of love between a teacher and pupil. She is particularly good at putting herself inside the skin of awkward misfit characters, and Prudence in this book is one of them. Educated erratically at home by their eccentric and irascible father, Pru and her sister Grace have never watched television or eaten a pizza or worn new clothes. When their father has a stroke, they have to be sent to the local school, where Pru hates everything and everyone, except for Mr Raxberry, the attractive but fatally weak art teacher. Mr Raxberry, or Rax, as he likes to be known by his pupils, allows himself to be lured into behaving with almost suicidal indiscretion, particularly in view of the fact that Pru is only 14. Part of the secret of Jacqueline Wilson’s enormous popularity is that she creates convincing people, and one minds what happens to them. She takes as much trouble with the minor characters, Pru’s parents and sister for instance, as with those who occu py centre stage, and this makes her imagined world extremely realistic.
Realism is not the word to describe I, Coriander, an original and enigmatic novel by Sally Gardner (Orion, £8.99), set partly in the London of Cromwell’s Protectorate and partly in the fairy kingdom from which Coriander’s mother had come. Her mortal life is happy until her mother dies, to be replaced by the truly gruesome stepmother Maud, an extreme Puritan with no redeeming features. ‘Of my early years,’ wrote Coriander, ‘I remember only happiness. That was before I knew this world had such evil in it, and that my fate was to be locked up in a chest and left to die.’ The chest proves to be the gateway to another, enchanted world, where Coriander has many adventures and meets her fate in the form of Tycho, the Fox Prince.
For those who prefer a more straightforward factual version of history, Hitler’s Canary by Sandi Toskvig (Doubleday, £8.99) tells the story of the German occupation of Denmark, culminating in the escape of nearly 99 per cent of Danish Jews to Sweden in ten days in 1943, an extraordinary feat of improvisation and courage by thousands of ordinary people who spontaneously decided that they were not prepared to stand by and watch while their Jewish fellow citizens were deported to the East. Some of Toskvig’s family were involved with the Resistance, and much of the book is based on her grandfather’s memories of the war years. The two boys, Bamse and his Jewish friend Anton are fictional, but many of the other characters and incidents are based on fact. It is good to see a novel for older children fully illustrated, in this case by Sandy Nightingale.
For lovers of Roald Dahl’s poetry, there is a handsome volume of his Songs and Verse (Cape, £14.99), with pictures by many illustrators, including Quentin Blake and Emma Chichester Clark, which would make an excellent present. And for those who want to spend part of the holiday setting or solving quizzes, Whitaker’s World of Facts by Russell Ash (A & C Black, £19.99) is a mine of useful and useless information and could prepare prospective contestants for victory in Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Lastly there are two classic reprints worth considering. Frances Lincoln has reissued Edward Ardizzone’s delightful books, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, Tim and Lucy Go to Sea and Tim to the Rescue in a good-quality edition with proper paper wrappers (£10.99 each). The best news of all for lovers of Violet Needham’s books, so long undeservedly out of print, is that The Black Riders and The Emerald Crown have both been reproduced in high-quality paperback, with the original Anne Bullen illustrations. They are available at £10 each from Girls Gone By Publishers, 4 Rock Terrace, Coleford, Bath BA3 5NF. What better start to the New Year could you give to any imaginative reader of 9-12?
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