A Perilous Land

 Nettle by Bex Hogan (Zephyr, 2024)

Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary, and dungeons for the overbold.

- J.R.R. Tolkein

There are few books that properly cast the spell of the folk tradition. All too often - and especially in literature for young people - 'faery' is translated with a sweetness that is as far from the dark danger of the source as cheese is from chalk. Those few successful examples, however, are great indeed: Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Hope Mirrilees' Lud-in-the-Mist and, perhaps the masterpiece of them all, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. In all of them, an 'English' quality is essential to their success - a resolute honesty that veers from whimsical  charm to sinister shadow. It is unsurprising, then, that Bex Hogan's Nettle, in its juxtaposition of these two opposing forces, is indeed that rare beast, the authentic English faery novel. 

Nettle is a girl who wanders into Faery through a hidden portal. There she encounters a stable boy (who, like her, has been tricked into Faery) and a shadow faery. She is brought to the court of the Faery King who in traditional folkloric fashion sets Nettle three challenges. Thank goodness that Nettle listened to her grandmother as, armed with her knowledge, she stands a fighting chance against the tricksy faery world. 

Throughout the book, there are subtle but strongly felt echoes of the source folk tradition, so subtle that at times they almost go unnoticed, woven so beautifully as they are into the texture of Hogan's storytelling. But their curious strangeness resonates. One example occurs early on in the book where Nettle meets a woman who, like her, has been trapped in Faery. The woman has been bewitched, cruelly, by a Faery and cannot remember quite the correct way to say goodbye. In trying to wish Nettle farewell, her palm brushes Nettle's recalling some long-forgotten gesture...but no, its true meaning is lost.

The construction of the novel itself also derives from  native tradition. Each chapter is headed by a picture of a flower or plant; the names and, according to folklore, the significance of these plants is given at the end of the book with the reader being invited to make their own connections between the content of each chapter and the original source folklore. 

As with the great fairy tales there is some light romance and in keeping with the great Faery tradition, there are also moments of discomfort, even quite shocking horror. Nettle will be very much enjoyed by those readers of 12 and up who have explored the imaginings of Sophie Anderson and Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I very much look forward to reading more from Bex Hogan...especially The Owl King, advertised in the final pages of this book! 

Nettle was published on 10th October by Zephyr and is available from all good bookshops. With many thanks to Katey Pugh for inviting me onto the blog tour to celebrate publication. 

Review: On The Wall

On the Wall by Anne Fine (Old Barn Books, 2024)

If Virginia Woolf had ever produced something for children, the result might have been along the lines of Anne Fine’s new book, On the Wall. Here, there’s a curious central character, Finlay, who for most of the book we see from without. Dreaming, wondering, a philosophical presence sitting up ‘on the wall’, this new boy to the school, fresh from the local primary into Year 7, says he is doing nothing, thinking nothing, though just by being there his influence upon those who are drawn into his orbit is powerful enough to alter their views of things.

The book is structured around the three terms of the school year. Fine has an innate understanding of how this ‘year’ works - there is the getting-to-know-you part at the start, then the more comfortable weeks of the Spring term, and then, suddenly, the grand finale of the end of year where minds are very much set on the imminent ‘moving on’ and all its associated excitement and apprehension.

Not since Gene Kemp’s ‘Cricklepit’ series has there been a more truthful ‘fictionalising’ of school life;  in the day-to-day routines and variations, of course, but also in those who inhabit the corridors on a daily basis. Finley’s class - as with every class, a microcosm of the huge variety of human society and nature - gradually reveals each of their own private worries and obsessions. When shared with Finley, these seem to take on new existences: they are not the same worries, obsessions - or even children! - that they were before: Finley’s detachment has a cooling air of clarity; he is able to put things in perspective just by being there, doing his thing ‘on the wall’. 

Through the course of the book, the eye is both on the children but also, more unusually perhaps, on the teachers, whose commentaries from the staff room punctuate the unfolding narrative elsewhere. (Their lives, again like those of Kemp’s Cricklepit staff, are only lightly sketched in; but lives they do have - the staff are real people, not cardboard cut-outs.) Individual staff members offer takes on the new boy that range from indifference to bafflement - ironic perhaps that these are the ‘teachers’, doubly so when in preparing for a school concert it’s the children who, quite unassuming, demonstrate their partial understanding of what Finley is capable of. But ultimately no-one really knows. Fine herself expresses her astonishment in the Afterword that even she didn’t realise that Fin carried a mobile phone until, unplanned, there it was, set down on the page in black and white.

Fine establishes key moments in the narrative with a surface artificiality that bring us, the readers, under the same spell. There is a scene early on, for example, where the class are taken to an art gallery and, to the teacher’s astonishment - and ours - the spotlight falls on Finlay and, one by one as if in a play, the other children are drawn from the shadows of the rest of the stage to join him in the centre. The effect is startlingly theatrical, and illuminates the inner lives of the children, their dialogue running fluidly in a corporate stream of consciousness. Their art teacher stands amazed. It is an unsettling moment, but a very beautiful one, too.  

Many will find On the Wall a very different experience to reading most other school stories. Just as Mrs Dalloway is hardly a story about a shopping trip, so sensitive readers of On the Wall will find new depths in the unnoticeable rhythms of our school day experiences, all the way accompanied by the wonder that is Finley.

Anne Fine's On the Wall was published by Old Barn Books on 5th September and is available from all good bookshops. 

Super Questers: The Case of the Angry Sea by Lisa Moss and Dr. Thomas Bernard; illustrated Amy Willcox (QuestFriendz, 2024)

Lilli, Bea and Leo journey to Questland to research ideas for a machine to clear up the rubbish in their local river. Upon arrival in Questland, the trio discover that the Queen is in urgent need of their help as the sea is in a state of fury and unrest and only they can help. Lord Grumble has teamed up with new mischief maker Captain Blackwaters and his pesky pirate-bots on a terrifying tanker. They are tearing through the waters of Questland polluting the sea and destroying the marine life habitat. How will they stop the dastardly duo and calm the angry sea? Join the SuperQuesters in their exciting new marine adventure to save the sea from pollution and rescue the marine life of Questland including otters and narwhals.

There's lots to explore in this latest installment of the SuperQuesterz series and just as much to admire. First off, there's the theme of this fourth volume: marine pollution. While the story has a light touch on the subject, there's other asides that draw attention to the seriousness of things that are happening in our seas right now. With just the right level of detail, these prompt deeper thinking from the young audience about the real-life parallels of the story.  

The puzzles in the book all focus on another facet of STEM learning: coding. An ideal audience would include some bright Year 1 children, with Years 2 and 3 getting most benefit. With this readership in mind, the puzzles range from spatial awareness skills to some complex WHEN/THEN functions, but nowhere is it felt that coding is a tricky 'specialist' area; in fact, many of the puzzles appear in very familiar guises...just with an added layer of computational thinking! It's very sensitively done with a real appreciation and understanding of the younger audience. 

As a whole, The Case of the Angry Sea reads like a fun, puzzle-laden picture book story but there's also a glossary included, covering many complex coding terms, which helpfully defines some of the terms used in the book, and clarifies the purpose of some of the problems (e.g. 'mental rotation' is the skill lying behind Puzzle 1 in the book). So, along with the maps, charts and diagrams to be found in the pages, there's an awful lot of non-fiction reading skills being introduced and sharpened too. 

The fun doesn't stop with the end of the book, either. There's a brilliant downloadable activity pack which explores other areas of coding, language and mathematics, from tallying recyclable materials, to designing an anti-pollution poster to raise awareness of the problem.

Overall, the series is shaping up to be a real asset to Key Stage 1 classrooms everywhere. STEM subjects should always be a source of excitement and challenge and, with the Super Questers on board to help, children everywhere will find new and renewed pleasure in discovering the world around them. 

***

Super Questers: The Case of the Angry Sea, published by QuestFriendz is out today, 14th March 2024, from all good bookshops. 

The Final Year: Book-Chat ideas

The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow (Otter-Barry, 2023)

Published last month, Matt Goodfellow's new verse novel, The Final Year, is being justly celebrated. It offers us a snapshot of  Nate's life as he negotiates his 'final year' at primary school and lays out, with clear-eyed empathy, the pressures and problems that exist in the pre-teen's world today. Illustrated throughout by the inimitable Joe Todd-Stanton, the pictures interact beautifully with the words to tell Nate's very moving story. 

With compulsive plotting, The Final Year is at once an empathy-builder, a guide to navigating those tricky years, and a green light to the power of the imagination. Most important of all, Nate's story is destined to capture the hearts of everyone fortunate to encounter a copy. 

And just as unique as those hearts are, each reader is sure encounter their own connections and pose their own questions. As starting points, I've put together a few prompts below that I hope will help young readers to explore the depths of this extraordinary book together. 

Names

• Look up what the three brothers' names mean: Nate, Jaxon, Dylan. What connections can you find? Do you think the choice of names was deliberate? 
• Nate's primary school is called 'Poppy Field'. Is this significant? Where have you heard about Poppy Fields before? 
• Is 'The Beast' a character in the story or simply a name? 

People

Major characters in the novel include: 

Nate, Jax, Dylan, Mum, Auntie San, Mr Joshua, Caleb, PS, Turner. 

• Give one word that first comes to mind when you think of some of these characters. 
• Put the names of these characters on cards. Pair up the characters/cards choosing your own reasons for the pairings. 
• There will be one character left out of your pairings each time you do this - does this tell you anything about that character? 
• How do you feel about PS? 
• Make a list of all the things Mr Joshua teaches the children in his class. When you've done this, read it through. What does the list tell you about Mr Joshua? 
• Why is Turner in the story? 

Voice

• Which words are used that combine to create Nate's voice? Make a list of these. 
• Try reading some of the poems out loud. Can you hear Nate's voice speaking the poems? Which parts in particular could you strongly hear his voice?
• Do any of the other characters have a 'voice' of their own in the novel - Auntie San? Mr Joshua? Dylan...? What makes them so recognisable? 

The Poems

• How does the shape of certain poems tell us 'a deeper meaning' that is going on? As an example to think about, look at "I only hear two names" and the poem on the previous page to that. 
• Look at the use of 'white space' throughout the book. Does it have any particular importance to certain poems? 
• Are the titles of the poems just 'titles'? 

The Pictures

• What do you think of Joe Todd-Stanton's depiction of 'The Beast'? Find all the pictures of 'The Beast' and read them from the earliest one to the last. What is the illustrator telling us? 
• Why has a whole double page been filled with a picture of Windermere? 
• There are no words on that page, either. Why not? 
• Which characters appear in the illustrations the most? Make a tally - are there any surprises for you?
• What is special about the cover? What stories are being told?  What messages are hidden there? 

David Almond

• Nate discovers a bond with David Almond and his work: "He writes about people like me" (page 65). Find out about David Almond's life and the sorts of stories he writes. 
• Joe Todd-Stanton's cover for The Final Year echoes that of Skellig. Why has the illustrator decided to make that connection from the moment you see the book? 
• If you know Skellig, does it matter if you read The Final Year but haven't read Almond's novel? 

The Final Year is published by Otter-Barry and is available from all good bookshops. Huge thanks to the publishers for sending me an advance copy of the book in preparation of this blog. 

Kicked Out

Kicked Out by A.M. Dassu (Old Barn Books, 2023)

Kicked Out finds Ali and Sami living their dream, playing football for the school team and hanging out in their friend Mark's new luxury pool. But money goes missing and racism rears its ugly head when their friend Aadam is accused of the theft. Can the boys prove Aadam's innocence, keep their friendship – and help fight Aadam’s threatened deportation? Can Ali navigate his emotions and stay focused now his dad is back on the scene and his half-brother has joined his school?

Following the triumphant success of Boy Everywhere - the first of Dassu's books to feature Sami, a refugee from Syria - and the short novella, Boot It!, published for World Book Day 2022, the whole gang of brilliantly drawn characters is back in Kicked Out, published on October 19th 2023. 

While her books deal with the very real experiences of refugee children (the research that went into Boy Everywhere was extensive!), Dassu's genius is to create characters that immediately connect with children today. While many of her readers will not be refugees themselves, there are a lot of elements to each character's life which will be very familar: football, gaming, fast food pangs! Why is this so important? The answer is clear, especially in these days when the refugee crisis, racism and extremist views loom large on our screens, in media and in our daily lives. Whilst propaganda seeks to draw divisions between us, never before has children's literature been so important to show young people that humanity should not work like that. 

Dassu's writing is vivid, engaging and ultimately very, very readable, exactly the sort of thing that middle-grade readers particularly enjoy. But beyond the fast-paced plotting and hugely likeable characters (though there are a very few not at all likeable!), there is also tremendous skill and care - just what young readers deserve!  

The title for instance will, on a surface level, simply describe what has happened to Aadam, and also to Ali and Sami. But there are wider echoes of 'kicking out' refugees, away from British shores, that young people might hear bandied about in casual conversation. Again, Dassu's love for her readers and fierce passion for her subject work in tandem: having created her characters, to an empathetic reader, they feel more like friends and the same upset, anger, unfairness is felt by them as it is by Ali and Sami.  

What her readers will keep in their hearts long, long after they have turned the last page is the warmth and love that Dassu demonstrates in her writing. In this way, her books remind me of the way Kelly Yang's Front Desk series makes me feel. As the saying attributed to Maya Angelou goes: 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In this way, I couldn't rate Dassu's writing any higher. As a teacher, I want the young people I work with every day to have the very best literature to read, so they learn that - other that for the sheer pleasure of it! - reading makes you feel: feel the emotional rollercoaster of life, feel the injustices meted out, and most importantly of all feel the joy too. Dassu's knack of engaging us to feel by creating stories and characters who still live alongside you once you've read the book exemplifies the genius of the most lasting books for children. That she is writing today for all of us, particularly the young, is cause for celebration indeed.

***

Kicked Out by A.M Dassu is published on 19th October 2023.
Thank you to Old Barn books and to A.M. Dassu for providing me with an advance copy of Kicked Out to read.

Generating a spark

Super Questers: The Case of the Great Energy Robbery by Lisa Moss and Dr. Thomas Bernard; illustrated Amy Willcox (QuestFriendz, 2023)

Just like a wind-turbine, I'm a big fan...

...of the SuperQuesters series, that is! 

Earlier this year, I celebrated the publication of The Case of the Missing Memory, the second in the Super Questers series and now, just a few months later, comes another title perfect for introducing younger children to the wonderfully exciting world of STEM.

The series, now well underway, is the best I have seen to give  young children  - Y2 -Y4 is the perfect audience -  the tools and confidence to think through problems based on real life STEM contexts and will have a hugely positive effect on their linguistic learning too. 

So what's the latest book about? The publisher writes: 

Leo and his two best friends, Lilli and Bea are on a quest to power a plane. Leo’s mum is an engineer and has given them a model plane explaining that some planes get energy to fly from biofuels. The team discover that renewable energy is made from organic materials even ones available in a garden! They journey to Questland in search of clues about creating biofuel energy. Upon arriving in Questland, the Queen is in urgent need of their help as Lord Grumble and his pesky Snapettes are draining all the energy out of Questland. Join the SuperQuesters in their new adventures as they learn all about how to produce energy from different natural resources; the wind, sun, plant oil, animal manure, algae and ocean waves and work together to crack this latest case, in order to defeat Lord Grumble and restore normality once again to Questland.

I really admire how the aims of the series are so positively embedded here. Quest Friendz have set out to instil a passion for STEM subjects in all children, especially girls, and this is made clear here in the brilliant role model provided by the character of Leo's engineer mum. Transferable skills, associated with STEM subjects, are all in evidence too, whether it's problem solving, finding creative solutions or - and this is a big one for me as a teacher - feeling that buzzy joy of discovery. Throughout the book, puzzles and challenges are posed in a positive, encouraging way which makes for a book that is primarily a real 'read for pleasure', as well as one that teaches key facts, knowledge and skills clearly. 

This book focuses on renewable energy - the subject of which the children I teach are very well aware. They speak of 'saving electricity' and 'not wasting water'. Reading this book will give them a much deeper understanding of the subject (seaweed power, for instance!) and offer thoughtful ways to consider their own place in solving today's problems. 

I cannot wait for the fourth book in the series to be published now - due in Spring 2023, it looks like we will be treated to a further adventure that focuses on the 'Angry Sea' - and the collection as a whole is certainly shaping up to be a major asset to homes and classrooms everywhere. Thoroughly recommended! 

Super Questers: The Case of the Great Energy Robbery is  published today (5th October 2023)! Do support your local bookshop where you can.
 

Jurassic Perks*

Ultimate Dinosaurs by Ben Garrod (Zephyr, 2023)

Occasionally these days, I'm sometimes reminded of the odd little crazes that swept me up as a kid of the 1980s. From Madballs to M.U.S.C.L.E. men via cereal-packet surprises, they all occasionally pop up - often on eBay! - to produce a nostalgic smile. The most recent buried memory re-surfaced when I read the blurb of Ben Garrod's series Ultimate Dinosaurs (I'll leave the reader of this blog to fathom which toy series it was!):

"Put a dinosaur in your pocket and start your greatest adventure!"  

But the connection to the child-like fascination with the collectable is no whimsy. Whether it's toys, cards, books, children love a series. Victor Watson wrote a brilliant book about the lure - and learning - that series fiction holds. Non-fiction has found triumphant success (and many readers) in Horrible Histories and Football School to name but two popular series, and the Ultimate Dinosaurs books look set to take over a similar position on the shelves of Natural History. 

The writing in this series of prehistorica is both immediately engaging and reassuringly accurate. Ultimate Dinosaurs take the best of the best non-fiction books currently available for children - a straightforward and supportive prose style, detailed but clear illustrative matter, factually up-to-the-minute research - and tap into that love of series that (nigh-universally) hooks children into reading for their own pleasure. 

He knows his audience and while the books will undoubtedly be picked up too by complete novices, Garrod understands that the already dino-mad fans will be most intrigued: there's helpful asides guiding pronunciation, but not to the extent that they get in the way of the flow of information - it's assumed that the reader will know how to say Tyrannosaurus, even Hadrosaur, but not necessarily Baryonyx or Suchomimus. 

There is also a 'New Science' section in the books, which brings the reader up to speed on the latest findings and thinking. There's a freindly authority to this which, to me, seems like a pretty good way of children being taken seriously by the very top scientists, of helping them feel that their passion and interest matters. They will of course be the generation that questions what we know now and go on to discover even more: the science never ends. As Garrod writes, for example: 

"With each new discovery, our understanding of Anklyosaurus grows." 

What an invitation!

The series also offers asides from other experts in the field - some particularly famous, like Chris Packham and Jane Goodall, and it is great to see the representation of women in science placed firmly at the centre of these publications with contributions from Dr. Jess French and Mary Gagen in the Anklyosaurus and Microraptor books respectively. 

Finally, the covers of this new series are not only stunningly exciting but also factually accurate, painted by the 'paleo-artist', Gabriel Ugueto. 

Ultimate Dinosaurs is a series that is destined to be popular with children everywhere, and which really must find its way into every library and junior classroom. 

* In the interests of accuracy, it should be noted that some of the dinosaurs in the 'Ultimate' series, such as Anklyosaurus and Microraptor, were not around during the Jurassic period. Still, it makes for a good 'dino book' blog-title...

***

Eight new editions of the Ultimate Dinosaurs series were published by Zephyr on 14th September 2023. Thanks to Courtney Jefferies and Zephyr for the review copies and the blog tour invite!