This is STUNTBOY!

Stuntboy, in the Meantime by Jason Reynolds (Knights Of, 2021)

Reading this book has been an exciting process. Chapter by chapter, I felt that I was reading something quite new. Taking elements of the comic book (it is after all the tale of a superhero!) and the urban fairy tale, alongside Reynolds' trademark-stylish narrative, Stuntboy, In the Meantime is not to be missed. 

Portico Reeves (names throughout reminded me of the improvisational brilliance of Philip Ridley) is the hero of the book, his 'alter-ego' the energetic superhero. We follow his escapades as he solves problems alongside his bestie/sidekick, Zola, battles with his nemesis Herbert Singletary the Worst, and block-parties with the Oldies. Although the narrative whips along, zipping between scenes at a cracking pace, there is a slow-burn, growing fear in the background: Portico's parents are not getting along, separation becomes a potential reality, and the boy's anxiety ('the frets') become increasingly more acute. 

The drawings by Raul the Third are not simply illustrations of Reynolds' story but form a parallel storytelling. It is through these drawings that we slip effortlessly between Portico's real and imagined worlds. We are seeing through the boy's own eyes: on one page, here are his parents arguing relentlessly; a couple of pages later here they are transformed into the 'Super Space Warriors'. In such a way, completely effortlessly, we feel the same pain as Portico as we try to make sense of how these two grown-ups - superheroes to their son - can clash so terribly. 

This book will be devoured by children from Years 5 - 8 as the brilliant story it is. But it would be a shame if you were to miss the intensely immediate language choices with which Reynolds, supreme poet, has garnered his writing. He manages to tap into the very speech patterns that his intended audience use and at the same time turn these to especially original, literary-gold effect: 

His brain started buzzing. His insides started piling and mixing up. His squiggles felt like they were wrapping around his beat box like a boa constrictor. 

And there is the same stream-of-consciousness fluidity in the prose that surfaced in Look Both Ways. Reynolds has this masterful knack of exploring the winding thought processes of children as they try to make sense of the world around them, connecting (and sometimes 'misconnecting') the stuff that bombards them every day. 

But the one thing that bothered Portico about Soup was his name. Why Soup? I mean, maybe he just really liked Soup, which is definitely a good enough reason to name yourself after something. Portico really liked Zola and had sometimes thought about calling himself Zola, but then he figured she wouldn't like it because she didn't even like him wanting to share the Super Space Warriors with her. 

There will be bright recognition and reassuring connection made between young reader and very telling of the tale in Stuntboy. 

Finally mention must be made of the book as a whole. Knights Of not only serve us the very best in terms of literature and new, diverse voices, but they put books out there that are a pleasure to hold and to read. From the design of the typeface throughout (with its nervous energy matching Portico's own) to the choice of including this unorthodox narrative in their booklist, Knights Of once again show they are the trailblazers for some of the best, most challenging literature currently published. They challenge their young readers whilst at the same time supporting and championing them; in short, they treat children with the utmost respect. 

Fast-paced, hilarious, thought-provoking and dramatically visual, Stuntboy, in the Meantime is an absolute gem of a book from a double-act that I hope will produce much, much more.

Stuntboy, in the Meantime is published on November 4th 2021. With thanks to Courtney Jefferies of ed. Public Relations for help in the preparation of this review. 

Read to Me! (Part 4): Ten Great Non-fiction Books to Read Aloud

I'm a passionate believer in reading aloud to children. It's a regular part of every day for us in Year 6 and I'm more and more convinced that this routine joy for us all is the key to building readers for life, in terms of confidence, knowledge, skills, and of course, pleasure.

Those who read aloud to their classes will undoubtedly read primarily fiction - novels, short stories, poems. Children enjoy listening and talking about these very much and I have also been struck by how they seem to enjoy writing stories for themselves above all other kinds of text. In fact, it was this 'noticing' that led me to explore the idea of reading more non-fiction to my class this year: would they enjoy it as much as getting into a good novel? Would their enjoyment of writing information texts for pleasure be enhanced too? Would the Book Chat be any different to that when discussing fiction or poetry? 

I have in the past always read non-fiction books to my classes  but I have never read whole books  of this kind to the children - why, I really don't know. There is so much high quality non-fiction out there at the moment that it seems silly not to do so! So this half term, I have experimented with reading aloud much more regularly from the same non-fiction book, purely for pleasure, just like a class novel. It hasn't been non-fiction every day; in fact, I have asked the class from time to time to vote if they would like to hear from our fiction or non-fiction read. It varies, as with all our reading habits.

Whilst I am still researching the effect of the practice - and I aim to publish this on the Open University Reading For Pleasure website later this academic year - I hope the following list of books that read aloud extremely well will be of use to anyone looking to explore the richness of non-fiction-reading-for-pleasure for themselves. I would love to hear of how your class responds! 

***

The Ten Books

1. Dr Nick Crumpton and Gavin Scott: Everything you know about Dinosaurs is wrong

A marvellously 'dippable' book, each double page spread debunks a myth that children (and many adults, including myself) may have previously believed to be true: Dinosaurs could roar: WRONG! Dinosaurs were all big: WRONG! Dinosaurs are all extinct: WRONG! Excited book chat is an understatement for this one! 

2. Alexis Frederick-Frost : Maker Comics: Grow a Garden!

I discovered this lovely series whilst looking for graphic novels for my class to read. We actually read this one with the children reading aloud each character's part to each other, rather like a play. So many children wanted to join in. The fun, quirky narrative (genius naked mole-rat characters anyone?!) helps to soften the very challenging information about the science of plant growth forming the main intent of the text. Others in the series include Baking and Fixing Cars...but these are just as challenging so be aware! 

3. Helaine Becker and Dow Phumiruk: Counting on Katherine

The Hidden Figures of the Space Race are at last getting their justified recognition and this book, winner of the Information category of the UKLA award in 2020 is a beautifully illustrated and super-clear non-fiction narrative of Katherine's life. The illustrations repay very close attention - there's lots of 'hidden' mathematical references - so once it has been read aloud, I'm sure many children will want to go on to explore the book much more closely. 

4. Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson: The Undefeated

This extraordinary book was the winner of the Information Book category of the UKLA prize last year. It is an inspiring and intensely thought-provoking text, equally challenging in its words and in its pictures, and has been the starting point of some of the deepest and most sensitive and questioning discussion I have ever experienced with my Year 6s. The poet reads the book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cHIWtl8PNk, a clip I will always show every one of my classes. 

5. Susan Martineau and Vicky Barker: Real Life Mysteries

A bit like a modern-day Mysteries of the Unknown (see No. 6 below), this book riffs on many children's fascination with the esoteric: the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, spontaneous combustion...and more. The tales are so bizarre that any reading is always accompanied by exclamations of 'No way!'. The structure of the book is perfect with two double-page spreads for each 'mystery': one, an introduction to the mystery itself and its attendant tales, and the second an exploration of two sides arguing whether each phenomenon is fact or fiction. A great book to pick up again and again, it won the Blue Peter Award for Best Book With Facts. 

6. Carey Miller: Monsters

My very first full blog was about the effect that the Usborne classic 'Ghosts' had on me as a boy. There is something universally fascinating and inspiring about this series, thankfully re-released by Usborne. Now all three are back in print and this, the third in the series, focuses on the monstrous, from the Loch Ness Monster and T-Rex to Medusa and the Yeti. The illustrations are pretty horrific and mostly gory, so of course this automatically makes it a winner with most older children! 

7. Ned Hartley and Binny Talib: The Big Book of Dead Things

What a title! This information book that covers everything from mummies to dinosaurs presents one of the most fascinating concepts to children: death. In no way morbid, it offers a lively and pacy exploration of all things dead and extinct by way of a fox family exploring a museum. There are overtones of graphic novel style here that definitely rewards closer viewing, but the text is engaging on a whole class level and the book is exactly what the title says - BIG! - which makes viewing the pictures easy and pleasurable. 

8. Michael Hearst and Jelmer Noordeman: Unusual Creatures

This book that was sitting in my class bookshelves was one that was requested by one of my class to be read aloud to everyone: their amazement at the peculiarities of the beasts described between the covers simply had to be shared. Each page describes a different 'unusual creature' from around the world and the information is couched in quirky structural and linguistic choices: there's True or False quizzes (which engaged everyone!), but also a True or True quiz, for example! I am fairly hardy but the hagfish page, read just after lunch, certainly gave my stomach a bit of a turn. Maybe best read at a different time of day...

9.Christine Dorion and Gosia Herba: Invented by Animals

Like Unusual Creatures, this book has fascinated the children I have taught. An original concept for a book on animals, it explores the concept of biomimicry, specifically how humans are looking to animals and their incredible construction, disguise and communication methods (amongst many other things!) to inspire our own technologies. The page about the mimic octopus led to requests to actually see the creature via a video clip and I particularly love how this book acts as a vehicle for natural further exploration and developed learning. 

10. Markus Motum: Curiosity

The reader-aloud becomes the voice of the Mars Rover, Curiosity, in this complex but beautifully clear picture book aimed at KS2. Throughout, there is a driving sense of wonder and potential making this is the perfect book to inspire the next generation of space explorers, scientists and programmers. 

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With thanks to Nosy Crow, bsmall publishing and Anna Howarth of Usborne books for their help in preparing this blog. 

'The Dark and the Light': An Interview with Richard Lambert

When I read Richard Lambert's The Wolf Road in Autumn 2020, I knew that it was hands-down one of the best books I would have read that year. Particular scenes and characterisation are still remembered with clarity; the way in which animals formed a huge part of the novel and the way in which the author portrayed their uniquely separate world was equally striking.

Now Lambert has a new book out - Shadow Town - and to celebrate its publication, I am delighted to have been able to ask the author a few questions about his writing and the part that poetry plays in his writing life. 

***

Your new book is for a slightly younger audience than The Wolf Road. Why did you decide to write for this age group and was it easier or harder to accomplish?

The age group for the book came from the main character, Toby. I started with Toby – unexpectedly. I was on a train journey and without thinking started writing a scene – about a boy and his dad. This became the scene where Toby says goodbye to his dad that’s in the novel. Toby is a thirteen-year-old boy who tries hard socially but who is constantly getting things wrong and misunderstanding things. I think one of the places he came from was going into schools to do creative-writing workshops and noticing children who misunderstood things or whom the rest of the class group find annoying. And I remembered being like that myself when I was a child. Also I wanted to write an adventure story for children – because I loved those kinds of story myself when I was young.

What is most important to you in portraying young people in your stories?

I feel I have far less knowledge of young people than schoolteachers or parents, so I am constantly questioning myself and whether I’m getting the young characters right. Two things are important for me, though. One is that I don’t underestimate the children’s intelligence – both my characters’ and readers’ intelligence. And the other is that I don’t write a bleak, unhopeful story. I still feel scarred by some of the books we were made to read at school when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen. So I worry that my stories are too dark, and I hope the dark and scary aspects are redeemed by lightness, life and hope, which I try to have in the stories. I want my stories to reflect life, both the dark and the light.

What is the difference for you between writing prose (especially for children) and writing poetry?

I write poems on impulse – so I don’t plan them, and they usually come out short, and usually they are quite personal. But with stories, I plan them beforehand. I visualise scenes in my head before I write. So I can see the place and the people, dimly, like in a dream. And I plot out the stories carefully. When it comes to the writing of prose, the sound of the language is important, and telling the story. When it’s going well, there’s a real flow to it.

The sentences are really important to me, too. With my first published novel, The Wolf Road, the sentences were much shorter, almost staccato at times. They felt to me quite plain. That had a strong effect but I felt that was a lot to do with my writing ability – I wasn’t capable of writing longer sentences. So I spent quite a lot of time after that trying to write longer sentences, and seeing how other writers did that. I wanted something larger, and sentences over which I had more control. I somehow felt I could include more of the world if I could enlarge my technique. And I’ve begun thinking of paragraphs and sentences like little poems in themselves, so I want them to have a shape, and to be interesting on their own terms.

Who are your favourite poets and how do they influence your writing?

I have lots of favourite poets, and they change. But I love John Clare, the nineteenth-century farm labourer, and his nature poems. I love the poems of the Irish poet Michael Longely, for their gentleness. Also the modernist poet Lorine Niedecker, who grew up and lived in a tiny town in Wisconsin in the middle of the last century and worked as a cleaner in the local hospital. The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who wrote warm, witty, and wise conversational poems. All very different.

The sound of words is important to me. When I read, the sound of the language really affects me. Even if I’m reading silently, I’m still sort-of forming the words into speech in my head. And that’s the same for prose as poetry. So I’ll often read a writer if I like the sound of their language. But I think that love of sound in language has been increased by my reading of poetry. And that informs my writing. Also the need for concision. Editing a poem, I'll think for ages about losing a tiny word like 'the' or inserting or removing a comma. So that affects my prose, too. And when reading a poem, it's often the visual image that hits me, so I've become attuned to the importance of the image. The sensory detail.

New readers coming to your writing will find it vivid and starkly memorable: are you a writer more interested in the visual or the aural impact on the reader?

Well, both are really important for me, I think. The sound of words is vital, but I think visually a lot too – I see all the scenes I write. When I'm planning, it's like I am running a film constantly, then adjusting some part of the film – dialogue, actors, lighting, costume – and reshooting the scene.   
But I have thought about this question sometimes myself, what is it that I’m most interested in, and I’ve often thought what I’m less excited by as a writer and reader are concepts, ideas and thoughts. I just feel I have less capacity for that than other people do. And that what excites me is the aural and the visual. That’s enough for me. 

What energises you as a writer and what exhausts you?

I think the thing that energises me also exhausts me – it’s the imagined story and the world I’m creating. It feels like physical effort. Perhaps like a game, or doing some physical activity like playing football. There’s a surge of physical energy, and I follow that in my flow of writing, then I am pretty tired afterwards. Editing is slightly different, it’s just slow, plodding work, and slightly more intellectual, cutting, deciding if something works or not. I’ve got slightly better at not despairing if something isn’t working. I can more easily cut a sentence or paragraph, a scene, or even a whole chapter. But overall it feels physically and emotionally tiring. Like everyone’s work, I imagine, is demanding.

What do you hope young readers remember from your work?

Enjoyment and fun. A visceral thrill. 

***

Shadow Town by Richard Lambert was published by Everything with Words on Thursday 21st October. 

With many thanks to Richard Lambert for answering my questions and to Fritha Lindqvist for her help in preparing this blog. 

Writing History: An interview with Frankie Durkin

The Histronauts: A Greek Adventure by Frances Durkin and Vicky Barker (b small, 2021)

With The Histronauts now into their fourth outing, A Greek Adventure, it's starting to look like a series that is very much going places. When the first three books (Roman, Egyptian and Viking) were published, I was very excited to see historical fact not only presented in an authentic and passionately personal way, but that it was all couched in the form of a graphic novel! Alongside this, there was diversity in evidence too and a very practical, hands-on feel (there's always recipes or crafts to make), all of which combine to give the series a refreshing and exciting edge over many other history books for children.

These books are a real gift to teachers, but what has really fascinated me as a Writing Teacher is how do we education professionals best help the young people in our care to think, read and write well about history? So it's been a huge pleasure  to have been given the opportunity to ask Frankie Durkin about her feeling for the past and how she writes history. 

***

Hi Frankie. I’m interested to know more about how history became such a passion for you. Can you tell us what was the first time you knew history was going to become a big part of your life? 

Hi Ben. I really don’t remember a moment when history wasn’t in my life. It was always firmly in the foundations of my childhood thanks to my parents and aunt. From day trips to museum outings to books to documentaries and TV shows. There was always so much history on my doorstep and kids in the UK are so lucky to grow up in a place where the past is such a key part of the landscape and tourist industry. There are places to visit and stories to learn wherever you are. The smell of the Jorvik Viking Centre is really nostalgic for me and the research visits for The Histronauts’ Viking book a few years ago brought back a lot of happy childhood memories. I also became fascinated with ancient Greece after spending an afternoon watching Clash of the Titans when I was about eight and I read everything I could get my hands on, even Homer. And I remember Mum having a book that tied in with a mock trial of Richard III that was staged by Channel 4 back in the early eighties. That led to another obsession and I actually wrote to my MP about exhuming the bones of the Princes in the Tower from Westminster Abbey. But I don’t remember ever having a moment when I thought that I would become a historian. I didn’t even study it formally until I started my master’s degree. But I love it. I love asking questions and finding out about the lives of people who lived such a long time ago. It felt like a natural progression to do my PhD and keep doing something that I’m so passionate about. But I never dreamed I could be lucky enough to be sharing history with young audiences quite like this.

2. Which historical periods have particularly fascinated you personally? What is it about them that grabbed them so much? 

So ancient Greece and The Wars of the Roses were very big early influences, but the Middle Ages has been my longest fascination. I grew up close to medieval castles and cathedrals so they definitely shaped what I was most interested in. I also like to blame Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. But those familiar old buildings and city streets always inspired me to look for answers about the history and what life was like for the real people who built them and lived in them. And that’s what carried me into my doctoral research and the reason I became a medievalist.

3. In choosing to write for young people, what did/do you want to capture to engage them in a similar fascination in history to your own. 

My own love of history started, and was nurtured, when I was very young. I don’t really recall it being something that I thought of as a chore or even a subject to learn. It was just something I was very interested in and always wanted to find out more about. My parents gave me the freedom to explore what I wanted to, and I loved finding out new things. But I’m not unique in that respect; so many historians talk about a childhood love of the subject or a particular topic that captured their imaginations and stayed with them through to adulthood. I think it’s natural to want to be a part of igniting that spark for new generations and I really want to help create those lifelong passions for history in our readers.

The Histronauts themselves are the most important element for engaging our readers. We created a group of friends who want to explore and ask questions. They love to go on adventures and they definitely want you to come with them. They don’t just want to be told what the past was like, they want to discover it for themselves. We really want everyone to be a part of their gang and to learn alongside them. 

4. What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of writing about history? 

Oh, that’s easy; what to leave out. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a book for children or a research paper for a room full of medievalists, there is always more to say than I ever have time or space to include. Making the decisions about what makes the final edit and what doesn’t is so difficult. I honestly can’t imagine that any non-fiction author doesn’t have the same problem. When it comes to writing The Histronauts that decision is sometimes helped by the fact that some things are just not appropriate for a young audience. But a lot of research goes into these books and so many wonderful facts or stories don’t make it into the final edit. I am lucky that some details can be used in workshops or teacher notes that support the books but, ultimately, I hope that The Histronauts inspire our readers to find out more for themselves and that they are a steppingstone into whole new worlds of all the things that didn’t make it into the books.

5. I’ve found when children write about history it’s important to show them to take a specific focus. How do you select what to include/write about when presenting huge topics such as “The Greeks” or “The Romans”?

That’s a great question! The structure of the books set out a lot of parameters for what I decide to focus on. The Histronauts spend a single day with a person from a certain period so choosing the point in time that they will experience helps to give the books their focus. Some of our books look at subject areas that refer to thousands of years of history and I take care to pick a point that gives us a wealth of information and allows us to discuss what had happened earlier. A good example of this is from our book about ancient Egypt. I wanted to set it during the construction of the pyramids but this happened relatively early in the timeline of what we call ‘ancient Egypt’ so it limited what our characters could talk to each other about. However, by shifting the setting to the Valley of the Kings in a later period we could still acknowledge the pyramids and take advantage of the stunning archaeology from Deir el-Medina where the craftspeople who built the tombs lived and worked.

The individuals who serve as The Histronauts guide also gives us an anchor to work around. In previous books we have met the daughter of a Viking boat builder, an Egyptian priestess and a man enslaved by a Roman General. In A Greek Adventure we meet a theatre propmaker who introduces us to his work, his family, the things he sees and even the things he eats. We wanted to make a deliberate shift away from experiencing the world through the eyes of kings and queens. Instead, our key characters are ‘ordinary’ people who give us an insight into how any one of us might have lived during that period. So, although the book does contain broad information about different classes of society, we want to show people that our readers can relate to and imagine themselves interacting with.

Our intention is always to take a vast topic and focus on how a person occupied their own place at a point in that time. We then build around them and allow The Histronauts tell us more about the bigger parts of that world. 

6. In your opinion what does the format of The Histronauts series do for children’s love of history AND love of reading for pleasure? 

Graphic novels are such an exciting format and I’m so delighted to see so much discussion about them between creators and educators on social media (I know you’re a big part of this discourse Ben). Visual literacy is such an important skill for all book lovers to develop, no matter their age or reading levels. And I really hope that readers who aren’t always confident with pages full of text feel that our books are a welcoming place for them to have fun learning about the past.

I’m so in awe of the visual elements of these books and it is such a privilege to be a part of the team that makes them. The brilliant illustrations are done by The Histronauts’ co-creator, Grace Cooke, and the layout is designed by b small publishing’s fantastic Art Director, Vicky Barker. We use images to communicate a lot of historical information that I could not include in the text. The visual details are always the very first starting point for our research and Grace and I always begin with museum trips so that we can see the tangible elements of the worlds we want to explore. We find so many things that we want to incorporate and it’s amazing to be able to create such an inviting version of history that appeals to all kinds of readers. We’re also able to use images as a method of telling the story and developing our characters; we love sneaking little jokes or details in that you might not see on your first read through. It’s a wonderful medium to use and gives us so many layers for our readers to engage with.

7. Inclusion and diversity is vital in today’s books. How do you address this hugely important topic in writing about history for young people? 

It’s enormously important and there are lots of ways that we try to make our versions of history more inclusive. As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to me that we don’t limit our account of the past to one of the ruling classes. I think it’s really reductive to perceive the past only through the eyes of the wealthiest people who lived then, so we want to challenge that. We also always want to counter perceptions of what people in a certain time and place might have looked like. We want to show that people of colour lived in ancient Greece and were a part of the Roman Empire, it’s important to see that Vikings were not all blonde-haired and blue-eyed. The past was an enormously diverse place so we are determined to represent that and give our readers something to talk about.

8. Having known very little about the history of ancient Baghdad myself when I first came to teach it to my Year 6 class, I was so excited to learn along with them! Which historical periods would you love to see become more of a focus in schools, primary and secondary? 

Oh, there are so many! Personally, I would love to explore more about African history; I’m reading a great book about the Benin Kingdom right now and it’s making me very conscious of the scale of that gap in my knowledge. It’s exciting to start to remedy that! But as well as widening the global span of what we study, I’m also passionate about teaching different aspects of what we already learn. British history has been too narrow for too long and we are a nation full of cultures whose history deserves to be celebrated. There are so many diverse writers and historians who are now writing histories that have been hidden away and it’s really exciting to see the growth of important narratives that have been neglected for so long. Organisations like The Black Curriculum and The National Trust are doing amazing work to expand the way we look at the past so we should embrace their work and welcome them into our classrooms. 

9. And finally as a passionate historian and educator, a big question - what is the point of learning about history for young people?

A massive question! How long do we have?! I could give you so many reasons that are about studying the past to understand the present or seeing the political patterns that shape our society. But if I really have to sum up why I think young people should study history I would pick two areas that are most important to me: critical thinking and empathy. As a historian it’s so important to learn how to think critically and to assess the evidence that you work with. It’s crucial that children learn to question everything and history encourages them to do exactly that. And I want them to feel empathy for people who lived long ago. Whether they’re studying war, or royalty, or industry, or any aspect of history, I really want them to think about the human aspect of it. I want them to want to understand that history isn’t just dates or statistics, it’s real people, just like them, who lived and loved and struggled laughed and learned. Whether it’s their great-grandparents’ experience of migration or a local story about the coal mines or a stately home they visited on a school trip, everything that can be labelled ‘history’ has an important human story. It’s why I’m a historian.

'A most awful, hideous place'

Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall (Guppy Books, 2021)

This new adventure story - the first in what will hopefully turn into a series - is quite unlike anything I have read before. An original take on the 'portal story', with much literary allusion and some vivid and engaging characterisation, this is a challenging and rewarding read especially well-suited to those young (and old!) readers who have read Narnia, Harry Potter and His Dark Materials and whose reading diet has taken in a few children's classics along the way, too.

Maggie Blue is an unhappy girl living with her eccentric aunt Esme. Neither school nor home offer her enough in the way of comfort, from having to contend with the bullying Ida and unsympathetic teachers during the day to dealing with the lack of central heating and a comfortable bed at night. But there is something about Maggie. Dot, one of Esme's musical friends, senses a difference in the girl while that difference seems to set her as an ideal target in Ida's eyes. It is when Ida disappears and Maggie discovers strange things happening in the woods that the story then takes an eccentric path.

Perhaps intentionally, the threads of the story start to unravel here and the novel takes turns that for me were genuinely unexpected. Some will feel the presence and madness of 'Wonderland' in Goodall's 'Dark World' ('a most awful, hideous place' as one character calls it), though it is an even more violent and disturbing version of Carroll's already nightmarish land. But because of its richly woven tapestry of allusions, I am sure each reader will find their own connections to past reading.

For me, though, the strongest parallels were with Mozart's and Schikaneder's fairy tale, The Magic Flute. (Is the eponymous character's name a garbled echo of that opera's English title even?) Once Maggie enters The Dark World, scenes evolve - as in Flute - in a kind of weird, improvisatory, devil-may-care way but with a solid internal logic all of their own (The latter point, for me, most emphatically sets Maggie Blue in contrast to the knowing, self-conscious illogicality of Carroll's book.) Further potential connections are also intriguing to consider: the bird-catcher, 'everyman' figure is perhaps taken by a particularly wonderful one-eyed cat called Hoagie who, despite his completely self-centred attitude, is one of the most lovable characters I have met in literature of recent years; Day and Night, Light and Darkness are tangibly to the fore replete with Moon-witches and a 'Sun-god/magician', whose designs on Enlightenment become a key plot point; while also haunting the narrative is a spectacularly dazzling but terrifying creature, bent on evil - a transformed Queen of the Night. I shall not say too much about Maggie's parents here, but their almost-absence throughout (which perhaps may become more of a part of the future sequels) felt like a nod to the challenging tensions between parent(s) and child in The Magic Flute.

As every performance of Mozart's masterpiece will reveal infinite wonders and unseen connections and contradictions, I felt strongly that re-readings of Maggie Blue would uncover many things new. This novel is a truly original piece of work and very much recommended to intelligent, thinking readers of 11+. I, for one, cannot wait for the sequel.

With thanks to Guppy Books who sent me the new paperback edition of Maggie Blue - it was so good, I have put it in the class library...and bought myself the hardback!

One to Tackle

Rampaging Rugby by Robin Bennett, illustrated by Matt Cherry

Firefly, 2021

I was never great at sports at school. I'm still not much good now but teaching sports lessons does allow me to ensure every child knows the thing that really matters - to have fun! And with this book, the first in a series that does for rugby what Horrible Histories did for the Tudors, children will have LOTS of fun on and off the pitch. 

Robin Bennett and Matt Cherry have produced in Rampaging Rugby a book that is absolutely jam-packed with detail, both about the game (its history receives a whole section, for example) and how it's played (an incredibly detailed but super-clear portion of the book). The illustrations are humorous and lively but never play down the authentic and passionate tone of how the information is relayed. It really is a great introduction for children in upper Keystage 2 and Keystage 3, who may be coming with interest to the sport for the first time. 

Not only will Rampaging Rugby inspire many young people to take an interest in the game but will also help to engage children for whom sport is already their 'thing' in the enjoyment of reading. A double win! 

I'm very pleased to have been invited to 'kick off' the blog tour for Rampaging Rugby, doubly so as I have been able to ask Robin a few questions about the book: 

What’s the reason for young people reading about the game when they could just *play* it?

Like Conrad Smith says in his foreword, as a kid I loved playing sport but I also loved reading - so anything that combined the two was up my street.

You focus on the history of the game…and (hooray) the history of girls’ rugby. Why is the backstory such an important thing to know about for today’s rugby fans?

Sport is as much about the spirit of the game as the rules and that comes directly from its culture and from its history: its heart and soul. 

In the section on playing matches, you don’t shy away from the toughness of the game. Isn’t this a bit scary for some young readers? 

Partly because it's impossible to dress it up any other way and do it justice but also because I think most kids' games involve physical contact  - they're more comfortable and enthusiastic about bumping into each other than we give them credit for sometimes (more than adults!).

The book is packed with technical detail giving a fantastic in-depth overview of the sport. How did you go about balancing this level of detail with reading about it in a pleasurable way?

That was the biggest challenge - I started off with bare bones facts, then added jokes and anecdotes but that didn't really work ... so I just imagined I was chatting to our kids and that helped it come across more naturally.

You end the book with a look at the future of Rugby Union. What would you like to see for the game in the next few years and beyond?

More people playing: more girls, more older people (like me) and more countries. I would like to see safety remain high on the agenda, obviously not at the expense of flow and set piece.

Thanks, Robin! And best of luck with the launch of the book. I know a number of children in my class will love to read it. 

***

Rampaging Rugby is published on August 5th, from Firefly Press, and can be bought from all good bookstores - do support the independents where you can! 

The Big Five

The Climbers by Keith Gray

Barrington Stoke, 2021

Obsession is an unusual theme to observe in a children's - or even young adult - novel, at least when it takes the form of the threatening kind that drives Keith Gray's new novella, The Climbers. It is the kind of madness that grips tightly,
making its unfortunate victim believe the unreal, and which occludes their eyes to their own personal shortcomings. 

Sully's determination to climb the tallest tree in the town park and name it as his reward has overcome everything for him. When Nottingham, a boy who has just arrived in the town, shows his exceptional prowess at climbing and announces as his goal to race to the top, the worst side of Sully comes to the fore and the competition becomes fierce and deadly. 

Blind to seeing what his obsession has made him, Sully is not the usual kind of protagonist in literature for young people.  He may seem to be the hero at the start, but very soon it is revealed that he is 'a right arsehole' - to use Nottingham's words; being party only to Sully’s view of things in the narrative, this makes for uncomfortable reading indeed. Like the unstable branches on which the climbers place their Adidas Swift runs, we are on treacherous ground to the very end. 

Keith Gray pinpoints exactly the teenage mindset, desperate to break free and find their own place in a world that has contained them, passive for the first fifteen years of their lives. Sully's friend, Mish, is determined to go to university and leave behind a small town that is easily excited by (but which all-too-soon loses interest in) the antics of the climbers. Sully and Nottingham still need to find what it is they want but they have for the moment settled on being the big cheese among their peers. They have much to learn...much of which from each other. 

And then, of course, there are the trees. Silent imposing guardians of the natural world, they stand astride the human world that buzzes around them. They haunt the book like green ghosts; you can smell their bark, sap and chlorophyll as they thwart the boys' plans to dominate them. One in particular, 'The Last Tree', fights especially hard - it has never been climbed without a fall - and, like Moby Dick, will not give up without adequate compensation. It is the major success of the book that through his vivid  characterisation, both corporeal and arboreal, Gray's depiction of humankind's determined plan to conquer all, even the very earth from which it was birthed, is subtle and sharply pointed.

***

The Climbers is published on August 5th by Barrington Stoke, and can be bought from all good bookstores - do support the independents where you can! 

Everything in its place

Mystery of the Night Watchers by A.M. Howell

Usborne, 2021

As a fan of A.M. Howell's writing it is a huge pleasure to provide the first stop on her blog tour celebrating the publication of  Mystery of the Night Watchers, her third and latest novel. I have read and shared Howell's wonderful novels with my classes ever since The Garden of Lost Secrets was published in 2019 and every time the children are mesmerised; often they mention the almost relentless piling up of mystery upon mystery as the vital key to the stories' success. Elsewhere on this blog I have written about Howell's connection to the work of Helen Cresswell and Philippa Pearce, authors of my own youthful reading whose highly charged prose connects the everyday with the supernatural and fantastic world of the child's imagination. Howell is a contemporary author to cherish - one to join those ranks of great authors -her quiet, intense worlds blooming to life in today's readers' minds.

When The House of One Hundred Clocks was published, I was overjoyed to find that the setting was my personally beloved city of Cambridge, and I wrote a walking tour to help readers locate all the places in the book. The way in which Howell takes great care not only in the historical accuracy of the novels but in their geographical placement too, is one of their great successes too, their authenticity ringing true even as one marvels at the almost incredible details of their plots. Suffolk and Cambridgeshire have a particularly personal resonance for Howell, so when she offered to tell us more about how this part of the world provides inspiration for her books - particularly as she is the winner of the East Anglia Book of the Year! - how could I possibly resist?

Ann-Marie Howell writes: 

The rich history of East Anglia has provided huge inspiration for all of my stories. My regular walks around Ickworth Park near Bury St Edmunds, managed by the National Trust, inspired my debut, The Garden of Lost Secrets, and my time spent living and working in Cambridge was the reason for setting The House of One Hundred Clocks there. 

I have always wanted to use my hometown of Bury St Edmunds as a setting in one of my books, but I needed to find the right story to tell. It’s a very historic town with many listed buildings, a beautiful cathedral and ruined abbey. After I had decided the backdrop to Mystery of the Night Watchers would be the exciting passing by the earth of Halley’s comet in 1910, I realised perhaps I had stumbled across the right idea. In the centre of the town is a lovely seventeenth century building called Cupola House, now occupied by a restaurant. The house gets its name from the cupola on its roof - a type of roof top observatory. I realised this could be an excellent place for my characters to watch the comet from!

My fourth book with Usborne, publishing in 2022, was also inspired by living in the east. I can’t reveal too much, but it is set after the second world war and is full of secrets and
unexpected twists and turns. Living in this part of the country has given me lots of ideas for future stories too – I now just need to find the time to write them all!

With Mystery of the Night Watchers hitting the shelves this month, readers are in for a treat - if you have enjoyed the puzzle-laden plotting of Howell's first two books then you will love this one too! And if you are as much a fan of these novels as I am, doesn't the sound of the fourth one coming next year fill you with excitement? And the possibility of more books inspired by the author's surroundings? I just can't wait, Ann-Marie! 

***

Mystery of the Night Watchers by Ann-Marie Howell is published on 8th July 2021. Do support local independent bookshops where you can! 

With thanks as always to Ann-Marie Howell and Fritha Linqvist for their help in the preparation of this blog. 

A Recipe for Success

The Cooking Club Detectives by Ewa Jozefkowicz

(Zephyr, 2021)

Food is one of the great pleasures of life. As a teacher, I've found that the act of making something that ultimately will be eaten and enjoyed by its maker (or their friends or family) is one of the most immediately satisfying creative things that children can do. So many children can't wait to get into the kitchen with huge amounts of confidence to 'have a go'; there's excitement in the air every time cooking is on the timetable. 

So it was with great pleasure that I turned to Ewa Jozefkowicz's latest novel, The Cooking Club Detectives. Here was a book that combined two of my personal - as well as professional - passions: reading and cookery. I'm not only dedicated to ensuring that every child considers themselves a reader by the time they head to secondary school, but that they feel confident to make themselves good things to eat and moreover want to do so. These are personal aims that I hope will turn into life-long habits for the children. In becoming so, good physical, mental and emotional health is more likely assured. 

Jozefkowicz's new book is full of the same warmth and joy as her others. She always writes convincingly about the relationships between children and adults and this book is no exception. Erin and her mum are  trying to find their way in a new town having just moved there. Mum struggles to make her dream of making cookery a professional reality and during the story finds it difficult to overcome the online trolling and professional setbacks. But her daughter is there to help her through these challenges, making it her mission to find out who it is behind the nasty comments and the identity of whoever it is trying to close down the local community centre. She is joined by her good friends, Tanya, Frixos and Sam, not forgetting her charming dog, Sausage! 

The story unfolds bit-by-bit and I think children will particularly love the layering of mystery on mystery. They (like me!) will also very much enjoy the interwoven recipes, cheap and easy to make, perfect for young people from about Year 4 up to make in the kitchen, with a little help where necessary. They also draw attention to how food connects us all: the dishes are all favourites learned from friends and family and the ultimate one being the simple, no-frills comfort of banana bread that tasty staple of family teatime. There's nothing complicated or fancy here, just straightforward things that can be made to show that love between the maker and their friends and family. These recipes will be made, shared, consumed, enjoyed...and remembered. 

I very much hope this latest from Jozefkowicz reaches the widest audience possible. Not only will the story and characters enchant, but the passion that sings from its pages of the joy of cooking, the confidence it engenders, and life-changing impact it can have on all of us from the earliest age will come across loud and clear. The Cooking Club Detectives truly is a recipe for success.  

***

PS Now, wouldn't it be remiss of me not to share one of those dishes that appear in The Cooking Club Detectives? So to give you a 'taster' of the book, here is....

Frixos’s Feast

Ingredients
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 stock cube
• 500g paella rice
• 1 head of broccoli
• 1 bag of fresh peas
• 1 tablespoon saffron powder
• 1 bag of frozen seafood

Method
1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the chopped onion and stir until softened (about 5 minutes).
2. Prepare a large measuring jug of boiling water from the kettle (500ml) and stir in the stock cube until dissolved. Then tip the 500g of paella rice into the pan and immediately add about 100ml of the water, so that it covers the rice completely. Keep adding the water bit by bit and stirring, until the rice soaks it up.
3. Meanwhile, chop the broccoli into florets and put them in a separate pan with another 500ml of kettle-boiled water. Place on a low heat and cook for twelve minutes, adding in your peas five minutes before the end. When cooked, drain in a colander.
4. Finally, stir in a tablespoon of saffron powder, then put the seafood mix into the pan and cover it with a lid. Simmer for 5 minutes until it is cooked through. Then add the vegetables and stir these in gently.

With thanks to Fritha Linqvist for supplying photos and encouragement - and Ewa's recipe! - in the writing of this blog-review. 

Striking a chord

Even When You're Sad by Jenny Pearson
Beginnings by Eloise Williams 

The more I read, the more I feel. 

These are not just words. When I read, I sense particularly deep connections with some books that seem to really strike a chord within. That musical metaphor is not just words either. Music is very important to me. Whenever I think about the question, 'What luxury would you take to your desert island?', it would either be my piano or my record collection with some way to play it!. (And it would probably be the record collection because I can't play everything I love particularly well!)

When I was growing up, my parents bought me a magazine partwork called Storyteller. Many of us 80s kids remember this fondly: every fortnight I would buy a magazine of stories which were read on an accompanying tape. I would plug into my Walkman and listen. The stories I remember most vividly are the ones that I also remember for their music. One in particular, Captain Bones, completely terrified me at the moment where a skeleton aboard a rowing boat appears to the strains of an ondes martenot wailing. I could feel the horror of the boy in the story. Every emotion heightened, all thanks to that strange, sliding tune. 

I have written music myself since my teenage years, studied composition at university, and now write songs for my school to learn and sing. I want to share with the children the sense that music not only enhances our lives but helps us connect - with stories and with each other. Singing is a community thing.  Reflecting on this, I realise that my other great passion in teaching is reading aloud to children - again, a community thing, like singing, easy and fun to do. 

One of the books that I read to my class a few years ago now that changed my whole outlook on what stories meant to the community of readers in my class was Jelly by Jo Cotterill. I wrote about how this book transformed the quality of Book Talk in my class for the Open University Reading for Pleasure site (https://ourfp.org/eop/tell-me-in-story-time/). What was developed simply as a result of reading a fantastic story with inspiring characters and then talking about it all as a class is still wonderfully mysterious to me. I know things were happening in the children's heads and in their hearts as we read but what those things were is still left up to each individual to understand. 

I've recommended that book to so many teachers and children in the years following that reading of Jelly, so I was delighted to be paired with Jo for the Empathy Lab's Blog Tour for Empathy Day 2021. And to work with her on choosing music inspired by the Empathy Shorts was just the perfect activity: I remember very well indeed the moment at the end of the novel where Jelly sings and, instead of reading, I played Jo's song that she had written for her protagonist: music for the author, clearly, was the best way to express the feeling there. (You can hear it here, but read the book first/alongside! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgd_okmKSE0) 

For Empathy Day, Jo chose music for Eloise Williams' Belonging and, being the super-creative that she is, also drew a picture to express her feelings from the story - interestingly, my classes all love to draw too while I read aloud to them each day! For me, I went straight to Jenny Pearson's Even When You're Sad and immediately felt the urge to write a song inspired by the story. Hopefully, I've managed to capture Jenny's brilliant ability to write of children's deep sensitivity with each other, but also their strength, good humour and resilience, too. The song, despite the thoughtfulness of the lyrics, is a kind of wonky, upbeat march. 

I hope children and grown-ups everywhere get to use their deep resourcefulness and unashamed creativity this Empathy Day to celebrate and develop their own empathic responses. Draw! Make! Listen to music! Compose! Stories are strange, arcane, borne of the human creative impulse; let's use our own creativity to connect with them.

The Empathy Lab's Empathy Shorts are all available to download here for FREE! https://www.empathylab.uk/empathy-shorts 
A Family Pack of activities has also been produced with loads of great ways to develop and celebrate empathy through literature and connecting lives to stories: https://www.empathylab.uk/family-activities-pack 

 

Life Stories

Untwisted by Paul Jennings (Old Barn Books, 2021)

Paul Jennings' writing always wins. 

Having spent the majority of my teaching career working with older junior children, every one of those classes has had me read at least one Jennings story to them. It's usually Spaghetti Pig Out (which works particularly well straight after lunch) or The Strap Box Flyer (which usually ends up with me staring out after the last line is read at a sea of completely shocked faces), though, truth be told, many of the tales from the 'Un-' books have been massively enjoyed. Being the curious type of reader, I've often wondered what makes them so good and also so loved: Immediacy - yes. A plain-talking prose style with often clear-cut sentence structure - yes. Surprising twists - ohhhhh, yes! But ultimately, I can't work out what it is exactly. Jennings is a kind of magician and as with the best of magic tricks, you want to know how he did it whilst at the same time keen to leave the actual mechanics in a kind of mysterious haze. 

Then along came Untwisted. This unique hybrid of a memoir-writing guide - like all those short stories - kept me entertained and completely transfixed throughout: although this is not a book for children, the same clarity and affective qualities of his writing for younger readers is there still. In short vignettes that dart back and forth from his earliest memories to just a few years ago, Jennings spins the yarns that share very similar, equally incredible scenarios with his fiction - a house that is cut in two and transported to the middle of nowhere being just one of these! The storytelling has that companionable tone that you might easily mistake for listening to an old friend telling you a story in the pub. The reading of this book becomes compulsive: like all good tales, you can't wait to discover how it all turns out. 

But there is so much more to this book. As a Writer-Teacher, I kept getting distracted by the fascinating insights into Jennings' development as a writer and his generous - almost throwaway - gems of writing wisdom: 

"A children’s author has fewer words to choose from than one who writes for adults, and these words need to be relatively simple."

It sounds maybe obvious, but when placed in the context of Jennings' own life-stories we see where his approach really comes from. When he was at school, his class was asked to write on a given subject. What Jennings ended up writing was particularly short (ahem!) - but clearly incisive, as his teacher declared: 

"Jennings has answered the question as well as anyone else but he has done it in half the number of words."

These kinds of stories about the learning of his craft shows how closely life and writing are interwoven. Important lessons (but maybe not the one the teacher intended!) were learned from direct experience: words matter; meaning matters; clarity matters.

Later he writes:

"My feeling is that children’s authors need to be able to put themselves into the world of kids and know what fears, hopes and experiences they face."

Again, it perhaps appears that this should of course be the case, but the overall impression of the whole book is that Jennings is showing us how life and writing are the one and the same. So the act of writing becomes the act of sharing, a yearning for connection through words between writer and reader. Jennings, whose life has been devoted strongly to the power of reading and in particular to those children who struggle, has created in Untwisted a testament to that very central importance that reading and writing has in all of our lives. It's more than just words.

Of course, reading Untwisted added more than a little to my enjoyment of the conjuring trick that is this writer's particular genius; but more than that, I came away more deeply appreciating what reading and writing can do. Jennings reveals that the life of his stories are absolutely 'the stories of his life' - just as our own, surely, are to each of us. 

***

Untwisted is published on 3rd June 2021. With grateful thanks to Ruth Huddleston of Old Barn Books who provided me with a proof and the photos (taken from the book) for this blog.