Ladybookbird

All Steamed Up: Ewww

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:10:00 +0100

At the risk of coming over all Mary Whitehouse, wtf? Teenagers now have to have their own dirty books and they are known in the trade as “steamies.” In my day we made do with our parents’ copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover but obviously John Thomas and all that pubic daisy threading would seem hopelessly old fashioned now. A horrible portend of what was to come emerged in a press release a couple of months back headed “Is this ‘Judy Blume for the Fifty Shades of Grey generation?’” - conveniently overlooking the fact that FSG is mostly read by sad sacks in their fifties. Irresistible by Liz Bankes, the novel to which it refers, is really no more explicit than Aidan Chambers and is not a bad read. The same could be said of Dawn O’Porter’s Paper Aeroplanes - though I guess the Nutella and oral sex scene in the kitchen (I may have juxtaposed the two in my mind) might be a first. And this is possibly the best sentence ever written about losing one’s virginity “It’s…like the time Margaret Cooper bet me to get my whole fist in my mouth. I am stuffed full. It feels as uncomfortable as it does unnatural.” It earned O’Porter a slot on Women’s Hour anyway. And though Irresistible is not a bad novel, I probably would not have mentioned it otherwise. So, yes, as a marketing ploy it obviously works. We should probably just let publishers get it out of their systems - they’ll soon tire of it. We already have.

Comics: not such a Golden Age after all

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:53:56 +0100

When I was a child the Saturday comic was the highlight of my week. I started with Harold Hare, moved on to Princess and then the upstart Diana which seduced us all with its flashy free gifts. I’ve long nurtured a nostalgia for these comics, believing them to be a cornerstone of my literary development. So leafing through a 1972 Bunty annual recently was a revelation. The first two stories are about models; then there’s Millie who lives in a tenement with her “dull, slatternly mother…. and puny, squalling baby” and finally - this one’s a cracker - “Lazy Liza - She’s Always Eating or Sleeping” in which a father sends his chubby (they didn’t do obese in the 70s) daughter to school to learn how to walk. The teacher’s solution is to put her on a factory conveyor belt with paint jets at one end…. Of course the really sick thing is that I’m thinking Rose Budd would be WAY too fat to be a model today.

Review: Stupid Baby

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:28:00 +0100

My favourite picture book hero of last year - a kind of demonic Miffy called Simon who featured in the brilliant Poo Bum - is back in Stupid Baby. New baby books follow a pattern as predictable as scheduled feeding: baby comes back from hospital, disgruntled sibling asks when it’s going back, disgruntled sibling starts acting up, baby cries and no one can settle it, until disgruntled sibling peeps over the cot and baby smiles… Stephanie Blake tells the same fundamental story but with that essential element of sedition that turns a picture book from run of the mill to inspired. The text is as brazen as the fabulous flat colour illustrations and yet you can see every conceivable range of toddler emotion in the tiny set of Simon’s mouth and pinpoint pupils. It goes straight to the heart of sibling rivalry but does not pretend to cure it with wishy-washy sentimentality.

Review: The Hit by Melvyn Burgess

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:36:26 +0100

There is an unwritten list of authors who will always get review space - mostly because they are just brilliant writers, have won big awards in the past or because they are “controversial.” At various points in his career Melvyn Burgess has straddled all three categories. He won the Carnegie Medal with Junk and over the years has written some great novels, though never surpassed, to my mind, the stunningly good Bloodtide. But, as if chasing his “controversial” tail, he has also written some appallingly bad, slapdash books too. (It may be no coincidence that all his best work was for Andersen Press) The Hit is a great idea, less than perfectly executed, but then the idea - as Burgess acknowledges, rather sweetly likening his role to a foster parent - was not his own, but emerged from a conversation Barry Cunningham, publisher of Chicken House, had with two A level philosophy lecturers. The basic premise is a drug called Death, which kills you in a week but gives you the best seven days of your life. Set against a background of social unrest, riots and organised crime, one of the main problems is that this is not a convincing enough scenario to lure tens of thousands of young people to opt for Death. But even less convincing are the two main characters, Adam and Lizzie. There’s a suggestion of love across the social divide, but as usual Burgess does a lot of telling and not enough showing; “Lizzie had lived all her life safe and sound, protected by her parents’ money”. One minute she is saying fuck and the next, after days of being beaten up and sexually abused by a psychotic forty year old, she thinks to herself “Bless him” when the thoroughly uncharismatic, whiney Adam turns up to rescue her. In terms of violence this is more Guy Ritchie than Tarantino, but readers with the stomach for it will read to the end, lured by the promise of Death. And then they’ll be disappointed. So all in all, not Burgess’ best but not his worst either. Bless him.

Reviewers' dirty secrets: judging the author not the book

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:00:40 +0000

OK, I’m not saying I would definitely have included Louis Nowra’s Into That Forest in my upcoming Easter reviews in the Sunday Telegraph if I hadn’t made the mistake of looking him up on Google and deciding I didn’t like him. And I’m not saying that every reviewer is as culpably judgemental as me (goodness, how would Martin Amis ever get any column inches if that were the case?) but as a rule it’s always best to know as little as possible about an author before reviewing a book. But Into That Forest is a curious novel - about two girls brought up in the bush by a couple of Tasmanian Tigers called, ahem, Dave and Corinna - so of course I’m going to be curious about the author’s name. Which is why I set off on the Google highway and discovered he changed it from Mark Doyle in the 1970s, no explanation given. Fair enough, he’s a writer - why shouldn’t he rewrite himself a more exotic heritage? But then I veered off on some side roads and found he had described Germaine Greer as “a befuddled and exhausted old woman” who reminded him of “my demented grandmother”. Feeling a bit befuddled and exhausted myself I suddenly wondered whether Into That Forest was really all that good. Isn’t that faux vernacular style - “Me name be Hannah O’Brien and I be seventy-six years old”- getting a bit wearisome? Wasn’t the whaling chapter a slightly demented leap in to Moby Dick territory? And then there was the clincher. Louis Nowra’s got a chihuahua. I didn’t even have to Google that. It’s on the dustjacket - publishers probably think it makes authors sound warm and cuddly when they namecheck pets but I think it’s a big mistake. Wouldn’t you think just a little less of Dostoevsky if on the back of Crime and Punishment it said that he lived in a cosy dacha with three cats and a Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig?

Book recommendations from my Teenage Self

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:00:30 +0000

Anyone who happened to read my letter in the Guardian (OK, so you may not all be Guardian readers but it got tweeted, and retweeted until it went viral, or at least mildly infectious) about my teenage diary will know I was a bit of a narcissist. July 20 1969. “Went to Arts Centre (by myself!) in yellow cords and blouse. Ian was there but he didn’t speak to me. Got little rhyme put in my handbag from someone who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH. Man landed on moon.” With the thought that there might be a blog in my teenage perpsective on events of momentous historical significance I scoured my diaries but soon gave up. All that “went to village/felt fed up/oh god I’m so unhappy/watched Man Alive” gets a bit monotonous over eight years of chronicling the minutiae of my minute life. But then I came across an entry so wonderfully prescient that I can’t resist posting it here. August 9 1971 “Finished just about the most perfect book I’ve ever read - The Wizard of Loneliness by John Nichols. I would like to force everyone to read it. Have read so many good books recently - think I’ll list them at back of diary so maybe when I’m older I can read and enjoy them again.” (So, yay, I wasn’t such an airhead after all…) Of course there were no such things as “young adult” novels in those days (we moved straight from E Nesbit to Colette) so these are all “grown up” books - the list includes several by Margaret Forster. I had completely forgotten that I was obsessed with one called The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff - even when I gave birth to my third child and called her Maudie the memory remained buried (just as well perhaps - Maudie would not be thrilled to think she was named after a cantankerous old woman). Most of the books are no longer in print - but in deference to my dictatorial fifteen year old self, I have ordered The Wizard of Loneliness, about which I now remember precisely nothing. Oh, and in case you’re interested - on November 8, 1969 I dyed the yellow cords grey….

Review: Night School

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:39:07 +0000

Everything about Night School by C J Daughery screams Step Away From the Book. The initials (Salinger yes, everyone else no), the dark cover featuring pale skinned, red (they’re always red) haired beauty, and the French love interest who “purrs” and calls our feisty – naturally – heroine “ma belle”… It’s set in a mixed boarding school where a mysterious night school separates elite students from the plain rich. Most have a family connection but why is ordinary, mixed-up-kid Allie there? I shamefully read to the end and enjoyed every minute of it. You can safely give it to a chaste young teen – the passionate kisses always end up in one of them pulling away and saying we must be “grown up”. It’s almost Angela Brazil for the twenty first century.

Review: How the Light Gets In

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:59:56 +0000

Why did I not review How the Light Gets In by M J Hyland when it was reincarnated last summer as a young adult novel for Walker Canongate? Maybe I just allowed my prejudice against authorial initials (yes, yes we all loved Catcher in the Rye but, you know, get over it) to overcome my critical neutrality, or maybe it arrived too late for my deadline? But better late than never to hail a teen classic.

Lou, an Australian exchange student living with an American Dream family is in equal parts fascinating and repellent. The reader sits uneasily in her head observing the front she presents to the world. Highly intelligent and clearly damaged, she is the product of an impoverished background, both materially and culturally. So she aspires to clean sheets and unconditional love and her desire to sleep in other people’s beds (preferably without the owners) is both touching and creepy as is her sensory sensitivity. On the plane coming over the old woman next to her smells of “stale vase water” while her host mother smells like “milky picnic tea poured from a flask” and the school room of “suffocated paint”. The nearest she gets to intimacy is to ask people if they know what “desquamation” is – though of course she already knows the answer.

Hyland’s descriptions are exquisitely wrought. The cartilages at the back of her host-sister’s knees “splay like miniature cathedral buttresses.” And a teacher has “a jagged black hairline near the front of his skull that makes him look like a shiny egg cracked open by a small and furious hatchling”. The sense of dread that dogs the reader – you know it’s not going to end well – is counter-balanced by the sheer pleasure of reading such beautifully crafted work. I hate to say it, but I think M J Hyland has earned the right to those initials.

Top 5: What the Dickens?

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:47:18 +0000

So, according to Claire Tomalin, today’s children don’t have the attention span for Dickens? The television’s on in the corner so we can’t really concentrate on the argument other than to say that Dickens himself, who objected to both memorialisation and cruelty to children, would not have condoned force feeding his dense prose to young readers. The truth is that some children will take to Dickens, and others won’t; it was probably exactly the same when Tomalin was at school. In the meantime, here’s our selection of titles to help them on their way.

Oliver Twisted by J D Sharpe (Electric Monkey) - the boy who asked for gore, set amidst zombies, vampires and ghouls.

Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver (Hodder & Stoughton )- tragic orphan, wicked stepmother, metaphysics - this lovely story for younger children has it all.

Six Days by Philip Webb (Chickenhouse) - a dystopian novel set in a richly evoked post-apocalyptic London

The Eddie Dickens Trilogy by Philip Ardagh (Faber) - ah, Mad Uncle Jack and Even-Madder Aunt Maud, Malcolm the stuffed stoat; Mrs Cruel Streak and St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans. This was the book that launched a thousand imitators and it’s still the best.

The Black Book of Secrets by F E Higgins (Macmillan). Ludlow Fitch, Jeremiah Ratchett and Joe Zabbidou - Higgins out-Dickens Dickens when it comes to names in this stylish Gothic fairy tale about a pawnbroker who buys guilty secrets.

A Christmas Tale from Under the Counter

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:05:05 +0000

Customer: “I’d like to return this copy of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Shop: “Oh, was there something wrong with it?”

Customer: “There aren’t any Christmas carols in it.”

Unfortunately this isn’t a sketch from The Two Ronnies, or a bad cracker joke. It actually happened. Happy Christmas!

Ladybird Books Deconstructed

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:05:21 +0000

I have been forced to have a radical rethink on the seminal influence of Ladybird books. A friend has just been round and dived with glee in to the box of covers - ‘Oh The Nurse! that was my favourite.’ All her nostalgic joy was directed at the educational ones - and as she is an Oxford educated Renaissance Woman who can unblock an S bend with one hand, while writing books about the Perfect English Cottage with the other, I have to consider whether my enthusiasm for stories about greedy, vain and discontented farmyard creatures set me on the right path in life. Maybe the Ladybird books we favoured in early life had a direct impact on our futures. Someone should write a thesis on it….

Gender Bending Ladybirds: the Box Set

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:16:07 +0000

Shameless bout of nostalgia brought on by the box set of Ladybird cover postcards that arrived in the post the other day. Ohhhhh! Beaky the Greedy Duck! That was MINE - in a family of five children, books were read by us all but we had a strong proprietorial sense of which ones belonged to us. One Christmas my brother and I received each other’s books - he had Puppies and Kittens and I got Tootles the Taxi. By the time my mother realised the mistake it was too late - they had been unwrapped and possessed. But the anxiety over this piece of literary gender bending was palpable - I was watched carefully for signs of growing up in to Andrea Dworkin. Anyway, whoever chose the Ladybird selection clearly had a different childhood experience - it is heavily slanted towards the “educational” ones. Where’s Tiptoes the Mischievous Kitten? The Discontented Pony? The Conceited Lamb? (they were mine too). And Cocky the Noisy Rooster (my brother’s - clearly to make up for the girly kittens)? Pity the poor child who found ‘The Public Services - Gas’ or ‘The Postman and the Postal Service’ in their Christmas stocking… But the box of one hundred cards would make a great present for anyone who grew up in the Fifties and Sixties or who is interested in design. They are fabulously retro.

Review: Far From Home

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:23:55 +0000

The opposite of Guilty Pleasure must be Worthy Read. And I must confess that when faced with a cover featuring an AK47 and those orange-y colours that usually denote war-torn African country, my instinct is to reach for the glitzy book next to it. The Frances Lincoln list is heavy on Guilt Trip Lit - and we love them for it. Because, generally, it means their books are well written and resonant. Far from Home by Na’Ima B Robert is both of these (bar a tendency to have a few too many smiles playing on lips). A dual narrative novel, it starts in Rhodesia with the story of Tariro who together with her village, is violently banished from her ancestral land by white settlers. Fast forward forty years to Katie, living a charmed life in Zimbabwe, until the Land Regeneration Programme delivers poetic justice. Although the connection between the two girls is awkwardly contrived, and towards the end Robert lapses clumsily in to history telling mode, the evocation of landscape and the emotion it engenders is powerfully done. Tariro’s story leaves you with tears down your cheeks and a residue of guilt that is harder to wipe away.

Bottom Humour - Enough!

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:52:00 +0100

Maybe it was the fact that the Pop Up Book of Poo (Walker) arrived with Harvey, the Boy Who Couldn’t Fart that caused the sense of humour short circuit. I’m sorry to be so po-faced - oh, let’s get in to the spirit of things and add an extra o to that - but ever since The Story of the Little Mole who Knew it was None of his Business (a mole goes round with a lump of faeces on his head demanding to know who did it) there has been a …. shit load of books on the subject, Andy Stanton’s Here Comes the Poo Bus being the worst; honestly, it’s crap. The Pop Up (they missed a trick there - plop down?) Book of Poo may disappoint children whose expectations will be raised by the lift-up lavatory seat on the cover, as it’s really quite educational. Yes, mice have “teeny-tiny poo. Elephants have simply ENORMOUS poo.” Who knew? Actually, it does get more interesting - blue whales have pink poo and geese go every twelve minutes…. And at least they don’t call it poop. In America you canbuy a book called It Hurts when I Poop!: A Story for Children Who are Scared to Use the Potty.

Event: Chris Riddell and Tony DiTerlizzi

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:59:00 +0100

Last Thursday LBB had the pleasure of attending an event with not just one, but two of our favourite illustrators/authors: Chris Riddell and Tony DiTerlizzi.

The event focused very much around their childhood. Tony grew up in Florida (the Mickey Mouse badge he was sporting on his blazer surely an ironic nod to his roots?). Spiderwick Chronicles started as a field guide that he made when he was 12. His formative and early adult years were shaped by an obsession with Dungeon and Dragons - something that comes across strongly in his latest book, The Search for Wondla.

Riddell’s childhood was spent drawing pictures of decapitated knights during his father’s church sermons. He was promoting Muddle Earth Too, which he described as a chance for him and Paul Stewart to let their hair down: “well I say let our hair down, mine’s thinning and Paul’s bald.” He joked that Muddle Earth was less of a collaborative effort, more him “imprisoning” Paul Stewart and making him write stuff he wanted to draw.

We were also treated to live drawing demonstrations - we could only gawp at Riddell’s ability to conjure up book worthy illustrations in a matter of minutes. On the other side of the room, DiTerlizzi’s depiction of himself as a young boy replete with a Luke Skywalker barnet bore an uncanny resemblance to Elton John.

Perhaps the highlight of the event was that we managed to get our trembling mitts on not just one but three of Chris Riddell’s sketchbooks. Ooh we bet you’re jealous now…

Author Crush: Kate de Goldi

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:14:29 +0100

Admittedly she has only published one children’s book which shouldn’t really qualify her for an infatuation. But what a book! If you haven’t already read the 10 O’clock Question (Templar), rush out and buy it immediately. It was the best young adult novel published last year.

But having met Kate the other day (tea at Fortnums – it’s been a fattening week) it’s clear why she is such a brilliant writer. She lives and breathes children’s books. The last time she came to England from her native New Zealand she made a pilgrimage to all of her favourite authors, including Jan Mark, Diana Wynne Jones and – the usual awkward pause here -William Mayne. Though she talked briefly about the genesis of Frankie, the brilliant hero of her book with his “rodent voice” of worry, mostly she just wanted to talk about other writers. So we all sat around sighing like adolescents over their favourite bands, as we threw names in to the pot. Jerry Spinelli, Louis Sachar, Geraldine McCaughrean, David Almond, E L Konigsburg, Francisco X. Stork…. A roll call of honour on which she most definitely belongs.

Turncoat Authors

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:18:29 +0100

One of the best things about literary dinners (and last night’s at Quo Vadis – we suffer for our art - definitely was literary because it was in honour of Roddy Doyle) is not necessarily meeting the author – though in this case he was as lovely as his book A Greyhound of a Girl. No, it’s the chance to have no-holds barred conversations about books with other critics and booksellers and to discover that what you thought were your own uneducated prejudices are shared by others. We were talking about defections by authors who have been nurtured by their publishers through the lean years and are then poached – not cool. Shall we mention names? Oh, why not? David Almond – from Hodder to Puffin. Kevin Brooks from Chickenhouse to Puffin. Ok, yes they’ve as much right as any footballer to follow the money and maybe it’s not just about megabucks, maybe it’s in pursuit of artistic freedom or a particular editor but, I don’t know , we just expect more from them. We are – to use that terrifying parental expression – disappointed. You can’t fault Almond’s latest, Billy Dean, but could it have happened without the brave and beautiful publication of My Name is Mina? And as for Brooks, let’s just hope that Naked is a temporary slip from form. Maybe his first few books, written under the wing of Chicken House, just set the bar too high.

(I’m sorry I’m not techno-savvy enough to work out how to put a response section on this blog but I am happy to publish a post from any publishers or authors who want to put forward an opposing view. )

Review: Colours and Numbers Orla Kiely

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:04:00 +0100

Oh dear. Yes, these beautifully produced baby board books with cloth covers will totally go with your Orla Kiely handbag and patterned coat. And the colours are fabulously dingy in an ultra-cool mid-century-modern kind of way. Which is great news for design-obsessed 30 something parents. But not so good news for babies who, last time we looked, were rather keen on bright primary colours.

Not Suitable for Grown ups? David Almond

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:57:00 +0100

David Almond’s latest book, published simultaneously for adults and children is written entirely phonetically in the voice of Billy Dean, “a secrit shy & thick & tungtied emptyheded thing”. For teenagers, bilingual in textspeak, this is not a problem but adults, particularly the linguistic pedants amongst us (am I alone in wanting to give pre-nup spelling tests to potential sons-in-law?), will find themselves searching for rules and pouncing on transgressions in a distracting game of hunt the inconsistency. ‘Aha! Surely if he’s spelling endles like that, wilderness should have one s…’

Fortunately the sheer visceral quality of David Almond’s prose will win over even the most hardline apostrophe vigilantes. Billy wants the words to “enter yor blud & boans & to infect yor dremes.” And freed of the constraints of spelling this is just what they do.

For my full review see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8722822/The-True-Tale-of-the-Monster-Billy-Dean-by-David-Almond-review.html

"There must be no computer, phone or iAnything, naturally. Did Edgar Allan Poe tweet? Did M R James..."

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:34:20 +0100

“There must be no computer, phone or iAnything, naturally. Did Edgar Allan Poe tweet? Did M R James check Facebook every ten minutes? No, no, no. Horror must be written by hand, alone, undisturbed (at least by the living).”

- Chris Priestley on writing horror…