Three Billy Goats Gruff by Susan Price and Andrew Price - review: Karen Bush

Excuse the pants photo which in no way does justice to the lusciousness of this book - another terrific offering from brother-and-sister team of Susan (words) and Andrew (pics) Price.

     The words are perfect, with some great rhymes, and some written  as straightforward text, others in speech bubbles. Plus of course, lots of fun to be had with the 'action' words as the Troll gets his comeuppance ... followed by his comedownance ...

     The pictures are bold, bright, gorgeous and funny and words and illustrations complement each other perfectly. It's a nice size for sitting and reading with your tinies - and it's such good fun that it is one of those books you won't get too tired of reading again and again with them. (In fact, it's proof too, that picture books aren't just for kids. A lot of grown-ups are going to enjoy this just as much)

     AND - when you have finished with reading the story, there is an accompanying colouring in and activity book - colour in the drawings, and fill in the missing letters and words - educational as well as entertaining. What more could you ask for? Apart from a sequel ...

Sir Charlie Stinky Socks: the Pirate's Curse by Kristina Stephenson reviewed by Julia Jones

 Sir Charlie Stinky Socks: the Pirate's Curse passed the grandchild test. My oldest granddaughter, aged 7, chose it for our teatime read as she'd already enjoyed another in this series. She took the lead in turning the pages, opening the giant flaps and pointing out details of the plot and jokes. The varied typefaces and sizes made it easy for her beginner-reader brother to join in and the lively story line frequently attracted the attention of the third child who was sitting on the other side of the table absorbed in a project of her own.

It's a simple, shapely narrative. "Once upon a time there was a bottle bobbing out on the big blue sea...a sea filled with pirates and magical mermaids. Oh, and a man-eating monster!"  Key words such as pirates, magical mermaids and man-eating monster all have their their distinctive type faces and there are frequent typographical jokes – such as increasing the type size for the word big and making the bs in bobbing undulate. These were pleasurable in themselves and a boost for shared reading.

The bottle contains the single word HELP! It goes on bobbing for six long years before it is discovered by Sir Charlie. He and his good grey mare and his faithful cat, Envelope, gallop into action and leap on board the pirate ship Black Toenail, captained by the terrifying Burnt Beard. There are adventures and a certain amount of ship-board humour – such as the moment that the cat and the horse catch sight of Burnt Beard's bottom. (A word that rarely fails to raise a teatime giggle.)

That's the general level of humour in Stinky Socks. Its strength lies in its story-telling. Captain Burnt Beard never really wanted to be a pirate, you see. The discovery of his hidden secret is neatly managed and appealing.All the children enjoyed this book and so did I. The drawings are colourful and cartoony and there's a happy ending in a cake shop "beside the big blue sea" where the pirates are finally at liberty to follow their true vocations.

This review first appeared on The Bookbag site 

The Quayside Cat by Toby Forward and Ruth Brown reviewed by Julia Jones

Sometimes it's good to be wrong. I'd been keen to review The Quayside Cat almost entirely because of the beautiful colour palette of the front cover – and also because I spend quite a lot of time hanging around on quaysides. But then I began to get cold feet – had I been guilty of the classic adult sin, choosing a book because it appealed to me and with no thought of whether the children would like it?

The Quayside Cat tells the story of a younger cat Jim who loves to hear the stories of the retired ship's cat, Old Tregarn. One day Jim is so enraptured by Tregarn's tales that he persuades the old cat to take them both to sea. The crew is kind but the weather is rough and though Jim puts on a brave face, he is glad to return home to the quayside. Old Tregarn, however, truly loves the seafaring life – Ruth Brown's drawing of him feeling the wind in his fur is possibly the finest thing in the book, though all her cat illustrations are delightful. He chooses to remain aboard. We guess that neither his life or the ship's will last much longer and the final page shows Old Jim on the quayside telling his seafaring tales to two entranced younger cats. It's a muted ending because the reader knows that Jim is spinning yarns whereas Tregarn had been a true sea cat.

I took The Quayside Cat to tea with three of my grandchildren: boy and girl twins aged 5 and their older sister aged 7. I pulled it out of the granny bag together with an utterly different, much more obviously child-focused book also featuring the mythological sea full of square-rigged ships, pirates and sea-monsters which is all that young children are usually offered. “Which would you like?” I asked the children. The boy twin, who loves nature and growing things but is finding reading, writing, arithmetic hard, reached for The Quayside Cat without a moment's hesitation and took it to the table to scribe his name in the front.

I'll admit that this was quite unexpected and very pleasing. The four of us then had a happy time reading and talking about the book and it proved, once again, how responsive young children are to beauty and how keen their eyes are to spot detail. The painting, textures and colour choices pleased us all. I wish I could say the same for the text.

Toby Forward's words begin in poetic mode which I was happy to read aloud as we were sucked back into the land of cobbled streets and cheery cabin boys and feasting on deck in the light of oil lamps. Some of the dialogue between the cats demanded stringent attention to speech marks to know who was talking and would I think have been unnecessarily difficult for a child reader. My grandchildren and I are sailors and while we are perfectly happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy the nautical never-never land, there were moments when this text came dangerously close to tosh.

The ship is in a storm and the ship is riding the waves As high as steeples. Higher. That's okay, it's emotive, it's how one might feel. But then the narrator claims: The sails become so threadbare that when the crew hoists them, they catch just enough wind to move her through the water as a father takes a child and leads it to safety. Whatever is this trying to say? Threadbare sails do NOT selectively catch less wind than sails which are in good condition. They split. The ship will then drive uncontrollably through the water under bare poles – NOT AT ALL the same as being led to safety by some reassuring adult hand.

Now that I've got this gripe out of my system I shall return the book to to my grandson knowing that Ruth Brown's illustrations will nourish his artistic sensibility and feeling secretly glad that he will follow the story without reading any of the words.

The Dandelion Wish by Sandra Horn & Louise Warwick, reviewed by Julia Jones

I think I should call this review "Picture Book Therapy".
   I had gone up to bed in a grump. Tired, brain-dead, work slow and uncongenial, never able to find that space in the head that allows for free-thinking and creativity.  Then some particularly dear friends invited us to stay for the weekend. Nooooooooooooo! I howled inside but of course it was yes. So I had ended the day so bad-tempered that I didn't even want to read.
   Beside my bed lay The Dandelion Wish. I'd looked at it some weeks ago and wasn't really certain what I thought or what I should say. Now I think I was trying too hard for the latter.
   The Dandelion Wish is about everything that I was lacking. Two children, Jo and Sam, are lying in a summer field. They have been lying there, it seems, for days and days. They go home to sleep, they return to play and simply to Be. Their heads are full of the sun and the breeze and possibly the smell of the grass but they are empty of anything else.
   Jo and Sam are not much like any contemporary children but finally they come close to uttering the dreaded words "I'm BORED." As it happens, they don't. They pick a dandelion each and make wishes as they blow the clocks across the field. Nothing happens for a while then into the field (or into their heads) comes the Dandelion Fair: pirates and a mermaid, a dinosaur, crocodile, puppets, musicians and a hoopla-stall.
   What modern child knows anything about a hoopla-stall? I grumbled to myself. I read the book over several times. I had a few niggles about some commas and capitalisations. There were one or two line breaks and internal rhymes that made me uneasy. This book seemed to be poised to tip into poetry and I just couldn't make it work.
   As I said, I was in a thoroughly bad mood.
   Yet I wanted to like it and I knew that, at some odd level, I did. The children and their images are completely retro. There's nothing that arrives in their heads that hasn't been a staple of kids' lit for the last fifty years.
   That's okay, some things are timeless. Chillax can't you, Julia?

   So I read the book again with my eyes. I let myself feel the space of the field and fly up into the air with the seeds. I let the breeze flutter my frock and and I waited as the distant music drew slowly closer. The mermaid came with waves and swirls, the musicians were impossibly elongated. Finally I was caught up in the magic and I breathed it in until at last, like the crocodile, I curled round and fell asleep.
   And can you guess?
   Of course you can. I had one of the best night's sleep -  WITH DREAMS  - that I've had for rather too long a time. That's picture book therapy. Thank you, Sandra and Louise.

Suvi and the Sky Folk by Sandra Horn and Muza Ulasowski

(Abridged version of Authors Electric blogpost 9.2.2014)

A dull evening in early February. All of us have been working, most of us are recovering from a fluey cold. We settle down with a box of chocolates and a new book: Suvi and the Sky Folk by Sandra Horn and Muza Ulasowski. “It looks good,” says my 4 year old grandson, Kemmel, judging a book by its cover. He's right, it's an effective, inviting cover – unusual colouring, those yellowy greens and the dash of violet. The lettering manages to be perfectly clear and yet also to blend into the flickering, transient lights. The contrast of the dark forest and the powdery snow is stark and there is a baby deer, alone, its shadow disappearing beyond the names of author and illustrator.

What you see is what you get. Suvi and the Sky Folk is the story of a young reindeer who becomes separated from her mother and the herd. Her Grand-deer has told her scary stories of the Sky Folk who live in the dancing lights. If you wave or make a noise, they will snatch you away to the place when No Moss Grows. It is the time of the long dark, when yellow-eyes and sharp teeth come slinking. Suvi is entranced by the ethereal pyrotechnics. She wanders away from the herd  …

Kemmel, Frank, Gwen, Hettie, Julia

Kemmel and Alice, when OMW is about

Frank read the story. He's a farmer and a cricketer and an excellent judge of a book. Gwen (aged 6) Hettie and Kemmel (both aged 4) were on the sofa looking at the pictures. Alice, their mother, watched them and listened to the words, as did I. Gwen cuddled up to her dad and took it all in. Kemmel was excited and responsive and ready to run to Alice's lap if the story got too scaring: Hettie seemed to be less engaged. She was playing with a toy and didn't look at the pictures so much but when Old Man Wolf appeared on the scene (and Kemmel fled) I noticed her tense and concentrate on every word. “Was that your favourite bit?” I asked her afterwards. It was a stupid question. Hettie may look fragile (especially when recovering from a cold) but she's imaginatively robust and loves being scared then feeling safe again. Old Man Wolf was easily her favourite character though there was a sinister owl with possibilities. 

I asked the children to tell me which pictures they liked the best in this beautifully illustrated story. Kemmel spent a long time deciding and then chose the first page – the beginning of the Long Dark when the mother warns Suvi that “Yellow-eyes and sharp teeth will come slinking.” Gwen liked the moment when Suvi realised she'd had a miraculous escape. But was it miraculous? Alice and I – who had listened to the words , not looked at the pictures – were happy to accept that the Sky People could have intervened to save the little reindeer. Frank laughed at our credulity and Hettie pointed to the picture which provides the rational explanation. Lively discussion ensued ...

Kemmel's choice
the beginning of the Long Dark

Gwen's choice
the moment Suvi realises that she's safe

Hetti's choice
what really happened to the wolf

The adult herd has been hunting for little Suvi while she has been having her lonely, dangerous adventure. I'm glad we don't enter into their anxieties -- the panic of a community with a missing child. I think that might be too much. The final reassurance  is tactile -- warm coats and nuzzling noses and once Suvi is snuggled back close to her mother she's not too worried whether the Sky Folk are fact or fiction. I liked the sense of something unresolved. There was lots to talk about in Suvi -- the aurora borealis, owls and lemmings in the arctic and whether or not Grand-deer's story had any truth in it. There had been plenty to look at as well and we sang the praises of clarity in children's book illustration as well as drama, humour and detail. 

Gwen explaining her point of view

Sandra Horn and Muza Ulasowski I thank you for adding luminous colour and a haunting story to a wet mid-week evening. Long live shared family reading.
Julia Jones

From February 25th, Suvi and the Sky Folk will be available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. It is currently available directly from Sandra Horn on Tattybogle and from www.TatePublishing.com