Monthly Archives: June 2016

Wolf By Wolf

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Wolf By Wolf by Ryan Graudin

Book of the Week: 26 June 2016

Wolf-by-Wolf-cover

This is a busy time of the year when the Warwickshire Year 9 Book Award is launched. I am in the middle of recruiting a Judging Team of twelve of our current Year 8 students, as well as reading the shortlisted books. I have therefore picked a book that was published in 2015 but which I haven’t read. Here is the publisher’s (Indigo, an imprint of the Hachette Children’s Group) blurb:

Once upon a different time, there was a girl who lived in a kingdom of death. Wolves howled up her arm. A whole pack of them – made of tattoo ink and pain, memory and loss. It was the only thing about her that ever stayed the same.

Germany, 1956. Over ten years since the Nazis won the war. Seventeen-year-old Yael is part of the resistance, and she has just one mission: to kill Hitler. But first she’s got to get close enough to him to do it.

 

Year 9 Book Award

The four books shortlisted for the Warwickshire Year 9 Book Award, 2016. ‘One’ by Sarah Crossan was awarded the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal last week.

The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting

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The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting by Holly Bourne

Book of the Week: 19 June 2016

Manifesto

The conversational and confiding style, rather like the intriguing title, draw you in to the story straightaway. Bree is from a wealthy background but is lonely and unpopular at school. Her only friend in Year 12 is Holdo, who has named himself after Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Holdo considers Bree to be girlfriend material but the feeling doesn’t seem to be mutual. Together they drink red wine, watch cult movies and complain about  popular people at school as well as Bree’s lack of success in being a published author. A passing comment by Mr Fellows, Bree’s English teacher, drives her to ‘become more interesting’ by changing her appearance, abandoning Holdo and joining the ‘cool crowd’ at school. For a while, the story is reminiscent of the movie Mean Girls but becomes much darker when her crush on Mr Fellows turns into something serious.

This is a book about friendships, bullying and what sacrifices you might have to make to be popular. Unusually in Young Adult literature, it also deals with the difficult and sensitive topic of inappropriate teacher-student relationships. This, along with frank language, self-harm and sexual references make it more suitable for older readers. Bree isn’t always a likeable character, and some aspects of the plot can seem a bit too neatly resolved, but it is an engaging read as well as a thought-provoking one.

If you enjoyed Silence is Goldfish by Annabel Pitcher, or the adult novel Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, then you will find similarities in The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting.

The Ghosts of Heaven

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The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

Book of the Week: 12 June 2016

Ghosts of Heaven

‘There are four quarters to this story; they can be read in any order and the story will work. The four quarters are assembled here in just one of the twenty-four possible combinations; this order makes one kind of sense, but the reader should feel free to choose a different order, and a different sense, if desired.’ So says Marcus Sedgwick in the introduction to his book. Who wouldn’t be intrigued after reading that?

I initially started reading the second quarter, ‘The Witch in the Water’, but then was interrupted by other reading deadlines and had to abandon it temporarily. When I returned to the book, convention got the better of me and I started at the beginning and read through to the end. The final story was my favourite, so I was glad I picked that order. However, other people I have spoken to have read it in a different sequence and still found it satisfying.

Marcus Sedgwick uses diverse styles and narrative points of view in his four stories, which range from that of a young girl in a prehistoric tribe wanting to learn the ways of magic, to a village of the 17th or early 18th century where a woman is accused of witchcraft, to an early 20th century American asylum, and finally (if thats the order in which you read it) to a spacecraft on its way to colonise a new world. The symbol that links the stories is the spiral, which serves a different purpose in each one. What it all means when you put them together is something to ponder, as this is not an easy read but an ambitious and demanding book which may just win the Carnegie Medal. We will find out on 20th June.

For more books shortlisted for the Carnegie, check out the website here

The book’s trailer is here and Marcus Sedgwick’s own website is here.

Black Arts

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Black Arts (Book 1: The Books of Pandemonium) by Andrew Prentice and Jonathan Weil

Book of the Week: 5 June 2016

'Black Arts' and its sequel 'Devil's Blood' are both in stock in the School Library.

‘Black Arts’ and its sequel ‘Devil’s Blood’ are both in stock in the School Library.

Black Arts is a mixture of adventure, fantasy and horror set in London in 1592.

The story opens with Jack setting off from his home in Southwark with words of advice from his ‘Ma’. He has come to the notice of the local crime lord, Sharkwell, a Fagin-like character who runs a criminal network and who puts young thieves to work as ‘nippers’ (youngsters who cut purses from the belts of unsuspecting people or ‘coneys’ as the thieves call their victims). The book is packed with this kind of colourful and archaic language and it adds to the picture of a rough and ready London brimming with life, crime and filth. Whether all the words used are genuine doesn’t really matter, as they sound convincing and would be great to read aloud.

Jack is put to work with other members of Sharkwell’s gang, including his grand-daughter Beth, an accomplished con-artist, who takes against Jack for reasons best known to herself. When Jack clears a blockage from a pipe found in a stolen purse, a puff of powder damages his eye and hand and gives him the ability to see things that are invisible to other mortals. The owner of the pipe is waiting for Jack on his return home and has already murdered his mother in his search for the stolen purse. He is prepared to kill Jack to get it back but Jack has already given the purse to Sharkwell.

The rest of the story unfolds in swashbuckling style as Jack seeks revenge for the killing of his Ma and learns to come to terms with his special gift of sight in a city teeming with horror and devilry.

There is praise from Charlie Higson on the cover – a good match, because if you enjoyed the horror, humour and action of his ‘Enemy’ series, you may well like this alternative version of a gruesome London.

There is an interview with the authors here and a link to the cover-illustrator’s work here.