my teacher is a monster

Published by: Little, Brown

Definitely my favourite picture book this month*. You may have already read some of Peter Brown's books, actually:

Mr Tiger Goes Wild 

Children Make Terrible Pets

The Curious Garden

If you have, you'll know that not only does he use colour brilliantly and offer a out-of-the-box perspective on the world, but you will also be prepared for all the laughing.

The premise of My Teacher is a Monster is pretty clear from the cover: Bobby's teacher Ms Kirby is a MONSTER. She roars and stomps and is not impressed with paper aeroplane flights in class.

For Bobby, the weekends are bliss. Until the day he arrives at his favourite place at the park to find MS KIRBY SITTING RIGHT THERE.

Without spoiling the rest for you, let's just say that, luckily, our friend Bobby is polite. Also that appearances can be deceiving and you must never judge a book by its cover. (Except this book, because its cover is wonderful.)

An excellent book to read out loud: perfect for classrooms of children, or while sitting on the couch with one or two kiddies, or reading to your grown-up colleague at the bookshop while they try to serve customers.


*I work at a bookshop again!

Moon Over Manifest

The conductor came into the car. "Manifest, next stop."
  The seven-forty-five evening train was going to be right on time. Conductors only gave a few minutes' notice, so I had to hurry. I shoved the compass into a side pocket of the satchel, then made my way to the back of the last car. Being a paying customer this time, with a full-fledged ticket, I didn't have to jump off, and I knew that the preacher would be waiting for me. But as anyone worth his salt knows, it's best to get a look at a place before it gets a look at you. I'd worn my overalls just for the occasion. Besides, it wouldn't be dark for another hour, so I'd have time to find my way around.
  At the last car, I waited, listening the way I'd been taught - wait till the clack of the train wheels slows to the rhythm of your heartbeat. The trouble is my heart speeds up when I'm looking at the ground rushing by. Finally I saw a grassy spot and jumped. The ground came quick and hard, but I landed and rolled as the train lumbered on without a thank-you or goodbye.

- Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

Abilene Tucker's spending the summer in Manifest while her father, Gideon, works his railroad job. The Preacher Howard, called Shady, has taken her in - as he has taken in many a soul who needs shelter. Shady may live in an old broken-down Baptist church, but he's also an old bootlegger from way back. It isn't long before Abilene is working for the gypsy diviner Miss Sadie and even less time before she uncovers a mystery that goes right back to 1918, a spy, a swindle, a murder and two young boys called Ned and Jinx.

It's Kansas in 1936. I like to think that Abilene is what might have happened if John Steinbeck and Harper Lee made a baby, or rather, Moon Over Manifest is what might have happened if they made a book together. Like the Tillermans, Abilene wonders about where home is and where she belongs. As she listens to Miss Sadie's story about Ned and Jinx, she weaves a thread between the past and present, between the people of Manifest ... while just possibly tying herself into the tale as well.

Moon Over Manifest won the Newbery Medal in 2011

Visit Clare's website

The Tillermans

Maybe life was like the sea, and all the people were like boats ... Or maybe each boat was a kind of family. Then, what kind of boat would the Tillermans be? A little one, bobbling about, with the mast fallen off? A grubby, worn-down workboat, with Dicey hanging on to the rudder for dear life.
  Everybody who was born was coast on to the sea. Winds would blow them in all directions. Tides would rise and turn, in their own rhythm. And the boats - they just went along as best they could, trying to find a harbour.

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt, first published in 1981, is one of those quintessential classic American children's books. Or at least one of those thick-paged, yellowing novels from the 1970s and 80s that have the same feel, the same smell, the same dorky, now-dated cover illustrations. The characters and the worlds they inhabit are small, but the stories are so rich. I don't feel like the authors are trying to impress me with how cool the characters are, but the focus is on creating relationships that ring true, that tell stories of sadness without being shocking or depressing, that capture a little bit of a life so fully.

Dicey and her brothers and sister (James, Sammy and Maybeth) are abandoned by their mother and find themselves alone in a car park in a strange city. When she doesn't come back Dicey decides they will walk to Bridgeport, where they had been headed before their mother left them, to go and stay with a relative there. Within a few pages you know these children so well and your heart fairly breaks for them as they hope to find their Momma waiting for them in Bridgeport.

There's a lot of walking involved, a lot of trudging, lots of stale donuts eaten and every penny they can get their hands on can go five ways. As the children walk, they talk about their Momma - who clearly became a very sad woman unable to care for her family - they sing together and they form an unbreakable unit. When Bridgeport doesn't turn out the way they expected, the Tillermans head off again, in search of an estranged, eccentric grandmother.

This review made me so sad. Of course we're not all going to like the same stories etc etc, and the books have more supporters than critics on Goodreads so I shouldn't complain, but at least try to tell me what made you stop reading.

Homecoming definitely has a wholesome whiff about it, for sure, but in a way that acknowledges and appreciates the dark side of the world and doesn't dismiss it or run away from it. All the children (and most of the grown-ups) learn about right and wrong, about what's important in life - and learn that all these things are difficult and changeable and confusing. The people that the Tillermans encounter on their travels, and the kindness (and cruelty) of strangers, the sea motif and the ideas of home and family all make for the best kind of book, in my opinion.

Homecoming's sequel, Dicey's Song, won the Newbery Medal in 1983.

The Tillerman Cycle: Dicey's Song, A Solitary Blue, The Runner, Sons from Afar, Come a Stranger, Seventeen Against the Dealer.

I'm a small town girl, get me out of here! (part one)

Saving June, Hannah Harrington (Harlequin Teen)

In Saving June (which really ought to be called Saving Harper or Saving Jake, because poor old June is beyond saving) Harper isn't necessarily looking to expand her world view or escape her town - but rather she is trying to escape or assuage her grief after her seemingly perfect older sister kills herself for a reason that nobody can decipher.

Her divorced parents cope with their grief in their own ways – her dad and his new girlfriend don’t call and her mother drinks a lot. Harper's christian aunt is making it really difficult for her to grieve her own way.

Harper is a self-confessed bad/rebellious girl - though if she really were a bad girl the reader potentially wouldn't like her very much, so really we know from the start that she's just a bit sad and angry.

Scruffy rock music lover Jake, who turns up is the potential love interest, though we aren't sure what the relationship between Jake and June had been. An interest in music is a nice touch to any book, like Sarah Dessen's ace Just Listen, and it's just gorgeous (warning, condescension ahead) when young people "discover" old music and think it's revolutionary.*

To prevent her parents from dividing her sister’s ashes into his and hers urns, and to grant June’s wish to move to California, Harper and her friend Laney (of the vintage clothes , straight-talking and slightly odd plot arc**) and the aforementioned Jake (who, of course, has a secret) steal the ashes and roadtrip in Jake’s van to the West Coast, which is where the story really starts. Crazy antics, kooky sights to see, encounters in mosh pits, fights and some sexytimes.

A lot happens. And I think because so much is going on, so many different places and conversations there's a funny pacing and I lost momentum a little towards the end. The scene in which they farewell June somehow felt too short, or anti-climactic, though it was raw, physical, and original.

There were lot of issues crammed in, but Saving June was a very enjoyable read overall. This review on goodreads says all I wanted to say but better. And read the comments too.

Click here to read more reviews of books with dead people in them about grief.

*yes, i am a bitter old lady and i totally listened to that band before you. any band. all bands!

**which (spoiler) goes something along the lines of date rape, unwanted pregnancy, no talk of pressing charges or STDs and with one wholly unsatisfying conclusion.

coffee : truman

on a leafy albert park street corner sits truman. i ate there once, a wee while ago now, but it was delicious and unexpected and i have since returned twice for coffee. the southside is growing on me, though for visiting only of course.

I had The Truman, which was delicious: potato and leek hash with avocado, relish and some scrambled eggs on delicious grainy bread. the old timey plate was a nice touch. and the hash brown was my favourite...om nom...


coffee, very good. nice and strong. fancy red glass saucer. i would recommend it.

i think my newfound affinity for the art deco south perhaps has something to do with the copious amount of inter-war period books i have been reading: nancy mitford, evelyn waugh, george orwell - as well as modern books that take place during this time: michelle cooper's montmaray books, amor towles' the rules of civility...

broadsheet reviewed it.

and so did the age.

a novel experience

One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder)

This review is twofold.

First, the story itself. "The international bestseller" One Day by David Nicholls. I did not care for this novel. But I read it through to its end and below there will be spoilers.

Second, I read this book as a Flipback. Tiny book and an amusing, novel experience...an amusing novel experience? Oh for the love of a comma!


Now for the second, first. Printed on 'bible paper' it's pretty much necessary to employ the lick-your-thumb-to-turn-page method and, until your eyes adjust, sometimes being able to see the print on the other side so clearly is distracting.


Flipbacks are so delightfully tiny they fit in most small bags and are perfect for the tram. I think the idea is to just use one hand to hold the book, like an e-reader, but I persisted mostly with the two-handed approach.


Somehow I felt betrayed by this book. I feel like it was marketed as literary fiction, though to be honest and fair I don't believe it was. Somehow I had that perception though. Then all the "celebrities" were reading it in my trashy magazines. I thought - wonderful! Literary fiction to the masses! Then they made a film and I thought I had better read it before seeing the movie. It's definitely well written*, engaging and a good novel. I just think that if it'd had Maeve Binchy's name on the cover I might have gone into it with the appropriate expectations.**

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew (get used to hearing their full names, Nicholls refers to them thus all the time) meet at college. She's young and idealistic, he's charismatic and arrogantly entitled. They've just graduated from Edinburgh university and drunkenly hook up one night, though they don't sleep together, and eventually decide to be best mates. The book then checks in with each of them on the same date each year, spanning the next twenty years. It's a great concept.

Emma is smart and enigmatic, but she sneers at Dexter's wish to travel the world and then she's relegated to failing regional theatre and a dead end job in a shitty London Mexican restaurant.*** Meanwhile Dexter travels, is charming, and then gets work in television. This apparently entitles him to be condescending to Emma whenever they meet because Emma is a dowdy, writing girl who "wonders why sex, even when so enjoyable, leaves her so ill-tempered."**** The reader's sympathy is nearly always with Dexter as he struggles with the rise of fame, the loss of fame, relationships, family and aging.

The characters are self-centred and on the clichéd (ok, ok "everyman") side. Their problems are annoying. Is this kind of novel designed to make me get myself out of a rut? Am I supposed to identify with the characters and their haplessness? Maybe this is why I enjoy young adult literature so much. Even when the characters wallow it isn't the same; there's the future to look forward to - there tends to be some kind of hope.

And what about the ending of One Day, I hear you ask. SPOILERS: So Dexter the cad finally gets the girl (fortunately Emma has become less dowdy in the intervening years) and, because of Emma's love and all, he gets back on track: becomes a better boyfriend, a better son, a better father, a better human being. So, her job done, David Nicholls kills the girl.



I know.



Let's not talk about it anymore.




At least I could imagine this as I read:

Go and watch him sing I've Just Seen A Face.

*Though, occasionally boring. On page 343 "Emma felt the hot tears of humiliation prick her eyes".
**This is not mean to sound disparaging. Yes, I am a MB fan. You knew that already.
***Don't get me started. This didn't make sense!
****Seriously, I don't want get started. Emma was "so very British" while Dexter was allowed to enjoy love and sex and it made me SO MAD.

review : beautiful days

Beautiful Days, Anna Godbersen (Razorbill)

This sequel to Godbersen's Bright Young Things continues the story of Cordelia, Letty and Astrid. It's summer in Long Island and the three girls have been spending their days lazing about the pool and attending lovely parties. And wearing wonderful clothes!

Cordelia is still feeling guilty and sad about the death of her new-found father and starting to get used to living the life of a high-profile bootlegger's daughter and sister. When her brother Charlie asks her to open a family speakeasy she jumps at the chance. But what about the mysterious pilot Max, who doesn't approve of her lifestyle? And why does what he think matter so much to her? Excellent twist around this plot point.

Astrid might be engaged to Charlie but without a ring can she really trust that her arrangements will go ahead as planned? Especially when her fiance is always away... Is she just chasing a pipe dream? I worry about the relationship dynamics between Charlie and Astrid and hope that the next book might address the imbalance.

Letty is still trying to make her name on the stage. Cordelia is helping, but Letty still feels like she could make it on her own. There's a bit of a romance blossoming with scruffy writer Grady, but there's a chance Letty might mess it all up. Can this songbird create a glittering future for herself? I love Letty, she's such an underdog, just a little bit wet, but has a lot to gain.

Though this series is not as detailed or evocative as The Luxe - almost seems a bit dashed off somehow? - it is lovely and diverting. Tip top summer reading.

My review of Bright Young Things.

review : clara in washington

Clara in Washington, Penny Tangey (UQP)

When Loving Richard Feynman was released in 2009 it was really exciting to discover a new, vibrant YA voice. LRF, shortlisted in the CBC older readers category, is about family, friendship and disillusionment. The protagonist Catherine was smart and set herself apart from the gang - she's aloof, kooky and hilariously, humanly flawed.

Clara in Washington is a fabulous follow-up. Clara has decided to spend the summer holidays after finishing Year 12 in wintery Washington DC with her mum - by way of escaping a certain someone back home and trying to avoid thinking and talking about her exam results and university choices.

Clara is terrified to leave the apartment at first, imagining muggings and terrorist attacks, people not understanding her. But faced with looking like she's not having a good time to friends back home, Clara soon finds herself volunteering with a number of organisations and charities (so she can post "put my name down to volunteer at a homeless women's shelter" on her facebook and feel a little bit superior) and visiting monuments and museums galore, as well as falling in with a group of anarchists. She's not a Rah-Rah-Rah do-gooder, but doing some good might do her good.

Clara is very smart, but she's book smart. Not savvy, not confident and not even very nice sometimes. She cuts herself off from her friends, stops replying to emails and, when results come out, refuses to look up her score. But in spite of her defences the reader can tell she wants to make connections. In discussions with friends about Clara it's been suggested she's "passive", that she just lets things happen to her. She's on the lazy size, with crippling anxiety about getting things wrong (to the extent that it is a little annoying) and a bit of a know-it-all. But! It didn't take me long to feel for Clara, or to sympathise with her and I think she comes across as a very realistic character - and, within her own parametres, pretty brave.

As well as being a personal journey, and something of a romance, Clara in Washington also explores politics, government and social justice. Learning to think for oneself, while also listening to what others have to say - is this the very definition of coming-of-age?

Penny Tangey has peopled her novel with a cast of interesting characters - the slightly crazy ladies at the shelter are just gorgous - and it was great to watch (read?) Clara interact with all the different people she meets and gets to know, and see how they help her settle into Washington, how they help her make the most of this opportunity. If you'd like to, you can imagine the anarchists Campbell and Eric like this:

Clara in Washington is laugh out loud funny. Clara's dry sense of humour and almost manic paranoia amused one greatly.

Read My Girl Friday's review.
Read the Fancy Goods review here.

review : black painted fingernails

black painted fingernails, steven herrick (allen&unwin)

in steven herrick's newest book, published a couple of months ago now, student teacher james is heading to a country town for his very first teaching experience. ostensibly, james is ready - he's got the job, somewhere to stay (and all paid up), he's got the keys to a bmw and a healthy cut lunch for the drive.

luckily for the reader, who might be despairing at this point for james' lack of imagination and sense of adventure, he stops to fill up with petrol and is somehow conned into giving sophie a lift on his way.

sophie is older. she's hair, legs and black painted fingernails. and she's got james pegged immediately and she goes out of her way to encourage, entice and embarrass him out of his shell.

she brings out a tube of lipstick and elaborately applies it to her full lips , then kisses the hankie, leaving a big red pout above my name. she hands it back to me. 'don't wash it. leave it for your mum.'

it soon becomes clear that james is far from ready, and far from willing to enter into the teaching life. and sophie - so cocky and apparently self-assured - is hiding, or has masked, some painful secrets and sadness. the characters are all big-hearted, very real people. they talk, they're awkward.

sophie's third-person narrated chapters deal almost exclusively with her back story and the reader learns how she developed her tough exterior. the scenes with cardigan madrigal, the gentle hippie boy - the only boy in town who didn't like football - of sophie's teen years in her rough country hometown are such a highlight.

and in an unusual move, a number of the chapters are narrated from james' parents point of view. ok, so you don't really want to read about (spoiler) parents having sex, but at the same time it's kind of special to be privvy to angela and michael's experience of being left behind by their only son - coping with his absence and torn between trying to protect him from the world while also wanting him to discover it. complete pic of family and when the time comes, at the end of the novel, we are able to understand the parents' motivations and responses.

on one hand you think you have this story figured out: road trip, coming of age, boy meets a quirky girl and is bewitched. on the other hand...this is steven herrick and it's beautifully written and a truly lovely story.

expression is the need of my soul

talking about archies the other week put me in the mind to re-read the wonderfully hilarious poems of archy and mehitabel by don marquis. archy is the reincarnated spirit of a free verse poet, now a cockroach living in a new york newspaper office. at night he scurries out and types poems by jumping and slamming his wee cockroach head onto the typewriter keys - hence lack of capitalisation and most punctuation. the idea is that the newspaper men happen upon the poems in the morning and start printing them as a column.

and here's a piece, a selection, from right near the start:

"expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook upon life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be fore
there is a rat here she should get without delay"

archy's poems give a beautifully satirical view of life in nyc in the twenties and thirties, the excesses and toughness of those decades. the poem "certain maxims of archy" is particularly memorable and includes stanzas like this:

"don t cuss the climate
it probably doesn t like you
any better
than you like it"

and

"prohibition makes you
want to cry
into your beer and
denies you the beer
to cry into"

and

"boss the other day
i heard an
ant conversing
with a flea
small talk i said
disgustedly
and went away
from there"

and

"the bees got their
governmental system settled
millions of years ago
but the human race is still
groping"

alley cat mehitabel, in her many previous lives, once lived much more grandly than she does now (once she was cleopatra). but she's toujours gai, darlinks, toujours gai even when she's down on her luck and or burdened with kittens. mehitabel never intended a life of matrimony or motherhood:

"the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens"

archy interviews pharaohs in the museum, has a radio interview with mars and one time finds the shift lock (caps lock) key and experiences the JOY OF CAPITAL LETTERS. hilariously funny yet sometimes tragic and cynical, you must get a copy without delay. and what's more, the best of archy and mehitabel is going to be published in october! go, demand your local bookshop order it in! i am placing an order for at least twenty-three as i type this.

go to the don marquis website for more on archy.

review : beauty queens

Beauty Queens, Libba Bray* (Allen & Unwin)

Isn't it the most riotous premise? It's brilliant: a plane full of teenage beauty queen contestants crash lands on a deserted (or, rather, not quite so deserted) tropical island. Libba Bray's latest novel is firmly tongue in cheek and just brilliant. It made me cry 100% less than Going Bovine but I loved it just as much. It's Drop Dead Gorgeous meets Lord of the Flies, via Lost.

It's way over the top, a delight from start to finish. A fun satire (subtle as a tsunami) and you fall in love with the girls as they are forced to fight for survival and reassess themselves as girls and as people. Adina (Miss New Hampshire) and Tiara (Miss Mississippi) were probably my faves, as well as Petra and Mary Lou. Shanti Singh (Miss California) and Nicole Ade (Miss Colorado) were hilarious and fierce as the two people of colour determined to stick it out in the whitewhite pageant world. And poor Miss New Mexico, who suffered greatly following the crash: "half of an airline serving tray was lodged in her forehead, forming a small blue canopy over her eyes."

Referencing all the action movie tropes, and just generally being very vocally aware of their own plot and devices, our beauty queens are faced with the presence of the nefarious Corporation who are involved in a terrible plans to secure American economic interests via a war with MoMo B. ChaCha aka The Peacock dictator of the Republic of ChaCha (oh! and my favourite character - General Good Times!!!) - and the girls' lives are in the balance...with exploding hair removal cream among the weapons.

You will like this book. The one-liners were brill, the footnotes and the short chapters introducing the girls, Corporation advertisements and movie "trailers" just hilarity - I especially loved the David L. Evithan bit - great way to honour your editor, as well as basing dashing young pirates on them.

On a last note, I have to give props to Taylor. She is also a brilliantly memorable character and I cast Mandy Moore (circa Saved!) as the insane, dedicated girl warrior. "Let's not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things live. There are people in heathen China who don't even have airline trays."

*i enjoyed the two youngish kids looking at this book's cover at the shop the other day, completely ignoring the boobs (well done boys) and instead saying "this almost says 'library'! libbabberry libraberry librabrary."

scholastic fantastic

Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco X Stork (Scholastic)

As part of a compromise and deal, so he can go back to his special school for his final year and help look after the ponies he loves, Marcelo must spend the summer break working in the mailroom of his father's law firm. His father thinks that some time in the real world will help snap Marcelo out of his head - the same head in which Marcelo hears beautiful music and spends much of his time. Jasmine is in charge of him at work, and though at first she's frustrated by his slowness, she quickly learns how to interact with him and they become friends. When Marcelo finds a photograph of a girl whose face has been severely damaged as a result of the faulty windscreens made by one of the law firm's clients - and he learns that the whole debacle is just going to be swept under the rug - he has to decide what is the right and best thing to do.

With its wonderful characterisation and tight plot (softened by the poetic, meandery way it's written), this is a really beautiful novel about kindness and friendship, and about confronting the bad things in life as well as the good.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters, Natalie Standiford (Scholastic)

It is Christmas and Lou Almighty is very upset with the Sullivans. One of them has offended her and if she does not receive a written confession and apology by New Year's Day they will all be removed from her will, and therefore cut off from her substantial inheritance. The family - Ginger, Daddy-o, St John, Sully, Norrie, Jane, Sassy and little Takey - get together and decide who it could have been to offend their fearsome grandmother so much. Unanimously, they decide it must be one of the girls:
"And so it was agreed that the three girls - Norrie, Jane, and Sassy - would spend their Christmas break writing out a full confession of their crimes, to be handed to Almighty by midnight on New Year's Eve. After that, they would have to hope for the best."
Was it Norrie's falling in love on the boy from her Speed Reading class that did it? Was it Jane's tell-all blog? Or was it that Sassy had murdered someone?

A wonderful, very funny and must-read book. Written with the same ease found in How to say goodbye in robot (my review here) - and perhaps even better dialogue - this one is an American, more grown-up, version of Hilary McKay's Casson family stories and also a little reminiscent of Nancy Mitford too.

review : a confederacy of dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

You probably read Joanne Horniman's post yesterday over at her blog Secret Scribbled about this wonderful book. This was one of the books I read during those delightful undergraduate years when my classmates took everything rawther seriously, and I reveled in it.



Ignatius, a college graduate, is entirely convinced of his superiority to pretty much everyone and everything in modern life (and much of history too). He's writing a great tome on big chief tablets in pencil. He knows an awful lot and spends his days philosophising and avoiding much of humanity. But when he and his mother (with whom he lives) need money, a new fate awaits Ignatius: "and what a vicious fate it was to be: now he was faced with the perversion of having to GO TO WORK."

As Jo said in her post:

It's a book that could manage to offend everyone, if they wanted to be offended: homosexuals, heterosexuals, blacks, Jews, overeducated fat white boys from New Orleans, little old ladies, mothers ... except that it is somehow one of those books that is so big and warm-hearted and inclusive that (if you read it right, just as you can't be offended by Mark Twain if you read him right) it is actually the most liberal, progressive and forward-looking of novels.

Yet I delight in Ignatius' self-righteous and almost repugnant observations and comments. You feel for the cretin: "I am forced to function in a century which I loathe." I love it because it's honest, but hyperbolic at the same time - yes, that's just how amazingly well written and clever this book is.


The dialogue is pitch-perfect and the descriptions superb. Toole captured all those little parts of human life and culture that just make the words leap from the page, whacking your funny bone on the way to your heart. The dialogues between Ignatius and his mother Mrs Reilly, in particular, are spectacular examples of characterisation and dialogue. Also, it amuses me how Ignatius holds a particular disdain for Mark Twain. Calls him a "dreary fraud".

Jo posted today about John Kennedy Toole's only other novel, The Neon Bible. We'll just have to wonder what other gems Toole would have given us.

review : forgotten

forgotten, cat patrick (hg egmont)

mesmerising cover, quirky premise. it feels like it's designed for marketing pitch meetings and booksellers' spiels: so there's this girl, right? she's called london. and london's memory resets every morning so she can't remember anything from her past. but get this: she can remember forwards - into her future. so yesterday? no no. tomorrow? yes yes.

first of all, this book is very confusing, certainly not an easy read*. other reviews have noted the inconsistencies in the story and what and why she can remember and i'd have to agree. is her future set in stone? can her memories change, you know, if a butterfly flapped its wings in front of her? i'm still not sure, and i've finished the book. and if the future can change, then is anything real? poor old london.

the twist towards the end of the book that shoots the story off in another direction - this is the point in the book that i actually got into it. the love story just didn't sustain my interest, like so many "romances" in so many young adult books at the moment there was attraction for no real reason - made even more unreasonable in this case, given that london had no idea who luke was each day and had to rely on her notes to know what had been going on in her life.
but yes - the twist. it was great. the book should have been about this mystery.

occasionally i blerg-ed at some lines, ie. "the wind sets flight to my bright auburn locks" (i know i go around talking about my hair like that) and also the bit where a car beeps its horn at london and her mum "politely". errrr? a beep is a beep is a beep.

however! forgotten was very interesting novel and for the most part i did actually like london - her voice was mostly fantastic and some lines were delightfully flippant and funny. some nice original observations, the intriguing premise and then the twist spurred me to read through to the end.

reviews here and here, and check out the latest issue of viewpoint.

* i agree with folks that this is not dissimilar (that is, it's similar) to the time traveller's wife which is also an awkwardly written novel. and no, i did not like that book at all. i do like this one better.

history, herstory, mystory

Nanberry: Black Brother White, Jackie French (Harper Collins)

Shan't say much just yet. Handed in my review to B+P recently and I believe it has to be one of the best books I've read this year and is a top-notch example of excellent historical fiction.

from the HarperCollins website: It′s 1789, and as the new colony in Sydney Cove is established, Surgeon John White defies convention and adopts Nanberry, an Aboriginal boy, to raise as his son. Nanberry is clever and uses his unique gifts as an interpreter to bridge the two worlds he lives in. With his white brother, Andrew, he witnesses the struggles of the colonists to keep their precarious grip on a hostile wilderness. And yet he is haunted by the memories of the Cadigal warriors who will one day come to claim him as one of their own. This true story follows the brothers as they make their way in the world - one as a sailor, serving in the Royal Navy, the other a hero of the Battle of Waterloo. No less incredible is the enduring love between the gentleman surgeon and the convict girl, saved from the death penalty, to become a great lady in her own right.

The Ivory Rose, Belinda Murrell (Random House)

Conversely, I was disappointed with The Ivory Rose. It has a great premise and plot but lacks sophistication in its delivery.

Jemma has just landed her first job, babysitting Sammy. It's in Rosethorne, one of the famous witches' houses near where she lives. Sammy says the house is haunted by a sad little girl, but Jemma doesn't know what to believe.

One day when the two girls are playing hide and seek, Jemma discovers a rose charm made of ivory. As she touches the charm she sees a terrifying flashback. Is it the moment the ghost was murdered? Jemma runs for her life, falling down the stairs and tumbling into unconsciousness.

She wakes up in 1895, unable to get home. Jemma becomes an apprentice maidservant at Rosethorne - but all is not well in the grand house. Young heiress Georgiana is constantly sick. Jemma begins to suspect Georgiana is being poisoned, but who would poison her, and why? Jemma must find the proof in order to rescue her friend - before time runs out.

See? Great, exciting premise. But too much exposition in sometimes-stilted dialogue causes the story to drag. It's also a little bit prescriptive. There are slabs of text that describe the ways of life in 1885 that read as lessons, rather than woven in to enrich the world subtly. When Jemma runs into Henry Parkes at the apothecary shop she fortuitously is able to recollect her school history class and dictate the lesson to the reader and the father of federation himself.

The characters suffer from being cookie-cutter shapes and tending towards the one-dimensional. Particularly, I wasn't convinced by the mother in this tale and object to her being portrayed as a pushy, overbearing, workaholic mother who then when has to turn to baking and wearing 'softer' clothes to show her character reconnecting and starting to understand her child.

I would still recommend The Ivory Rose because a historical fiction timeslip novel is always interesting and it is still great to enter another world and learn more about our history.

review : just a girl

Just a Girl, Jane Caro (UQP)

The girl destined to be queen sits in her chamber on the eve of her coronation and reflects on the tumultuous path of her life to this moment. Elizabeth recalls her childhood, declared illegitimate when her father King Henry VIII executes her mother Anne Boleyn for treason and adultery (but really for not begetting him a male heir), throughout her adolescence, her incarceration in the Tower of London and the deaths of her brother and sister, which led her to the throne.

Though disadvantaged by her sex, Elizabeth is extremely intelligent, has an incredible aptitude for Latin and Greek as well as a keen interest in politics and diplomacy.

Just a Girl illustrates the young Elizabeth’s sexuality in the playful scenes – and reputation-damaging scenes – of not-entirely-innocent games with Thomas Seymour, the younger man Catherine Parr (the last wife of King Henry) marries after the death of the king. These vivid scenes mark the point in the novel where Elizabeth realises how cautious she must be if she wants to keep her head.

Jane Caro’s created Elizabeth doesn’t suffer fools; she’s as hard on others as she is on herself. Although she does have empathy and is a very loving person, this is tempered by her ambition. Her arrogance makes her human, just as the way her enjoyment of people looking at her, and calling out to her, as she rides in the royal processions will be something the young adult readers of this book can identify with.

Just a Girl also works well as an introduction to the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, with the descriptions of life at the time: fabrics, living situations, sounds and smells (such awful smells) and the occasional glimpse into the lives of the poorer subjects of England who come out to watch the kings and queens pass by.

There is no way Elizabeth is ‘just a girl’. She is smart and ambitious enough to know that, for her “it has to be Queen of England or nothing.”

This review taken from the longer review I wrote for Magpies magazine, which appeared in their March 2011 issue.

review : surface tension

Surface Tension, Meg McKinlay (Walker)

The day that I was born, they drowned my town.

The town of Old Lower Grange was flooded to become a catchment on the day that Cassie was born (like the old township of Glenmaggie in Gippsland). The town's Mayor pulled a lever, let the water in, and now all their houses are at the bottom of a lake and they all live in New Lower Grange in new houses that look just like the old ones.

Cassie is twelve now and she has to swim laps of the pool every day to help her lungs, which didn't develop properly on account of being born too early. One day, sick of swimming in the town pool (after a particularly disgusting "seven-bandaid swim") she goes down to the lake, to a spot that no one goes to - so she can swim in peace.

Liam, about the same age as Cassie and with a past that also distances him a little from people in their town, joins her at the lake and the two of them form a fast friendship and act as sounding boards for one another's theories when strange truths start to appear from the murky depths.

For the water level is dropping - revealing dead trees, forgotten objects and one humdinger of a mystery. Cassie is smart, she questions things, she has insight and listens to what isn't said - more so than any adult within these pages.


This is an eerie tale, a real page-turner and a wonderful read for anyone about ten and up. Dialogue, excellent. Story, brilliant. Pacing, perfect. The cover is gorgey. Admission? This book scared me a little bit more than I would have expected and I had très troubled sleep the night I tried to read it in bed. That fear of what lies beneath...I was a little bit like Anne that evening she had to run through the woods to Diana's and back.

Photograph of the Cowwarr Weir - there is no town underneath here, as far as I know.

p.s. Very exciting that Meg McKinlay is shortlisted for her book Duck for a Day in the CBCA awards. Visit her website here. And her blog here.

review : first light

First Light, Rebecca Stead (Text)

What was actually Rebecca Stead's first book, First Light has arrived to our Australian shores as the follow-up to her Newbery Medal-winning stunner When You Reach Me.

First Light is a dual-narrative novel for readers around 10 and up that explores environmentalism and politics through a cracking adventure - and slightly sci-fi/fantasy-ish - set in Greenland.

Peter has gone to Greenland with his parents, who are studying climate change. He begins to spend time with the sled dogs, exploring his new icy home. Having suffered from headaches in the past year or so, Peter also begins to have strange visions...

Thea lives at Gracehope, an underground city her ancestors built after they fled England, a people persecuted for 'gifts' and 'talents' they possessed. Gracehope is a model of sustainability, but its ruler is less than receptive to any questions or suggestions that young Thea puts forward.

Of course, these two curious, intelligent characters are destined to meet and it's when Thea and her cousin find a passage to the surface that the plot changes gear and pitches forward at an exciting pace. The themes are accessible and the language perfect. Highly recommended.

Political and cultural superbrain The Cultured Animal has written an excellent critique, which you can read here.

review : the hate list

The Hate List, Jennifer Brown

Val wrote a list of people she hated, people she said she wanted dead.

Her boyfriend Nick brought a gun to school one day, and opened fire.

Told in the first person, with Valerie the narrator, the book starts with her on the first day she goes back to school after the shooting and over the course of the novel flashes back to events leading up to, on, and immediately following that day. It's certainly an emotional read, and one a reader quickly becomes engrossed in; pacy and well-plotted. Val loved Nick, thought she knew him, and is having to live with what he did (which includes killing students and a favourite teacher, and shooting Val - who ran at him to get him to stop - before killing himself) and try to reintegrate herself into school and her family, while living with the guilt and hurt.

I know morbid and taboo topics are popular and that one of the awesome things about young adult novels is the way a teenager can experience something without actually having to experience it. For that end, this is an interesting book.

For the most part the writing is good. Limited interiority sometimes weakens the story, even in spite of it being from Val's point of view. For example, when Val goes to see Dr Hieler for the first time and he suggests her mother leaves the room for the session, he asks: 'Are you comfortable with that?' The next line is 'I didn't respond.' But I want to know why didn't you respond? What were you thinking?

Characterisation and development was pretty good. Although, the characters were, rawther unsubtly, given names that are designed to manipulate the reader's perception of them: Nick, the killer, has the surname Levil; the bully, named Christy Bruter; and the stupid and unsympathetic principal called Mr Angerson. Some reviews have noted how Nick is given a more sympathetic rap than the father, but for me, I could see exactly why the father acted like he did (even though it was both cruel and weak) but Nick was more of an enigma - which made sense.

The end? Leetle bit disappointing and cliched, although it did explore forgiveness and hate enough to give readers closure. I read this book and wanted to hate it for being one of those books, an issues/torture porn type read. I thought I did hate it while I was reading, but...I guess I didn't.*

Visit Jennifer Brown's website.

*Though it makes me feel like a bad person, I couldn't help but giggle when I read this interview with the author and learned that a Nickelback song inspired the novel. Ye gads. Even worse, I can't get The Smiths out of my head, thinking about how people's words can get twisted if you take them seriously:

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I'd like to smash every tooth in your head
Oh ... sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed
Bigmouth, Bigmouth,
Bigmouth strikes again
I've got no right to take my place in the human race

review : a beautiful lie

A Beautiful Lie, Ifran Master (Bloomsbury*)

In the last week or so leading up to the 1947 partition of India (our good friend Wikipedia actually has a good entry about it), thirteen-year-old Bilal is not only facing the end of his country as he knows it but his father, his Babuji, is dying. His father loves India, his mother country, and Bilal devises a plan to hide the truth from him so he can die believing that India is at peace.**

It's a very lovely story and it's great to see such important historical moments written about. Bilal's friends - all of whom come from different backgrounds - are great, lively characters. The riot scenes, between the Muslims and Hindus are probably the strongest in the novel. On the whole, though, the book meanders along at the one pace and it was difficult to maintain interest. The language was unremarkable, and at times tipped into the cringy side of sentimental.

A Beautiful Lie would have been a stronger story if it gave more explanation about what the date signified. Without prior knowledge of the partition of India, the reader could be a bit lost and Bilal himself didn't seem to explain, or even truly understand, the events that were taking place.

Nevertheless - I love a little bit of historical fiction to open people's eyes just a little to the things that have come before. A nice read.

*Copy received for review from Bloomsbury
**If it sounds like you've heard this story before, you might be thinking of that gorgeous German film Goodbye Lenin starring the hunkahunka Daniel Brühl, in which a young man recreates the GDR in his apartment so his mother, who has been in a coma and could die if put under stress or shock, doesn't know that the Berlin wall has come down and the East Germany she knew and loved has crumbled.