Gifted by Juxtabook

Welcome to Gifted by Juxtabook

Welcome! Having begun a reading group with some very bright 9-11 year olds I have realised how this group brings special challenges. Often by increasing the langauage difficulty you increase the chances of the child reading something someone considers unsuitable. I have realised how little there is in reviews that tells you what you really need to know as a teacher, parent, librarian or book group leader: not only is it any good but is the content suitable. This blog is not aimed at children, but at the adults who might buy or pass on the books to what educationalists currently call the 'gifted and talented'.

I don't intend to write full blown reviews but to flag up books that I think are entertaining and well written with, and this the important bit, notes on watch points. I'll be noting levels of violence, how relationships are handled, how death is handled, and how religion is handled.

The lastest post will be below this welcome. You can see a list of the most recent few posts in the column on the right, or you can browse the Authors A-Z page.

You as a teacher, parent or guardian, can then make a judgment as to whether it might be suitable for your child/children but of course the only real test is to read it yourself first! I make no guarantees that my judgements are the same as yours, obviously, and these notes are meant as starting guide for you only. Having said that all feedback is of course welcome.

A note on spoilers: in order to assess the watch points of each book I may need to include spoilers. I will try and do this as little as possible, but you have been warned!

Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy the site!

 

The Edge of the Cloud by K.M. Peyton

The Edge of the Cloud by K.M. Peyton is the second book in the Flambards series. Though regarded as a series of pony stories The Edge of the Cloud is markedly different to the other three volumes as it has only one riding scene in it. What it is in fact is a wonderful historical novel with a little romance and a lot of flying, set just prior to WWI.

The previous novel, Flambards, ended with cousins Will and Christina eloping after the hunt ball and The Edge of the Cloud begins immediately, the same night, as they arrive in London at their aunt's house. Told from Christina's perspective the bulk of the book is really about Will and his attempts first to get a job with his beloved aircraft, then to fly again and to save the money to get his damaged leg fixed so it will bend into cockpits. When that small matter is resolved, Will wants to design and build his own plane.

Christina is on the sidelines for this but her own life is interesting too. Much to her aunt's dismay she decides to get a job and trains as a hotel receptionist. She does other 'fast' things such as staying all night at the airfield (as the only woman) to help with the planes. Though she rebels against her aunt's social conservatism she is still very much subordinate to Will who treats her very casually. She is, as she says, always second to his first love, flying.

The book is a very satisfying read. The general thrust of the plot is not particularly engrossing but there are plenty of exciting episodes. Peyton also shows just how well she can write. Her descriptions of these early experiments in flying are wonderful. Christina is terrified of flying but feels that she must always appear never to mind either Will's exploits, dangerous through they are, nor her own trips into the sky. Crossing the channel was the ultimate test of her nerve:

The sea, as they came inevitably closer, resolved itself into waves and troughs. The metallic similes were lost in the reality of the stuff. There was nothing fanciful  in its nature at close quarters. Christina looked over the side, down over the wings, and saw the restless, desultory heaving of the grey waves. There was no comfort there; they were heedless of her feelings, grey vultures slip-slapping in an endless, pointless dance up and down the Channel. She looked at the back of Will's head, and pictured him disappearing under the grey waves, and the hot tears welled up inside her goggles so that she could no longer see. Better not to see, she thought, sniffing numbly, better never to think ... 'Dear Aunt Grace, We are over the sea ... Dear Aunt Grace, The sea is over us ...'

Will being a man of few words when it comes to their relationship, the oil-splattered scrap of paper saying, 'I love you', which comes during the above flight is the nearest Christina gets to romance.

In the end, I think this has become my favourite of the series, something which I wasn't anticipating. I like the development of their relationship, which whilst not very egalitarian, is also quite real. I also like the group of friends that they gather round them: gentle pilot Sandy and the exciting Dorothy.

Watch points:

Peril: there are lots of heart in mouth moments with the flying. Especially when they take up stunt and exhibition flying. I suspect these scare adults (with a more advanced sense of anticipation) than they do children however!

Death: pilots die flying these early planes. One significant character dies and characters (one nice, one nasty) from the previous book also die. The reactions to death are very well done: the shock and horror at an accident; the casual indifference to the death of a brutal and bullying parent. They may require some talking through, especially with the young end of our age group.

Relationships: Will is more likely to touch his plane than Christina, but there are discussions of what it is Christina may or may not do (like stay out all night at the airfield), of what is 'proper', which requires a bit of understanding of the facts of life, and some understanding of the social conservatism before the war.

Overall: a lovely historical novel. Plenty of excitement, but rather episodically so. Some of the other books in the series, especially the last one Flambards Divided, have some significantly more adult themes, so you might need to bear that in mind when introducing younger readers to this book.

Other reviews and useful sites:

You can read my review of the first novel Flambards here.

K. M. Peyton has her own website and there is a nice piece on her in The Guardian.

There is an excellent review of Flambards on academic Rohan Maitzen's site here, and one of the Flambards series on the blog  A Thing With Feathers.

I bought my copies of the quartet from the lovely Jane of Jane Badger Books who is a national treasure when it comes to pony books. Jane's K.M. Peyton page is here. Jane has a history of the English pony story coming out this month, Heroines on Horseback.

A TV adaption was made of the first three books and is available on DVD

Keeper by Mal Peet

Keeper by Mal Peet is a remarkable book and one unlike any other that I've read for this age and ability group. It combines a demanding and imaginative storyline with the kind of sophisticated writing more usually seen in the more literary novels for adults. Yet the themes of father figures, landscape and identity, ambition, and personal fulfillment, played out through the medium of football are such that there are no major social concerns for a reader of any age in our group. It is the perfect G&T book in that sense.

Paul Faustino is South America's top sports journalist and the novel begins as he sits down in his office with the goalkeeper known as El Gato, the cat,who has been part of the un-named team that has just won the world cup. Faustino is expecting a fairly ordinary tale of the keeper's poverty-striken childhood as the son of a poor logger in the jungle, and a typical rise through the ranks of players to the national team. What he gets stuns not only Faustino but also us, the readers, for Keeper is magic realism for kids.

Not always El Gato, as a child the keeper thought he was no good at football, he was known as La Cigüeña, or the stork. Gato's village was in a forest clearing and he was warned off the forest by his superstious grandmother but once the other kids banned him from playing he wandered off alone. There, as he says, he didn't find so much what he wanted, as it found him. He meets the mysterious ethreal Keeper, a ghostly, shamanic figure who appears only in one place (apart from one incident later in the book), an immaculate and unlikely football pitch away from any of the forest paths. And the Keeper and his teaching changes La Cigüeña into El Gato. It is football, but it is the psychology of football, the myth and mystery of football, not Roy of the Rovers.

Magic realism, the presentation of the fantastical as though it is real usually without explanation, and often to make a political point, has drawn some very impressive practioners to its style ranks over the years, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie to name but three, and it, appropriately for this novel,  can be very strongly considered as Latin American, as writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez etc, show. In taking this Latin American style along side the South American setting Peet is echoing the work of Louis de Bernières whose South American novels are also in the magic realism tradition. In this then , as in so many other ways, Keeper is such a grown-up book.

Magic Realism for children is a slightly odd idea as they, nutured on fairy tales, may see nothing odd in  the presentation of the fabulous along side the real. The execrable Rainbow Fairies series for younger girls (very pink, very glittery, very predicatable, very poverty striken in imaginative terms) places two ordinary girls Kirsty and Rachel who do ordinary things in situations where they interact with a parallel fairyland. Similarly, the children in Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series live with mother and do chores before interacting with magic in the forest not unlike our goalkeeping hero does in Keeper. Yet no one would makes claims for Rainbow Fairies or  The Faraway Tree to be magic realism.

What lifts Keeper further than mere fairy tale is clever and complex. The narration for a start utilises adults. Faustino, who like us is a narratee receiving the main narration, is clearly an adult, probably someway into middle age. A brave move for a children's book. The second narrator within the text is El Gato himself and whilst he is a younger man, he is undoubtedly also an adult. In fact for a children's book there are remarkably few children or teenagers in it. Our child reader's point of interest is that our hero is just 12 or so when the story begins, when our adult keeper starts his recollections, so their empathy is heavily directed towards the main character as he lives his life and strives to find out who he really is. But El Gato is already an adult and we know he has won the world cup, so this is clearly not a linear story (again, how grown-up). We're obviously not meant to wonder about that outcome, we're meat to listen to the rustling political sub-texts of the plot. The fanastical Keeper is shown to us through the eyes of adults, to emphasis the strangeness, the magicalness, of the acceptance of this reality. When magic doesn't go just because you're grown-up, then it is truly Magic, and a magic beyond mere football.

So what is it about if not football? Well football (and there is a lot of brilliantly described football, described from within the head not by the feet nor the roar of the crowd) certainly forms the centre of the book, but about it spin the themes. How does Gato interact with the men of his family, what of his mother's hopes for him, and what of the forest that his father and the other loggers do daily battle with? And here's the politics: its an eco-tale of rainforest destruction. Of the power of the forest to inspire and destroy, and of human greed and need for nothing to stand in the way of progress. Of what sort of men we should make into heroes, and of what heroes really do. Play for Real Madrid or right social wrongs? Is El Gato a shaman? What have the forest and the spirits taught him?

I've stated all that very baldly, but the narrative is very subtle. Whilst Gato's decisions become clear in the last pages there is no sense in which the main omniscient narrator preaches: in fact we are shown throughout that what we don't understand is often more important than what we do.

This book is not just for football fans, it is not just for boys, and it is not just for children or teenagers. I loved this book, and I know it will be one I'll re-read. Keeper is the first of three books by Peet featuring Paul Faustino.

Watch points:

Death: Gato's father dies, knocked into a ditch by a tree where he drowns in the mud. This is described at the end of the book, and though Gato is clearly disturbed by the death, it is not over-played within the text. The mysterious Keeper is not a shaman but part of the spirit world, and why becomes clear at the end of the book.

Violence: a jealous colleague has Gato followed by men with knives at one point, but otherwise there is nothing worse than what you see on Match of the Day.

Peril: the fear of the unknown, the slightly spooky nature of the forest and fear of failure are all present. Nothing the average 9+ couldn't handle.

Religion: this is very spiritual and mystical book throughout : this is the element in which it swims. There is no overt religiousity however.

Anything else: Paul Faustino smokes (which seems appropriate somehow, it is how an old fashioned journalist should look). There is a long description of a big cat hunting - related to the football.

Overall: A truly grown-up, remarkable book that both entertains and demands your respect for the writer on every page. Entirely suitable for 9+ but feels like a work for adults. Wonderful, sensitive, tactful, tasteful, imaginative, sophisticated and elegant throughout. One of my books of the decade.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The author's own site is here.

There is a review in The Guardian here by Jan Mark which argues for a Fisher King/Arthurian view of the book, a review on Kirkus here, and an interview in The Telegraph here.

There is a review by a 12 year old by on BBC Norfolk's page here. (Peet is from Norfolk).

There is a blog review on Persnicketysnark here.

The Salt-Stained Book by Julia Jones

The Salt-Stained Book by Julia Jones, the first in the Strong Winds Trilogy, is a wonderful mixture of social realism and sailing novel. It's sort of Swallows and Amazons meets Tracy Beaker. I first came across it on Geranium Cat's children's book blog Hurleyburlybuss and I'm very glad I decided to read it.

Teenager Donnie Walker's family is unusual: he lived with his grandmother and his disabled mother Skye until his grandmother's recent death. Skye is deaf and autistic and Donny communicates with her through sign language. Knowing social services will think that he and Skye can't cope on their own Donny makes sure his grandmother's last letter, to her estranged sister in China, is posted. Great Aunt Ellen is their only hope. After a cryptic telegram from Ellen arranging to meet in Shotley, Donny and Skye set off to make the journey down to Essex from Yorkshire. They don't quite make it before they're ambushed by social services after Skye goes into meltdown in an Essex car park.

Now Donny is fighting for his, and his mother's, freedom. With Skye locked up in a mental health unit and stuck in a vicarage with well meaning but distant foster parents and their dysfunctional foster family Donny must find a way to make the rendezvous with his great aunt. Social services and the police are behaving oddly and seem to have a greater interest in his aunt than makes sense, especially as they claim not to believe she exists.

Overlaying the gritty realism of life in care is Donny's burgeoning romance with water. His grandmother had always kept him and Skye away from water; there has been no swimming or sailing in his youth, but from the moment he gets his hands on Swallows and Amazons Donny is obsessed. At school he falls in with the determined Ribiero sisters and with the help of their family he learns to sail.

In the end the water seems his only hope of meeting his great aunt, and like John in Swallows and Amazons a brave night sail seems his only chance.

The main thrust of the plot would be exciting enough but the story is bookended with a prologue and then a final explanation of the deaths of two sailing brothers during WWII. The loose threads caused by this and the rather strange behaviour of a police officer named Flint and Donny's social worker suggest the adventure has only just started and buying yourself the second book in the trilogy suddenly becomes very necessary!

The parallels with Swallows and Amazons, and with Treasure Island, are obvious throughout but unlike S&A  The Salt-Stained Book has action from the first. If you hadn't read those classics you can still follow the plot, but you'll obviously get so much more out of the book if you have. Spotting the characters is fun, and the word play is clever: Maggi and Peggy both being pet names for versions of Margaret, for example, emphasising how the Ribiero sisters so clearly parallel the Blacketts.

I was not totally convinced by some of the teenage dialogue, especially at the start, but not so that it spoiled the book. The plot, charactisation and inter-textually make for a fascinating novel. Donny engages you right away and you will him to succeed. The women in the novel are all fascinating, and all very different, from his remembered grandmother to the dreamer Skye, to the Ribiero sisters, to strange Anna in his foster home, to the mysterious Great Aunt Ellen.

The book is almost self-published, in that Golden Duck is the publishing vehicle of the author and her partner, but she is an established writer with several other books to her name, and is, amongst other things, an expert on Margery Allingham and her family.

The book, physically, is far from self published, indeed the production values could teach mainstream publishers a  thing or two. The cover is by Claudia Myatt and there are vignettes throughout in the style of older children's paperbacks. The design is excellent (with a named designer, Roger Davies, on the colophon) and there are interesting extras such as a diagram with parts of a dingy, and details of the fingerspelling alphabet used by the deaf.

All-in-all there is charm and excitement on every page.

Watch points:

Peril: this is much tenser book than Swallows and Amazons, and Donny's dramatic sail to meet his aunt is quite scary, but not worse than, say, Treasure Island. The scariest thing, I think, is Donny's uncertain future and the fact his mother is locked up, rather than the physical problems. There are the briefly referred to dangers of being in the navy in WWII.

Violence: there is a rather brutal interview with the police officer and odd social worker.

Death: Donny's grandmother dies, just before the book starts, which is the catalyst for the events of the book. The seamen in the WWII flashbacks die, one in an apparent suicide. Donny's grandmother's death is handled well as the imaginative Skye has some lovely ways to say goodbye which Donny recalls.

Relationships: friendships, and parenting (both good and bad) are covered but not romantic relationships. Donny's parentage, and indeed Skye's, is in question, so some basic knowledge of the facts of life are assumed. The other children in the foster family are from a badly broken family, with different dads.

Religion: the foster mother is a vicar, and the portrait is not a flattering one!

Anything else: the foster family is dysfunctional in itself, as well as the problems that the children come from. There is a suggestion of Chinese gangs/smuggling with the implied violence/drugs etc. This is not over played. The politically correct blinkers on social services and the foster family get them into real trouble, and mean the foster kids can manipulate them. There is of course lots of sea and boat related language which may challenge.

Overall: this is an exciting book in its own right, with the added bonus of its relationships with Treasure Island and Swallows and Amazons. Autism, deafness, and non-traditional families are all dealt with sensitivity. The very middle-class Ribiero family with their kindness, intelligence, education, culture and money are black and make for a very positive portrayal. Unlike social services the Ribiero parents treat all the children as people with their own talents, attributes and needs. For those who have read Swallows and Amazons, the Ribieros are Mother and Uncle Jim at their best! The WWII flashbacks and some revelations at the end of the book mean that much more is to come in the next installments: A Ravelled Flag and Ghosting Home. A lovely book, making a great start to an intriguing series: highly recommended.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The author's website is here.

There an article in The Telegraph here and a review in The Guardian here.

There is a review by Amanda Craig here and another from The Nancy Blackett trust here.

There is a review on Hurlyburlybus here.

I have reviewed both Swallows and Amazons and Treasure Island  for this blog too.

Flambards by K.M. Peyton

Flambards by K.M. Peyton is the engaging first volume of a historical trilogy that belatedly turned into a quartet over a decade later. This first book is definitely a pony book but later books are more varied.

It is 1908 and Christina, an orphan, is 12 and being sent to live with Uncle Russell. She has been moved between relatives all her life and this is nothing new. Uncle Russell has two teenage sons and Christina believes that she is intended to marry the older one so the money she will eventually inherit will save Flambards, the crumbling family pile, from further deterioration.

Flambards is a depressing house ruled over by the tyrannical Uncle Russell who is severely disabled from a hunting field accident. His elder son Mark is also horse mad but the young boy Will is a totally different character. When we first meet Will he is falling off a horse to be carried badly broken from the hunting field and for much of the first part of the book he is in bed.

Christina is told she must learn to ride and is taught by the patient groom Dick. Mark nearly gets her killed by putting her on an unsuitable horse too early (an event he treats as a joke) and she is saved by the quick thinking of Dick. Depsite this she loves riding and eventually she too is a 'hunting Russell'.

Uncle Russell lives for tales of the chase and won't tolerate non-riders. Will is terrified of horses and Christina catches him trying to walk on his broken leg so it will set badly and he won't have to ride. Christina watches the family in a slightly detached way as careless joking Mark and serious Will deal with their father. Russell is a brute and bully and there are some well written and compellingly unpleasant family scenes.

Gradually Christina is drawn into the family as the years pass. She loves the horses and gets on with Mark in a love-hate sort of way. Unloved kindly Will, with his obsession with planes, she admires and feels sorry for. There is very much a sense of distance between  family and servants which Peyton, writing in the egalitarian 60s, starts to undermine through Christina. She can't see the patient and skillful groom Dick as just a servant and enrolls him in saving her pony Sweetbriar from being shot. She, Dick and Will pay heavily for this in one of the most unpleasant of Uncle Russell's many gritty moments. Dick is sacked, Will is given a horrific flogging, and Christina is  hit in the face with a crutch.

The book is driven by the hunting season and family relationships and so character is all. Peyton's mastery here is clear, especially in delineating two so different brothers, and two very different kinds of bravery alongside a third variation of masculinity in the steadfast Dick. By the end of the book the hunt ball is in full swing and Christina elopes with one of the three young men in her life. Whilst I can't see modern 12 year olds becoming Team Mark, Team Will or Team Dick in quite the same way as Twihards do, this book has much of the same appeal - with added horses!

I enjoyed the whole series but my favourite books are this one and the utterly brilliant second one The Edge of the Cloud which deserves a review of its own. Be warned that the last volume, Flambards Divided, whilst not grossly explicit, does deal with some very adult themes.

Watch Points:

Peril: hunting has lots of peril and there are some sickening accidents. Not a book for the queasy. Christina is often nervous but never exactly frightened, so this keeps the feeling of danger at one remove.

Violence: there is Uncle Russell's temper and the thrashings. Dick beats Mark to a pulp for getting his sister Violet pregnant.

Relationships:  there are simmering feelings throughout the book. Christina clearly does not know the facts of life and raises questions others feel awkward answering. Violet the maid becomes pregnant by Mark and Christina is baffled. Will and the housekeeper won't explain the hows and whys.

Death: animals, especially foxes, die. Dick's mother dies but this is touched on only briefly.

Anything else: hunting and lots of it. This mainly from the perspective of the riding experience but there is 'blooding'. The riding descriptions are wonderful but the hunting won't appeal to everyone. The accidents and fights: there are a lot of broken bones and bloody noses and Will trying to walk on his broken leg in a cold sweat with his face 'greenish' from the pain is a real 'eugh' moment. Not a book for anyone who feels faint at medical things.

Overall: I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the book: the horses, the characters, the historical elements. Not much happens plot wise, but it has much to appeal to the older children in our age group who respond to character driven fiction.

Other reviews and useful sites:

You can read my review of the second volume in the series, The Edge of the Cloud, here.

K. M. Peyton has her own website and there is a nice piece on her in The Guardian.

There is an excellent review of Flambards on academic Rohan Maitzen's site here, and one of the Flambards series on the blog  A Thing With Feathers.

I bought my copies of the quartet from the lovely Jane of Jane Badger Books who is a national treasure when it comes to pony books. Jane's KM Peyton page is here. Jane has a history of the English pony story coming out next month, Heroines on Horseback.

A TV adaption was made of the first three books and is available on DVD .

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer is on the shortlist for one of the best loved books of my childhood. The other main contender is Stars of Fortune by Cynthia Harnett. Whilst I reviewed Swallows and Amazons as a newcomer, a first time adult reader, here I find it hard to lose my twelve year old self who just wants to rave about it.

Published in 1969 and set a little before (if the internal ages of characters in the book are to work), the story is a wonderful fantasy, a great boarding school story, and a time slip novel with a lovely long historical section. Charlotte is on her first night at boarding school and this is strange enough but when she wakes the following day she appears to have gone back in time to WWI and everyone assumes she is someone called Clare, even Clare's little sister Emily. The day after that she is back in her own time but no-one has noticed she was missing. She realises Clare had been taking her place. For many days Charlotte and Clare swap, and swap about again, causing chaos in both their lives as they try to keep up the pretence, for fear that no-one would believe their story. Then, one day whilst Charlotte is in Clare's time (and vice versa) Charlotte or 'Clare' and Emily are moved out of the school to live with a local family, and Charlottte and Clare are both trapped in the wrong eras.

 The long central section  when the girls are trapped has subtle and sensitive characterisation of Charlotte (trying to be Clare) and a wonderful creation in Clare's little sister Emily. The evocation of WWI England is sharp, clear, and not a little scary. And despite all its sophisticated trappings, this book succeeds on the simplest and most basic level: you soooo want to know what happens to the girls.

The premise of this plot fascinated me as a child. I was musing on identity and what I now know to be the philosophy of the self. If I managed that all by myself, just think where you could take a bookgroup considering the philosophy behind this novel! Similarly the use of time and narrative structure make for interesting analysis. The are many ways in which the substance of this novel could be used to stretch bright children,  whilst its surface story will entertain.

For this review I have re-read the book and it has been my third re-read as an adult. It has lost none of its considerable charm. I am also delighted to say that my bookgroup (Y5 and Y6, or 9-11 year olds, both boys and girls) all loved the book too. They all said that they might have passed it by in a shop or library, but that they were so glad they'd read it, making it one those I am so glad I dangled in front of them. The boys all said that it was 'no way' just a girls' book, that it was a 'book for anyone'.

As an interesting aside Robert Smith, the lead singer  of The Cure, also loves this book and The Cure released it as a single with a video. See below for links.

Watch points:

Peril: of the fantasy kind, such as will Charlotte and Clare get stuck in the wrong eras. The children in WWI also fear for relatives who are fighting, but this is peril at one remove.

Death: the war brings death. Charlotte and Emily back in 1918 live in a house mourning a soldier. One of the girls loses a father. A teacher loses a fiancé. Shortly after she gets back to her own time Charlotte hears with sadness of the early death of someone from Spanish flu back in 1918.

There is no romance,  nor any violence beyond the shadow of the war.

Anything else: there's a seance.

Overall: not only my personal favourite, but also the most successful book I used with my bookclub.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The video for Charlotte Sometimes by The Cure can be seen here (interestingly both the 1950s and the WWI characters seem to be working 80s hairstyles!).

Penelope Farmer's blog is here and you can read her story of meeting Robert Smith, and hearing Charlotte Sometimes performed live, in two parts here and here, and see her photographs of her old school on which she based the school in the book here.

There is a review on Typographical Era and there is an interesting chat on the Enid Blyton society Forum about the book and what else to read if you like Charlotte Sometimes.

Edited to add: Vintage Children's Classics are bringing out a new edition of Charlotte Sometimes in the autumn which will include a range of additional material currently planned to include: a Who’s Who of the characters, a child-friendly author biography, a quiz, further information about WWI and Britain during the war, some ideas to think about, an interview with Penelope Farmer, recommendations for further reading etc. I will add a link to the page on Vintage's website when they have one, in the meantime, the main page for Vintage Children's Classics is here.

 

Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes

Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes is, unbelievably, Hughes' first novel. Best known for her books for younger children including Alfie and Dogger, Hughes is tackling a YA novel here with great success.

Paolo is thirteen years old and living in German occupied Italy at the end of WWII. His mother Rosemary is English and his Italian father is in hiding with the partisans. His older sister Constanza appears bored and interested only in teenage girl things.

The story that spins out from these characters has a centrifugal force of its own: childhood rebellions, teenage stubbornness, the invincibility of youth and attractions of romance exacerbate the central event (hiding of two airmen) into something far bigger than any of the participants could have imagined. The era was perilous and it would be so easy to makes this book too frightening but Hughes contains the elements within the YA frame whilst making it still seem so very real. The adults are suitably flawed as desperate frightened adults are in war-time and unusually for a children's book we get much of the point of view of the mother including a  sense of her desperate loneliness as she tries to handle the ever increasing danger alone and without her husband. A happy, loving marriage is beautifully implied.

I couldn't put this one down!

Watch points:

Peril: constant. The threat of death or capture and tortures un-named is ever present. To be honest the threat is probably worse for an adult reader as we know the sort of things that might entail whereas a child might not. But still, to watch a child fearful for their mother is hard. I think Hughes' use of the mother's point of view is so effective here. We see she is scared too, but more for her children than herself, and that is somehow reasuring as it keeps the focus of fear moving between the characters and slightly dissipating as it goes. the mother's mind often drifts back to London and her own mother and the bombing there, again dissipating the fear across the continent. It is still not for the super sensitive though.

Death: this a war book and there are bombings and executions and surprise attacks. Exactly who dies and when is not always clear. Presumed dead characters pop up later. Paolo's beloved elderly dog is shot by the Gestapo. A German soldier whom the family know dies unpleasantly in front of Constanza.

Violence: see death and peril above.

Relationships: this is fairly subtle and not the main focus of the book. At the start there are mainly looks and glances between Constanza and some of the soldiers and airmen, as it progresses and the danger increases there is more in the way of kisses and declarations. All the love is sanitised and no details of the facts of life are assumed.

Religion: mass is attended and brief references to the mother's faith and its nature are made.

Anything else: I think some background on the war in Italy (and how the Italians ended up occupied by the Germans) would aid enjoyment.

Overall: I loved this book and can see it achieving classic status. The plot and the children's adventures were believable, the fear realistic but not too overwhelming, the setting of the streets and countryside of Florence admirably evoked with an artist's eye. I also liked that there were sympathetic Italians and Germans, and that no one nationality was the arch-bad-guy. If your child is solidly unflappable in the face of fictional peril then this book is suitable across the whole age range but it is not for the faint-hearted of any age.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The book has its own site with a lot of useful background detail.

Hero on a Bicycle was shortlisted for the Blue Peter prize.

There are reviews on The Guardian and on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (blog run by a number of chidlren's authors) 

There's also a great reveiw on Did you ever stop to think & forget to start again?

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Swallows and Amazons was as charming as I had hoped it would be. However I'm a 40-something bookseller and exactly the sort of person this book would charm. As I never read it as child it is hard to imagine whether this rather understated narrative keeps its appeal except as nostagia.

The four Walker children, on holiday in the Lake District, are awaiting a telegram from their father which will either grant or deny permission to sail on their own and camp on an island in the lake. The famous reply:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN

is a delight in a world of health and safty and babied children but I am really not sure an 11 year old today would get that, without a good deal of explanation.

The first half of the book is pretty much: "How we did things". The second half has a much pacier feel and will, if they've got this far, keep even quite exacting readers entertained. The characterisation is weak in the first half - there are few ways to tell either the children or the adults apart, other than Mother who is very understanding in the 'good sport' mould. By the second half though John and Susan are pattern card 'good sorts' of the era, and have well defined gender roles (though John's 'captain' is balanced by the marvellous Nancy Blackett, captain of the Amazons) while Titty comes into her own and stands out from both the page and the others quite marvellously. She moves away from being a 'girl' and a little sister, to becoming a really brave and admirable adventurer. She minds the island on her own, including in the dark, is responsible for the lights, she takes the Amazon and wins the war, she spends the night alone on a strange ship, and eventually she carries the day over the missing treasure. Throughout, her drawing is subtle and she emerges gradually, the character on the page developing as her character on the island does. All in all she is a delightful, believable creation.

The final part of the book is dominated not only by the emergent character of Titty but by the lovely 'Captain Flint'. Like Mother, he is a truly good sport, and part of the great pleasure of reading the book. And despite my caveats on plot and characterisation I thought the sum of the whole far greater than its parts, but then I'm 41, and so well I might. Whether your children will find it so too is another matter.

Watch points:

Peril: mild, such as when they are sailing in the dark, or on the island in the dark, or during a large storm.

No violence or bad langauge or relationships or religion or death!

Anything else?

Titty, God Bless her unfortunate nomenclature. I once had a Y8 boy, who was writing a story set in WWII, name every character in this manner: Fanny, Titty, etc. My advice to a young teacher dealing with the inevitable outbreak of hilarity is to smirk with them the first time, admit it is mildly funny, explain language changes over time, and then just ignore them and let them deal with the more unfortunate historical names how they like!

Overall

Swallows and Amazons is utterly charming and I loved it. Not all children will however. The main challenge lies in the distance leant by history to the narrative and setting, and in its length. In a sense, its benefit for our defined group lies in that it is a major piece of the children's canon that no well-read 14 year old should not have in their literary armoury of allusion detectors.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The Arthur Ransome Society is one of many societies connected with the Swallows and Amazons series. Others include The Nancy Blackett Trust and Sailing Swallow.

Writer Julia Jones owns Ransome's boat Peter Duck which features in a later story in the series: you can read more here. She has also written a sailing novel for children which might be of interest: The Salt-Stained Book

Also of interest is Marcus Sedgwick's wonderful Blood Red, Snow White which is a fictionalised account of the time the author Arthur Ransome spent in Russia where he falls in love with Trotsky's secretary. Aimed at a YA audience and probably for the older end of our age group. I will do a proper review of this soon.

As to reviews: there is a fabulous list of contemporary reviews with links and extracts on All Things Ransome and this wonderful site also has a very useful page with a compilation of guides, sources, articles, reviews, booklists and trivia about Arthur Ransome and his works which you can see here. The home page is here.

There are dozens of recent blog reviews of course. I think the one on  The Bookshelf of Emily J. to be one of the most useful for you as it is written by a mother and teacher.

The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman

The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman is one his less well known books, but will both entertain and stretch the older children in our age group.

Ginny is a mixed race teenager with a talent for art she inherited from her dead mother. Growing up in Wales with her father, she has worshipped her mother: loving French because her Haitian mother spoke it, and feeling close to her mother when she was creative. Her realtionship with her father has alway been close, despite a series of breakfast ladies (women who were there in the morning for breakfast, obviously her father's girlfriends). She loves the landscape which she feels she owns. The summer she is 16 feels wonderful: she has her art which she believes is her future, she has a close friend, she has two part-time jobs she loves, and the area's only other ethnic minority, her enchanting friend Andy, is back home looking handsomer than ever.

This is not a conventional teen romance, nor a conventional coming of age story. From the start something ominous is hanging over Ginny's idyll and she gradually realises nothing about her family is what it seems.

So often, much though I love Pullman's books, you feel an axe to grind behind the stories, the anti-Narnia of His Dark Materials, the critique of Victorian values and social conservatism of the wonderful Sally Lockhart books. Here though the dominant feeling eminating from the implied author is not the irritation and anger of the more famous books but love: love of landscape, of the potential of youth, of real families, of art.

What I particularly like for our age group is the sections on art. I love the way Ginny thinks about her talent and her work. I like the way we see the embryonic artist's point of view. There are also some wonderful discussions of art amongst the characters.

Just as many children are no longer taken to the theatre, not even to pantomines, many children never go to art galleries, never stand in front of an impressive canvas and have someone explain it or ask them what they think. In this, as well as in the quality of writing, The Broken Bridge demands to be on any reading list for 13 or 14 year olds. Slightly younger children may get something out of it if they are particularly emotionally mature.

Watch points:

Any peril is emotional and there is not really any violence though there are angry scenes including some mild domestic violence.

Death: the consequences of death are dealt with.

Relationships: relationships are the crux of this book. There are family relationships of all kinds as well as friends and boyfriends though it is not a romance. There are no explict scenes but a knowledge of the facts of life is assumed throughout. Homosexuality is referred to a few times.

Anything else: there are a few swear words: pissed, for example. There is lots on the nature of marriages, why relationships break down or twist into something unacceptable, on parents and children, on parental abandonment, on adoption and fostering, and on truth and lies in families. There is also much about love and forgiveness and moving on. There is something on identity as it pertains to race but this is not the central thrust of Ginny's emotional difficulties. There are some fantasy voodoo moments.

Overall: The Broken Bridge is a wonderful uplifting story, tightly plotted and exciting, with a wonderful central character. It is a coming of age story but is not the slightest bit sentimental, being intense but never truly dark. The way art and landscape are made part of the novel is unusual and very enjoyable.

Availability: it appears to be out of print but lots of inexpensive used copies appear to be available.

Other reviews and useful sites:

Philip Pullman's page on this novel is here.

There is a review on Kirkus here and on Publisher's Weekly here.

The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence

The Case of the Deadly Desperados is the first of the PK Pinkerton mysteries by Caroline Lawrence, best known for the Roman Mysteries.

My name is PK Pinkerton and before this day is over I will be dead.

From the very first we're involved in the thick of it with PK Pinkerton in the Wild West of the nineteeenth-century. The foster parents of Pinky are dead, scalped and apparently killed by Indians. Pinky, however, is no ordinary 12 year old, having skills in hunting and tracking, and it becomes evident that three men hunting for Pinky are responsible for killing Pinky's foster parents. Pinky's skills are great but Pinky also has a "thorn":

But here is my Problem: I cannot tell if a person's smile is genuine or false. I can only spot three emotions: happiness, fear and anger. And sometimes I even mix those up.

Pinky seems to have problems somewhere on the Asperberger's / Autism spectrum. Pinky's talents and hinderences coincide to make this a truly exciting book. Pinky can get out of tight corners with talents you wouldn't suspect, and yet is easily trapped when those of us with more conventional personalities can see the problem coming. This makes for a plot that is both character led (my favourite sort) and unpredictable.

Running from the deperados Pinky sets off for the "Satan's playground" and "vilest place on earth" Virginia City where Pinky immediately meets a "Soiled Dove" (the slang in this book is great - very evocative) and the adventures truly begin, as Pinky dodges the deperados and tries to protect the document that everyone seems to be after. Pinky has no idea who to trust and with the "thorn" often mis-judges character. Pinky's uncle is the detective Allan Pinkerton and Pinky tries to detect too "like Mr Bucket in Bleak House".

The narrative has a surface simplicity in the words of Pinky, but is actually subtle, complex and tricky as a snake. You may have noticed that I've avoided using a pronoun for Pinky. There's a good reason for this: I've no idea which pronoun would be right!

Watch Points:

Violence: it with begins the murder of Pinky's parents and their scalping is presented in modest detail. There is a torture scene where someone has a finger cut off by Whittlin’ Walt who hacks his victims to death little bit by little bit. There are shootings and fights and other moderate violence.

Death: as noted it begins with the deaths of Pinky's parents. Other characters are killed throughout the book.

Peril: Pinky's parents' deaths show the enormity of the danger from the start. Pinky learns about Whittlin’ Walt and exactly what he does (see violence, above) a bit later. The opening line shows Pinky waiting to die and there is the inevitable showdown to resolve the predicament at the end. Throughout Pinky is on the run.

Relationships: awareness of the facts of life is assumed. There are numerous "Soiled Doves" (prostitutes), and the complex circumstances of Pinky's birth are discussed.

Anything else: yes, drugs. Belle, the "Soiled Dove", is hooked on opium. Pinky has to visit an opium den where Belle is stoned out of her mind.

Overall: this a swift paced and sharply drawn piece of crime fiction dressed up as a glorious Western. There are lots of genres to discuss, the narration is stylishly done, and there is a wonderful cast of minor characters from Poker Face Jace to local news reporter Sam Clemens (yes, him). The setting  is vivid with its evangelical Christians, and its prostitutes, gangsters, Chinese laundries, saloon bars, and card sharps and its evolving landscape of the new town and its silver mines slapped down in the scorching desert. The speech is great and I loved the slang: one could write paragraphs on "soiled dove" as a metaphor, and I learnt what you do to 'mark twain'. I loved it and I'm delighted that there is a sequel.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The author's blog is here, and she has a page on the slang used in this book here. Her book website is here.

There are reveiws on The Bookette, The New York Times, and The Telegraph, and this latter also has "reading notes" for a book club.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island is beautifully written and quite gripping but gives our age group the challenge of nineteenth century prose, and is surprisingly violent.

Jim Hawkins lives with his parents in the Admiral Benbow. An aggressive new guest obviously has something to hide and on his death Jim and his mother discover a treasure map. The local magistrate Dr Livesey and Squire Trelawny arrange to go hunting for the treasure, taking Jim with them as cabin boy amongst the crew on the Hispaniola. The loose tongued Squire also takes on a one legged ship's cook John Silver who brings a large part of the new crew with him. And so the stage is set for one of the most famous adventures in children's literature. And a very bloody adventure it is too.

Treasure Island has several great strengths: the plot, which, at least once they set sail, is a real page turner; the relative reality of the adventure, which is at times stark and brutal and lets Jim really experience this adult world; and the character of Silver, as never was a man such a traitorous turncoat, nor such a smooth tongued villain, yet somehow, in his likable plausibility, the reader can't help but be slightly relieved that his final fate is not on the gallows.

Watch points:

Violence: this is a violent tale. Sword fights, knives, gun fights are all the order of the day. Jim is intimately involved, and has to kill as much as the men do. He is also pinned to the mast with a knife through his arm, and has to literally tear himself away. The historic setting lends distance however and somehow the 'classic' status will mean you're less likely to get complaints from parents. I feel it is suitable for the whole age group.

Death: again, lots of men, good and bad, innocent and guilty, die. There is also the shadow of the noose for the wrong doers. Human remains form part of one of the plot twists.

Peril: from the start Jim is frightened of the aggressive guest at the inn and his violent companions. Once on the ship there is mutiny afoot, on the island there is the fight to the death for the treasure. At one point Jim, having given his word not to run back to his friends, does the gentlemanly thing and keeps his word, though the reader must fear for his life at this point.

Religion: the religious beliefs of the characters, particularly the more superstitious aspects, are discussed at some length, and form part of the plot.

Anything else: great characters, all of them male. The only female character is Jim's mother who crys and faints a lot. Silver is a very positive physical role model as a disabled character. Having one leg never stops him! One character is mentally ill, having lived in isolation as he was abandoned by pirates some years before.

Overall: when I set this for a book group it was met with much groaning. I think the 'classic' label weighs it down in their minds. They all complained that the lengthy sentences and rather more formal English was unfamiliar and slowed them down, but most admitted that they found it got easier as they got into the book. 

I think it was a shock for them, successful readers that they are, that there are aspects of reading that they still need to practice. I think, for these clever readers, that suddenly finding something difficult is good for them. Often the 'gifted and talented' never get the chance to fail at school but, for the very clever, failure is often the first stepping stone to cracking something very difficult, and handling set backs and seeing them as temporary is as important for this group as any other, yet they experience it less. Whilst it was no-one's favourite book in my group, they did seem to get a lot out of the experience.

For me, it stood out in its quality amongst the the many lighter offerings on today's bookshelves, and I adored it. John Silver is one the cleverest examples of charcterisation in any novel, for adult or child; the half mad Ben Gunn was also skillfully drawn.

Other reviews and useful sites:

It is reviewed on Reading Matters, and there is also a review of Treasure Island alongside various modern versions/sequels on the London Review of Books though you have to subscribe to read it all.

Your main port of call may well be the Robert Louis Stevenson site - maintained by academics, the RLS Website is a freely available online resource dedicated to the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson and is a mine of information. Their schools' page is here.

And I may as well mention my own Robert Louis Stevenson shelf  in my virtual bookshop.