I’m not much of a beach reader. It’s hard to get as comfortable as I need to really lose myself in a good book. There’s no perfect position. If I lean on one elbow, the book flaps away in the other hand as the entire right side of my body slowly goes to sleep. Lie … Continue reading
‘An ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.’ The moment Maurice Sendak’s wolfish hero escapes the confines of his bedroom prison and into the world, there is a … Continue reading
A wordless appreciation of Shaun Tan’s unique fantasy about being a stranger in a very strange land. Continue reading
‘I can remember very clearly, even now, what it was like when we climbed over the wall into the garden of the big house. We knew we weren’t supposed to… but we were on the lookout for adventure.’ A boy and a girl escape the boredom of their aunt’s house and plunge deep into a … Continue reading
It’s ten years since a great wave of dystopian fiction for young adults broke with the publication of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. During that time we’ve become accustomed to grim visions of the near future, a trend that has cooled a little of late, possibly because we now find ourselves living through one. So … Continue reading
One of the great strengths of books about boats is their ability to show human drama on the largest of all possible canvases, whilst simultaneously focussing on the tiniest details of life at sea. Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill turns this dual function into an art form. This is the story of Ernest Shackleton’s … Continue reading
A wordless review of Aaron Becker’s Caldecott award winning ‘magic crayon’ trilogy: Journey, Quest and Return. Continue reading
I confess that I’ve always harboured a little inverse snobbery about the work of the much lauded Michael Morpurgo. It dates back to an event by Mr Gum author Andy Stanton, who spent a considerable part of his act falling over and saying, ‘You don’t get this with Michael Morpurgo!’ What you did get, as … Continue reading
I always enjoy a sequel that begins with the admission that perhaps the happy ending of the original story might not have been so happy for everyone. It’s the bittersweet feeling that all readers experience when putting down a book they have thoroughly enjoyed. The Storm Whale certainly falls into this category. With the Storm … Continue reading
Pirates, shipwrecks, voyages into the unknown, floods and mysterious strangers. Boats provide a useful function in children’s books. Over the next few months I’ll be writing about my fifty favourite adventures about boats. From fantastical nautical epics to salty graphic yarns, we’ll see how these stories form a central strand of children’s literature, and also … Continue reading
‘It rained every day since Grandma arrived in London. Every single day. Not the nice sort of fat rain than makes gentle plopping noises on your rain hat, but the nasty thin sort that runs down your nose and the tops of your Wellington boots and makes your hair stick out all over the place.’ … Continue reading
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939) was the first book written and illustrated by Mervyn Peake, who went on to write Gormenghast. I’ve always been a bit in awe of Gormenghast, having started it on several occasions and been defeated each time. It’s the sort of book best read when locked in a tall tower … Continue reading
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