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| Books glorious books for kids
at Christmas |
Author Jenny Wolfe picks out some of this
year’s best books for all ages – and which might also
keep adults hooked
IT'S hard to choose the very best book of 2005 but if I had to
recommend just one, it would be Geraldine McCaughrean’s The
White Darkness.
Ferociously gripping, it’s also startlingly original. It tells
how young Symone is taken on a trip to Paris by her eccentric Uncle
Victor – or so she thinks. In fact, Paris quickly becomes a
mere staging post on a trip to Antarctica, with which Sym has been
obsessed for years.
Somehow, Uncle Victor manages to avoid explaining to Sym’s
mother where they’re going, but Sym is too excited to care.
They travel, ominously, further and further from home. At first
there are many companions – rich holidaymakers, mostly –
but these fall away, even seem to change into other people, as Uncle
Victor relentlessly continues in pursuit of a goal which becomes
ever vaguer as they travel deeper into the snow. Yet even when it’s
just Sym and Victor hurtling through the trackless wastes, they
are not alone.
For their unseen and inaudible companion on the journey is Captain
Lawrence Oates, hero of Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition,
who lives inside Sym’s head.
Oates, (nicknamed ‘Titus’) has been Sym’s imaginary
companion and friend for years. He has helped, loved and advised
her during her traumatic life – for, taunted for her partial
deafness, Sym has also lost her father to a hideous illness.
She’s always kept her companionship with Oates quiet, for fear
of ridicule. But is Oates really a total fantasy? He seems increasingly
real as Sym and Victor’s adventure becomes increasingly surreal,
and, as Victor slides from eccentricity into psychosis, Sym needs
Oates more than ever before…
The book is beautifully written – the descriptions of Antarctica
evoke a place more amazing than an ice goddess’s jewel-box.
The gripping plot is so unpredictable that you’ll need someone
to surgically remove the book from your hand if you are to stop
reading before the end. In short, The White Darkness is a masterpiece.
Kevin Brooks’ Candy is best of the rest for the oldest age
group. It tells of Joe’s obsession with Candy, drug-user, prostitute
and fascinating beauty. It’s good to be a little wary of novels
men write about adorable prostitutes – too often, they fail
to get inside the female character’s head, to say the least.
But here, Brooks – a first class writer – keeps Candy
real enough for us to care about her fate, and he portrays Joe’s
confusion and terror with enormous conviction. He’s great at
Catch-22 plots and petrifyingly spine-chilling villains, so Candy’s
terrifying avenging pimp, Iggy, lingers in the mind like a nightmare
that won’t go away. This is literature, not pulp: but so what?
With a different cover – plenty of gold and glitter –
it could make its author a fortune in the mass market.
Joseph Delaney’s The Spook’s Curse will comfortably scare
readers from 11 upwards. It’s the second volume in an excellent
series about young Thomas, apprentice to a demon-slaying magician
called The Spook.
The author eschews the usual predictable weirdo fantasy settings
and places the characters in a kind of olden-days Lancashire –
but a Lancashire swarming with witches and ghouls. There are plenty
of monsters rising from tombs or doing terrible things at midnight,
and great characters, too.
The Spook resembles a kindly yet alarming grandad, dawning love
interest is provided by the witchy Alice, and they all live in an
attractive sounding cottage run by a houseproud Boggart.
But they’re never able to relax and enjoy it: there are always
too many terrors and horrors to sort out. The best overall children’s
picture book of the year has to be Charlie Cook’s Favourite
Book, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, the partnership behind
The Gruffalo.
In the simple rhyming story, Charlie reads his favourite book which
is about a series of interesting people (and creatures) also reading
their favourite books. Eventually, we reach a ghost reading her
favourite book which is about... Charlie Cook.
And so we return to the beginning again. Scheffler’s illustrations
are, as ever, intriguing. The cover picture shows Charlie surrounded
by all the characters as he reads a book about himself reading a
book, about himself reading a book. This will keep a four-year-old
happy for hours.
And find me a baby who won’t enjoy Robert Crowther’s Opposites.
This excellent book is carefully thought out, with colourful, original
and graphically striking images, with many ideas for little minds
to ponder, and, best of all, numerous tabs, wheels and pop-ups to
push and pull.
For bedtime, the best tot’s book of the year is the long-awaited
paperback version of Lindsay Camp’s The Midnight Feast. Here,
Alice organises her younger brother Freddie to collect ingredients
for a midnight feast, even though Freddie doesn’t know what
a midnight feast is. He thinks it’s about a fairy visiting,
but Alice is always too busy planning (or eating the feast) to explain.
Eventually both children fall asleep. Freddie never gets any food,
but when his mum lifts him to return him to bed, he dreams that
the beautiful fairy has got him and is filled with bliss. Tony Ross’s
lovely illustrations are expressive and tender.
Finally, for the child in all of us, Terry Pratchett’s Where’s
My Cow? is tops. The kindly daddy, Commander Sam Vimes of the City
Watch, (“one of nature’s policemen”) always reads
Young Sam his favourite bedtime story, ‘Where’s My Cow?’
about farmyard animals which all make noises.
But Commander Vimes finds nurseryland boring, so he decides to make
up stories about real people, like Foul Ole Ron who says “bugrit!”
and Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler whose pies you must never eat.
Young Sam likes these just as much, drifting off to sleep with “I
arrest you in the name of the law” on his lips. “That’s
my boy!” says Vimes, happily, as his wife looks suspiciously
on. Good pictures by Melvyn Grant include fab endpapers showing
a twirling mass of clouds in which udders, hot dogs, dragons and
farmyard characters helplessly twirl – a pleasant antidote
to any Christmastide sentimentality.
• The White Darkness By Geraldine McCaughrean, Oxford, £12.99
• Candy By Kevin Brooks, Chicken House, £12.99
• The Spook’s Curse By Joseph Delaney, Bodley Head, £8.99
• Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book By Julia Donaldson And
Axel Scheffler, Macmillan, £10.99
• Opposites By Robert Crowther, Walker Books £9.99
• The Midnight Feast By Lindsay Camp, Illus. Tony Ross, Andersen,
£5.99
• Where’s My Cow By Terry Pratchett, Illus. Melvyn Grant,
Doubleday £10.99
• Jenny Wolfe is a writer and bookseller who lives in West
Hampstead. Next week more on children’s books for Christmas
by Ann Sinnott. |
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