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| Book explosion is a great gift
for children |
The children’s story market has never
offered more varied and high quality entertainment, says Ann Sinnott
CHILDHOOD is now a highly-lucrative consumer-goods industry and
while some adults complain it’s become quasi-factory farming,
and they are princessed and dinosaured-out, few would object to
increasing literacy in young children, nor to a resultant huge benefit
to the children’s book trade – sales increased in 2005
by a staggering 23 per cent.
It has been helped along, no doubt, by that new phenomenon in children’s
publishing: the celebrity writer.
The latest CW title off the production line is High in the Clouds,
by Paul McCartney and Philip Ardagh, Faber £12.99hb. Geoff
Dunbar’s tremendous illustrations aside, this is a ponderously
derivative tale featuring Wirral the Squirrel leading his fellow-creatures
from a destroyed habitat to a bright new land, rescuing imprisoned
city-animals on the way and winning his Wilhamina.
It is somewhat pedestrian in the telling but will be a bestseller
with parents and liked well-enough by five to seven year olds, especially
boys.
Many boys of a similar age, and girls too, are entrenched fans of
Horrid Henry. The latest offering from Francesca Simon, Horrid Henry’s
Wicked Ways, Orion £9.99 hb, will have them chortling with
villainous delight. In these 10 tales, HH wheedles, manipulates
and connives, sabotaging a French holiday and elsewhere attempting
to sell his little brother.
Parents of girls aged around seven please note, Jill Murphy’s
latest is here – hurrah! The Worst Witch Saves The Day, Puffin
£9.99hb.
Toddlers will clamour for Joyce Dunbar’s Shoe Baby and rocker
dads and mums will love Simon James’s Baby Brahms Superstar,
both Walker £10.99hb. One baby goes far in a shoe, the other
far with an electric guitar; but both are back in time for tea.
With spin-offs into film becoming legendary, Michelle Paver’s
stone-age series, Chronicles of Darkness also has a celluloid future.
Book one, Wolf Brother, shot with great acclaim into the firmament
last year.
Book two, Spirit Walker, Orion £8.99hb, sees the return of
13-year-old Torak, who vanquishes the Soul-Eaters, learns he can
actually enter other beings and is reunited with his beloved wolf.
I cannot wait to see what Ridley Scott does with this.
The latest from GP Taylor, Tersias, Faber £9.99hb, features
a 12-year-old blind boy who can see the future and survives death.
Peppered with grotesques: a girl with two heads and three arms,
a man with a yard-long neck and Solomon, who breeds, and ultimately
gets eaten by, a species of giant black locusts. Spellbindingly
unpredictable.
Prophecy also figures in Marcus Sedgwick’s The Foreshadowing,
Orion £8.99hb. Set in WWI, 17-year-old Alexandra has a developing
ability to perceive some people’s imminent death. When she
envisions the death of her soldier-brother on the Somme, Alexandra
tricks her way to his side.
There are some plot weaknesses but it is compelling reading and
a vivid account of the gruesome atrocity that is war.
Elizabeth Knox draws on the still utterly mysterious business of
dreaming in The Rainbow Opera, Faber £9.99hb. Set in a world
similar to our own, Dreamhunters are an elite minority who catch
classic dreams and relay them to ‘audiences’ in a dream
palace: the Rainbow Opera (think magnificent opium-den).
Is 15-year-old Laura about to be admitted to this prestigious inner
circle? Enthralling and truly original.
Josh Cope can fall asleep whenever he wants and always remembers
his dreams, abilities that carve out an alarming adventure in Isabel
Hoving’s The Dream Merchant, Walker £9.99pb. A mysterious
corporation sends Josh on a series of dream-walks back to the dawn
of time, but how will he get back? Gripping.
In I, Coriander, Sally Gardner, Orion £8.99pb, nine-year-old
Coriander, is locked in a trunk by her wicked puritan stepmother
and stepsister and left to die. Magically, she escapes into the
timeless fairy world that her mother came from.
When she returns, Coriander is 17 and charged with a life-changing
task. It is a vividly haunting tale, depicting the turbulence of
Cromwellian times with great historical accuracy.
Tales of Beauty and Cruelty, Kate Petty and Caroline Castle, Orion,
£5.99pb, are updates of classic fairytales for teenagers.
They reveal the perennial essence of these tales (the present-day
ugly sisters are instantly recognisable) and point up valuable life
lessons.
Speaking of fairytales, space-age fairy Holly Short is back in The
Opal Deception, Puffin, £12.99hb, the latest book in Eoin
Colfer’s wonderful Artemis Fowl series.
• Ann Sinnott is a freelance journalist and writer. |
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