Unlike most other books that I pick up, the cover of Broken Soup did not attract me. But I've read and loved two other books by Jenny Valentine (The Ant Colony and Fire Colour One), so I borrowed this one - and, once more, I loved how the story was told.Rowan's family falls apart when her brother Jack dies. Jack was the kind of person who made a room more interesting when he stepped in and left people feeling a little deflated when he stepped away. He was funny, lively and charismatic - so much so that Rowan lived in his glow. She was his little sister.But after he dies, something in the family seems to die too. Rowan's father leaves, and her mother sinks into a well of sadness. Rowan, all of 15, does not want to live with her father, so she takes responsibility for her little sister Stroma, and pretends both to her father and to the world at large that everything with their … [Read more...]
Listen to the Moon
I keep saying that with Michael Morpurgo, you can't go wrong. Once more, with Listen to the Moon, I realised the truth of that. Had it been almost any other writer, I would have been daunted by the thickness of the book and the idea of beginning to read it when I know I'm busy. But Michael Morpurgo? Any day.Another World War I novel, Listen to the Moon is set on the Isles of Scilly. We move from one time frame to another, and the two are just a few months apart. Merry MacIntyre tells part of the story. He father, a Canadian, is wounded in the war, and Merry and her mother are determined to travel across the Atlantic to be with him.Through a third person narrator, though, we also discover Lucy Lost, a young girl who seems traumatised into silence, wet and shivering by herself on St. Helen's Island. Who is Lucy Lost and why won't she speak? With anti-German sentiment on the rise, … [Read more...]
Ink
More often than not, fantasy serves as an allegory of the world we live in. Sometimes, the allegory is clearer than at other times, and I suppose part of that is cultural. For instance, when I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time, I didn't know enough to make the obvious connections.With Ink, it was different. Especially with the right wing on the rise all around us, the links between the the protagonist Leora's world and our world assault us. In the fantastic world of Ink, every important event is marked on your skin. Your name, your family, your qualifications. And then, you choose marks of your own that you would like to add to your skin - and having marks there is a sign of your integrity, for what to you have to hide? Let the world see you for what you are! Those who hide are likely to be untrustworthy, cheats, thieves.Long ago, there were blanks who … [Read more...]
Secrets of a Sun King
The first book I read by Emma Carroll was The Girl Who Walked on Air, and I loved it enough for it to have been one of the top ten middle-grade books I read in 2018. As a child, I devoured Galliano's Circus and I picked up the book with nothing in mind other than the fun of exploring another, different circus.When I saw Secrets of a Sun King at Lightroom, a delightful children's bookstore in Bengaluru, I recognised Emma Carroll's name and after a very slight hesitation, I decided to pick it up. I'm glad I did.In the Q&A section at the end of the book, Emma Carroll talks of the challenges of writing a book about Tutankhamen. The boy king is shrouded in intrigue, and countless stories have been written about and around him. The young pharaoh's tomb revealed unimaginable treasures, and incredibly, the boy's heart is missing. That forms the seed of all kinds of stories, doesn't … [Read more...]
Books I Read in January 2020
I wrote already about the three hOle books I read, as well as about The Lilliputians. But there's so much more, as always, especially as I was travelling! Instead of doing one post per book, here's a list of books I read and loved.Neel on WheelsNeel on Wheels is a lovely picture book written by Lavanya Karthik (who also created the cover of The Prophecy of Rasphora) and illustrated by Habib Ali. I love picture books that play with rhyme and rhythm! In this delightfully imaginative book, Neel's wheelchair becomes his superpower. It can fight dragons and can scare monsters away!TitleNeel on WheelsRating (out of 5)5GenrePicture bookBoo! When My Sister DiedStories about dealing with grief are so important! I remember attending a session on death, divorce and other difficult subjects at the AFCC 2017 and thinking that we needed more books … [Read more...]
The Lilliputians
Street-smart Tilly ropes Poesy in to audition for the Lilliputians, a children's theatre group that is to travel to America. Poesy qualifies, only to discover that the world of acting and singing is rather different from everything she had dreamed it would be. For one, it seems that everyone cannot be friends with everyone else. There is more backbiting than she had ever imagined, and suddenly, she needs to grow up. Nothing is the way it seems on the surface. Being naive is going to get her nowhere.The reader is sucked into this world of gossip, rumour and drama that is not restricted to the theatre. Through Tilly and Poesy, we learn that even the idea of their childhood seems to be a farce. Tilly pretends to be innocent - because it works. But the thrill of being a Lilliputian comes from much more - from temptation, adoration and secrecy.The Lilliputians starts slowly, but grips … [Read more...]
Three hOle Books
Who doesn't love a hole in a book? I love the idea of the hole, and I do wish it were possible to make the holes part of every illustration! I'm sure the illustrator would probably find that rather restrictive, but even so, I delighted in each picture that used the hole in some way.Petu Pumpkin: Tooth TroublesWhat if you really need a football and the only person who can get you one is the tooth fairy? And then, what if the tooth fairy bargains with you and says that a football is worth at least two teeth and not just one?I chuckled as I read Petu Pumpkin: Tooth Troubles and could picture so much of it as the kind of cartoon I would have watched as a child! The very correct, very polite letters to the tooth fairy; the joy of a fallen tooth; the conviction that a tooth deserves some sort of payment ... What fun the book was!TitlePetu Pumpkin: Tooth … [Read more...]
The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop
Ooh! That's Polly! Let me wave out to her!Oops. I'm at an auction and I just ended up buying a horse for a thousand pounds.No, I'm not quoting, but this is the lovely premise of a heart-warming story of a racehorse who refuses to gallop.Ten-year-old Charlie Bass loves horses, but she has only ever ridden a cow on her farm. When she accidentally bids for a racehorse that her father must now buy, Charlie is determined to make the purchase of Noble Warrior the best decision ever, even if it means additional expenses on Folly Farm for a while. Charlie ropes her brothers Harry and Larry in and, as a team, they begin to train Noble Warrior, aka Noddy, to become the next winner of the Derby.The Racehorse Who Wouldn't Gallop is a story about friendship - between a horse and a palomino pony, and among the humans in the story. Most of all, though, more than all the … [Read more...]
After Tomorrow
Flawed narrators make me squirm. When I read a story from the point of view of a character who does not make the right decisions, I often don't know whether to read on. Fictional friends are important to me as a reader. I read to befriend the characters. What if the protagonist doesn't seem like the kind of friend I would like to have?I read After Tomorrow slowly for exactly that reason - it made me uncomfortable. However, the point is that the story is supposed to make me uncomfortable, for it's dystopic, set in a time when the pound is worthless and no one has food. The only thing Matt and his family can do is to try, somehow, to move out of the UK and into France, which is, at least for the time-being, allowing a few refugees in.But Matt resents everything that comes his way. He does not want to learn French; he thinks it is pointless. His stepfather Justin is nowhere near as … [Read more...]
The Island at the End of Everything
Amihan lives with her nanay on Culion, the island at the end of everything. Unlike most of the others - who came by boat to this beautiful, lush green island with blue skies - Ami was born on the island, an island of lepers. Except that they don't use the word 'leper' on Culion; instead, they say that the people there are Touched.Ami's mother, her nanay, is her world, her everything. But Mr Zamora, a government official, has other plans, founded on segregation. Everyone on Culion is to be tested for leprosy. Those who carry the disease must live separately from those who are 'clean'. Worst of all, children under 18 who are not Touched will be taken to an orphanage on another island.And so, Ami, who is not Touched, must leave her mother and go with the evil Mr Zamora to a place she has never visited. She must learn how to make friends and worst of all, she must learn to live as an … [Read more...]