Talking to the Moon by S.E. Durrant

This is another subtle dramatization of family life by S.E.Durrant, who seems to always discuss the little talked about aspects of family life in a warm and moving yet ‘normal way’.

Set against the seaside backdrop of Brighton with its piers and pebble beach, this is the story of 10 year old Iris and the endearing relationship she has with her grandmother.  Mimi, Iris’ grandmother is becoming more and more muddled and confused whilst Iris is temporarily living with her so Iris has to try and cope with the effects of this on everyday life and the anxiety that comes with it: jam on the scrambled eggs, clean washing in the cat’s bed and fish hanging on the washing line.  The story tackles the subjects of dementia and generally getting old with a soft focus without being too sad.

Iris struggles to cope with and hide her eccentric grandmother’s odd behaviour and enjoy spending time with herat the same time, cue Iris’ annoying but generally kind new friend next door, Mason who is a helpful distraction. Mason and Iris try to solve the mystery of the child in the photo- Mimi’s cousin Coral who disappeared as a child, this simple yet satisfying storyline adds another needed dimension to the story and gives the reader a clear resolution.

This is a slow-paced story but beautifully told with enough events, interesting characters and inference to suit individual or class reading with discussion. The way S.E. Durrant highlights the close bond between a child and their grandparent and shines a light on uncomfortable matters of family life is worthy of discussion.

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer

Avery and Bett are both daughters of single gay dads who find out that their said dads have just embarked on a jumping in at the deep end full on relationship and who are about to go off to China on a holiday of a lifetime and are sending their respective daughters to the same summer camp with the intention of their becoming close and loving sisters. Of course the girls have other ideas. That’s the nub of it!

It gets a lot more complicated, lots more characters, lots more events.  I loved the book and thought the whole set up really worked well and was cleverly expressed entirely throughout by emails sent mainly by the girls.  The girls are very different from each other, thus Avery is Night Owl, thoughtful and sometimes overanxious about situations and worries herself by looking up every risky issue on the internet, Bett is a high risk taker who doesn’t mind interfering in other peoples’ lives and likes to emphasise by PUTTING IMPORTANT THINGS IN CAPITALS.  Which isn’t as annoying as it sounds.  There is actually a lot of subtlety in the book, despite the capitals, and the feelings and relationships are often nicely understated with a lot of inferences drawn by the email style of writing which doesn’t overexplain things (unlike what I am doing now).

The narrative races along, it’s readable and funny. Being in a family with a gay parent is never presented as an ‘issue’ and discrimation is touched upon by the comments of one of the other campers in one situation, but events show that people can be more complex than at first sight, and also friendships can develop, and have their ups and downs.  There’s a neat twist near the end so the ending is not quite as predictable as you might think.

I’m intrigued by the double authorship – did one writer write all Avery’s emails and the other all of Bett’s?

A House Without Walls by Elizabeth Laird

A House Without Walls is a powerful story of family, hope and redemption amidst the refugee crisis in Syria from the award-winning Elizabeth Laird.

Thirteen-year-old Safiya and her family have been driven out of Syria by civil war. Safiya knows how lucky she is – lucky not to be living in a refugee camp, lucky to be alive. But it’s hard to feel grateful when she’s forced to look after her father and brother rather than go back to school, and now that she’s lost her home, she’s lonelier than ever.

As they struggle to rebuild their lives, Safiya realises that her family has always been incomplete and with her own future in the balance, it’s time to uncover the secrets that war has kept buried.

It is beautifully written from the eyes of a 13 year old girl. So many eye opening life lessons in there for the younger reader without being overly sad/emotional/traumatic.

The story has some twists and turns and plenty of action as well as descriptions about how she feels about everything from learning to cook to the cold damp living conditions she finds herself in. I really loved Safiya. She was a very honest character and well written as a thirteen year old. The book shows both funny moments for her, angry and sad and clever moments when she really is quite sneeky.

If you liked The Boy at the back of the class you are sure to love this one

The House of Light by Julia Green

You can almost smell the salt and feel the wind: a celebration of the great outdoors – The Daily Mail

I wonder whether any Daily Mail readers actually reading this book were disapointed that they didn’t end up with some kind of follow-up to ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Or perhaps they DID get this follow-up, albeit one set in a subtle dystopian future built upon the politics espoused by… The Daily Mail.

Oh, the irony.

After all, there are strong shades of Brexit here – with the principal villains of the piece being the border guards, on the hunt for Ish who has washed up on the shores illegally. Of course, this is just my take on things – a commentary on the ongoing arguments that Brixitannia can’t be a bad place at all. If it were, then refugees and immigrants wouldn’t want to come here.

There are also hints of the hostility toward climate-change school protests (the main character is continually hounded for not being present in school). It’s at this point that (for me), a few months have turned The House of Light from ‘a cutting commentary on the politics and ethics of Brexit, isolationism and xenophobia’ to ‘damn. This is disturbingly uncanny.’, because this dystopia is also apparently one where medicine has failed and antibiotic-resistant illness is rampant.

However, this is not a tale about a character being ground down by dystopia, it’s about a character who sidesteps and escapes from this cage of agression, anxiety and lack of imagination out into the natural world. Its a story of courage vs adversity and – also uncannily appropriate in these Extraordinary Times(™) – about a reconnection with nature and the wider world that has been otherwise denied to us.

So – is The House of Light a perfect lockdown book? I think it is – and it’s also a perfect post-lockdown book. What other books do you feel could accompany it?

Book Review: Planet Omar: Unexpected Super Spy by Zanib Mian

My kids loved Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet for its loving ‘own voices’ immersion in a British Pakistani family adapting to life in a new town, new school and the ups and downs that brings and my children are so pleased to say that Omar has returned better than ever and with wonderful illustrations from Nasaya Mafiridik.

You can’t help but love Omar whether he is caught sneaking down to play X-Box after bedtime or giving his mum the most creative full-sensory spa treatment ever.

In the original Planet Omar, Zanib Mian embedded into the story details and explanations about British-Pakistani and British Muslim life within a frankly gorgeous and loving family. This book similarly explores concepts to celebrate diversity with young British Pakistani and Muslim children recognising themselves in Omar’s family and the way they have both British and Pakistani-Muslim elements

Planet Omar Unexpected Super Spy is a super-cute, fun packed illustrated adventure through the life of Omar as he shines and struggles but always with kindness and good intentions in his heart.

Omar and his friends have been saving up their pocket money for ages so they can have the world’s most epic Nerf Blaster battle. But when Omar discovers that his mosque is in trouble, they decide to donate their pennies to help save it.

Then they try to raise some more money by:
Doing some chores (boorrring)
Selling some home-made cookies (deeelicious)
Holding a talent contest (YESSSSSSS)

Everything goes PERFECTLY until the money mysteriously goes missing. Can they work out who has taken it in time to stop the mosque closing down?

And what exactly is Omar’s sister Maryam hiding in her room…?

The use of the illustrations/typography would make this book accessible to younger children/children who struggle with reading the author makes the reader feel like they were inside the mind of Omar and could relate to what he was going through. The humorous nature of the text helped to sensitively touch on issues such as racism, stereotyping and different cultures. I loved the story of this one and how amazing Omar and his friends were in trying to save the mosque – it was very heart-warming. I could read these books over and over again, they are fun and informative. Very excited for book 3!

This book is perfect for fans of Tom Gates and Wimpy Kid.

A visit to Eerie-on-Sea in Malamander by Thomas Taylor

I somehow missed the map of (Ch)Eerie-on-Sea on my first read of Malamander. I only noticed it afterwards and I’m glad I did because it really confirmed just what a brilliant pocket world Taylor has created and literally mapped out. Malamander was written by an illustrator and it shows. The book goes out of its way from the start to conjure up a vivid visual impression of the place, and it cements its peculiarities by turning expectations of a seaside town on their head.

The seaside town is a wonderfully peculiar English institution that’s often rather overlooked in favour of the city but can offer many avenues for creativity. They have the contrast of opulence in their grand hotels on the promenade with the grinding poverty of the run-down backstreets, they have the eccentricities of strange shops tucked away in narrow crooked streets that slope sharply down to the seafront, or of the wonderfully dodgy piers and the amusement arcades. A curious mixture of timeless fun and seediness, the traditional and the time capsule buried in the sand. Immortalised in cheap picture postcards, we’re immediately at home with the idea of the people who inhabit these places to be somewhat strange or extraordinary.

The genre of magical realism, used incorrectly, can result in the reader feeling as though they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them when the normal rules of the real world start breaking down. Sometimes this can be intentional but more often than not it can feel jarring and out of place. Eerie-on-Sea, within the opening passages of the book, is set up as a place where we should not only fully expect this rug to be pulled from under us, but that it will most likely be followed up by a slap in the face by a large wet fish and a dunking in the ocean.

For a start, we have to visit Eerie-on-Sea in the grip of a bitter winter, so immediately all of our preconceptions of the seaside are thrown out of the window into the cold and we’re forced to scrub away our mental image of sunshine and ice cream.  The seaside town in winter is a ready-made ghost town, complete with rolling banks of mist, locked and shuttered shops and houses, and only a few choice eccentrics at large. We’re immediately unsettled and out of our comfort zone.  Taylor seems to build his town out the driftwood and odds and ends and lost stories that have been washed up on the beach – this is a place where things end up – and populates it with the only people who could really belong there and gives them names to match. In fact, these characters are just as much a part of their town as the mists and the seaweed and the pier – as though they’ve grown up out of the place and couldn’t really exist anywhere else. They’re imbued with the magic of their home and, rather like Neil Gaiman’s naming of characters in ‘Neverwhere’ after locations in London or people associated with the city (Hammersmith, Old Bailey, and (Richard) Mayhew ).

First we have Herbet Lemon and Violet Parma. (s)Herbet might as well have been in Eerie-on-Sea since the Victorian era when the town first became a popular tourist destination and his namesake was being sold from jars in seafront sweet shops. Violet Parma is another antique sweet, but also a rather exotic plant, giving her somewhat more mystery than plain old lemon.

I thought at first that Jenny Hanniver (working in the book repository) was just a nod to Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines books, but then I discovered that a Jenny Hanniver is (and I quote) “the carcass of a ray or a skate that has been modified by hand then dried, resulting in a mummified specimen intended to resemble a fanciful fictional creature, such as a demon or dragon.”

Well. That certainly adds to the atmosphere, doesn’t it.

And then of course we have the (slippery) Sebastian Eels, and The Boathook Man, and Captain Kraken and a whole host of others. Like everything else in the book, Malamander wears these exaggerations proudly. The reader is kept on their toes knowing that real things can happen to imaginary people, but at the same time has a lot of fun recognising jokes and deeper references in something as simple as a name – it’s a very playful writing technique that is much more fun (and less pretentious) when used in children’s fiction. Just like Gaiman’s work, Malamander is a contemporary urban myth that hovers between realism and fantasy, and so it is quite within its rights to take all sorts of liberties with characters and setting that wouldn’t be allowed elsewhere and I found this far more engaging than other books in the genre precisely because it was prepared to not take itself too seriously. And so when bizarre and impossible things begin to happen, they seem far more believable. These are people and goings on that we’ve heard about second hand from someone none too reliable, but they’re so strange it must be real.

I’ve visualised Malamander as being perfect for a stop-motion animation, but perhaps this is just because I once worked on an animation project involving a seaside (literal) tourist-trap populated by cannibals. It’s one of those worlds which is at once enticing and unpleasant, familiar and otherworldly – rather like the reflection in a half-forgotten hall of mirrors tucked away on a rickety pier.

Anyway – feel free to leave a comment and tell people what you think helps to build a good fictional world that you’d want (or not) to visit.