How Cars Work

Anyone who gets talking to Eddie is soon going to get talking to Eddie about buses. As regular readers of this blog will know, buses are just a little bit important to Eddie right now.
(entire route of the 210 in both directions is tomorrow's treat for us...)
So inevitably kindly adults caught in a route interrogation conversation will ask the question, "Are you going to be a bus driver when you grow up then Eddie?"
Which sends him into a bit of spiral of panic and denial; "No. That would be too hard. I don't know how to drive. I'm just a child."
The idea that it is a skill he could be taught one day seems to be Dreaming the Impossible Dream.

I knew it was formenting in his brain though when I started finding him craning over the dashboard and crawling in the footwell of the driver's seat of the car on a regular basis, examining pedals and buttons and grilling me on their purposes. I am really not the person to grill on this subject beyond the basics. Eventually he admitted, "I need to learn to drive soon because when me and Ella M fly to Australia together I've said I'll drive the hire car." It was news to me that he was planning an imminent return trip to Oz with his 6 year old fiancee but I understood the pressure of responsibility he was feeling.

Enter 'How Cars Work; the interactive guide to mechanisms that make a car work' by Nick Arnold and Allan Sanders, part book, part cardboard meccano; a properly unpatronising primer in car engineering which is also a little bit tasty-looking.

The book has a removable peg board at the front and a back pocket full of numbered coloured cogs, levers and screws. Each page looks (in detail- this will really properly satisfy any budding engineer who wants to look under a bonnet) at a different aspect of a car's mechanics and then provides a plan to build a working example on the peg board. You get therefore to make and see how a piston moves, or the motion of a windscreen wiper or the principle of an accelerator in action amongst others. It's really very nicely done.

The making is reasonably technical, requiring the following of a plan and grid references and appropriate selection of parts. Eddie is not of the mindset to do it yet, Bill had a good play around. But Eddie does pore over the technical descriptions with a bright and beady eye. Hoovering up the knowledge he needs for a golden future on the buses.

I've started keeping the car keys hidden.

nice bit of suspension

Incidently in a week where there has been much discussion about the pros/cons of the Goldiebox range of toys to encourage girls into engineering, after their rather fun ad went viral, I think this book does a reasonable job of gender neutrality. The illustrations are just about evenly split between male and female drivers and the colour palette is not agressively 'blokey'. All you DO need to enjoy a read/play is an interest in how cars work.
Here's the Goldiebox ad if you've happened to miss it-

'How Cars Work' by Nick Arnold and Allan Sanders, published by Templar, isbn 978-1-84877-737-8

Maps

There are a lot of maps in this house.

For a start there's a magnetic map of the world in our hall with name magnets that we push around as friends and family go on travels like military planners. We really value friends who disappear to interesting destinations for months at a time for their magnet value. The small matter of not having them around to chat to matters not a jot in comparison. P and L who have spent the last five years in first Pakistan, then Zambia and now Burma get the gold star in this respect. We sponsor a child in South America solely for the benefit of that map really.

Then there are Eddie's beloved bus maps which wallpaper his room and are spread over his floor, doubling as Total Wipeout course obstacles when he's not studying their intricate poetry. As I type this I am readying myself for today's treat of travelling the entirety of the 102 whilst his brother is at a party. "I'm so excited!" says Eddie.

There is a substantial collection of books of maps too; both of the entirely practical variety- Pah I say to your Satellite Navigation Devices; I LIKE driving with an open book on my lap giving frantic glances down to where I should be going- and of the ancient and decorative. Basically, whenever I can't think of a present to buy the husband, which happens increasingly frequently as the years pass and I have given him everything, I buy him a mappy-type book. And it never fails to make him happy. He is happy with the mappy.

But best of all is this one which he has painted and is a work in progress on Bill's wall. It was supposed to be covered in 'things' by now. Alas an RSI-type collapse put a dramatic halt to is completion in the last few years but the husband's caterpillar slow recovery is marked by the new addition of St Basil's cathedral last week. The big red balls of the Total Wipeout course are set to adorn Argentina next...

Which brings me to 'Maps', a book of simply astonishing loveliness by Polish author/artists Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski and which formed part of Eddie's birthday book haul last month.

It's like Bill's wall but turned up to 11. Each double spread is devoted to a different country and crammed with illustrations incorporating not only the sights, but also the people, stories, food, animals and history of the place. All hand drawn with dizzying gorgeousness. It's LUSH this book is. Lush. Not a word I've used for a a good few years that but exactly what's required here. It's also big and thick papered and Proper. A coffee table book or rather in Eddie's case; a hot chocolate table book.


Just look at it-

See? SEE? Loveliness. (and excuse the photography which is extra specially poor today)

I like the 'facts' on the UK page which include 'The British are famous for their luxury cars' and 'Afternoon tea is a British tradition'. One rings truer to me than the other.

Have to admit it's the husband that has been appreciating this book even more than Eddie since it arrived; if in a slightly wistful I-would-like-to-be-fit-to-paint that way, poor lamb. But Eddie will get round to it. He's just rather hung up on another birthday book at the moment- his absolute best present that he would recommend to you ALL. It's the 2013 edition of 'The London Bus Guide- the routes, the buses, the garages, the companies' by Ken Carr.

I am fairly confident that it's 'Maps' you should be putting on your Christmas list though. Unless you prefer buses.

'Maps' by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski, published by Big Picture Press, isbn 978-1-84877-301-1

The little boy/girl who lost his/her name

Snappy title for this post eh?

Personalised things were few and far between in the 1970s. One of the main frustrations of my childhood was the sheer absence of 'Polly' mugs/magnets/lollipops/bedroom door signs available in Motorway Service Station's named-thing racks. Ah The Curse of the middle class labelled child. How we suffer.

I don't think personalised books existed at all. I seem to remember coming across the concept in late teenagerdom and feeling a sense of burning injustice at the fortunes now bestowed on an ungrateful younger generation. All I had to make do with was a napkin ring engraved with the number 6; my position as youngest in the family.

Of course now all your possessions can be personalised in any way you want. But it's true that adding a name to something is not an end in itself. In fact if something has your name on it you want it to be even better than the average to mirror your own very particular brilliance. And personalised books may have suffered particularly from being a bit ho and a bit hum in the past.

So along has come www.lostmyname; a group of friends with a self funded, self published project to produce individual books that are a bit more ooh and aah than ho and hum. And I think they've just about pulled it off.

We were sent three samples for Bill, Eddie and (AT LAST!) me. The books follow the story of a child who has lost their name and must be reunited with its letters. He or she goes on a magical adventure meeting characters who have their own dilemmas and part with their own letter in exchange for advice; a lion needs somebody to play with for instance, an Inuit needs warm holiday ideas. Each story is thus genuinely unique and it depends on your own letters as to who you'll meet.

The boys thought this an amazing magic trick. "But HOW did they know? HOW is it done?" Bill really enjoyed unpicking them and comparing the stories. Because his name is short he ends up with an extra linking 'story' page in the middle. Duplicate letters are dealt with my means of a few generic letter generating characters- although Eddie did get both eagle and elephant, suggesting the commonest offenders get extra characters. I did wonder whether you'd lose the will to live reading it out if you'd called your child Guinevere or Jeremiah or something. But then you reap what you sow...

There's a lot of craft and thought gone into these books; particularly the number and quality of the illustrations I think. I'm less of a fan of the rhyming prose. (I think people coming fresh to writing children's books often make the mistake of thinking they'll work best in rhyme. The answer to that, unless you're very skilled, is generally No.) But the stories are warm and funny and Eddie and Bill enjoyed them. The production values are faultless and these books would make interesting and original christening/naming/new baby presents. They're not cheap but you wouldn't expect them to be given the up front investment that's been made. Have a look at the website and see what you think.

Incidently, and for free, Persil has produced some online personalisable adventure stories here. Written by Adam Perrot and illustrated by Clare Elsom I thought they were surprisingly good quality. The stories are funny and unexpected and pleasingly un-gendered in their approach to fun. There may be a debate to have about mixing major corporations marketing budgets with children's books but I'll applaud anyone prepared to generate free access to quality words. Even Mcdonalds have been at it with Michael Morpurgo after all.

As a final note, both 'Lost my Name' and Persil run into difficulties when it comes to personalising the illustrations of their lead characters. Some generic decisions have obviously been made about the 'Lost my name' children. The boy and girl both have black hair and white-with a very faint hint of coffee skin. They don't look like  my children. They're fairly likely not to look like yours. The Persil characters are customisable but only to a very limited degree which may end up being even more frustrating. "But I have glasses!" "But I have long hair even though I'm a boy" etc. etc. These things bothered me more than my children though so perhaps I'm just Mrs. Finickerty Pants. (you'd definitely get fed up reading your name through THAT one.)

With thanks to the Lost My Name team for providing us with lovely free samples. Our decision to review and our opinions are our own. They also kindly provided me with some 15% off coupons- just chuck me a comment/tweet if you'd like one.
Persil did offer me a FREE no-strings-attached  sample of their washing tablets when they told me about their books. I turned them down folks. My integrity in that respect is clean (even if my clothes are grubby...)

Casson family books

I suspect there are two main categories of readers of this blog. People who know me personally and read this blog as a stop gap check of my pulse before the next cup of tea together (It's better than a phone call. I loathe the phone.) and people who share my love of children's books and may also blog about them. Of course if you've stumbled here in search of genuine recommendations then that's wonderful and I hope you'll find what you need- you are part of a small sub-category number three. If you've just come to recommend a stockist of cheap bed frames in Glasgow to me (which seems to be happening with bizarre frequency) then fine, but probably you know, not brilliant targeting of audience. I have a bed. I'm not in Glasgow. You are my fourth group.

Anyway. This post I think, is going to be of most interest to the first and third category of my readers (who knows about the Glaswegian bed enthusiasts?) because the second lot know it too well already. I am shamefully late to the discovery. Hilary Mckay is a wonderful, wonderful writer.

The lateness is excusable; I am both too old and my children too young and conceivably too male to have stumbled across her by chance. It's only relatively recently that I have allowed myself to play catch up with all the children's writing I missed during the long years of reading tedious adult fiction. Oh it's been lovely.

Anyway Hilary Mckay was a name cropping up in virtual conversations a lot and then I read this fabulous interview with her here and then, almost the next day in fact, I came across three of her Casson family novels second hand in the Oxfam bookshop and THEN, oh my, I was in heaven.

Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate my reactions to a book as an adult from what they would have been as a child. It's transparent to me however, that I would have had the same sense of love, and warmth and plain old happiness from opening my first 'Casson' book age 10 as I had age 42. It was that overdue cup of tea with an old friend feeling.
They're very, very funny but they're also human and true. Nothing terrible happens in them, she shares with Helen Cresswell an interest in character over plot I think. And you know I like that now and I liked that then too.
There's been a lot of debate in the media over the last year or so about the Dark Themes that have dominated children's literature (or at least prize-winning children's literature) over the last year or so and whether that's a Good Thing or Not a Good Thing. I'm not going to enter into that debate because boy are there some amazing, dazzling, terrific dark dark books out there and they are important and transformative and worth reading and all that.
And yet.
I know that when I was a child (and, small whisper, even now really) I read for the good much more than the bad. Found the bad at times difficult to bear in fact and would flick through it to find the happy ending. I LIKE books which hold a light up to the positive and which allow their characters and their readers to be transported safely. Which find the beauty and the funny and the powerful in the everyday. It's a very female trait to be apologetic for enjoying the domestic more than the Grand or the Fantastical and well, ya boo sucks to that. I think you can hold a reader, grip a reader and illuminate emotional truths for a reader without also torturing them or descending to the saccharine or the banal. Hilary Mckay is very very good at this, as she herself says in afore-linked-to interview:

 "...these are supposed to be real life stories, about real life people. I’ve never come across an evil person. Have you? I write about what people really eat, and where they really live. I write about what people are really like, and in my experience most people are very kind to most people."

The Casson family novels consist of 'Saffy's Angel', 'Indigo's Star', 'Permanent Rose', 'Caddy Ever After', 'Forever Rose' and newish prequel 'Caddy's World' and follow the growing up years of a slightly ramshackle, bohemian and unashamedly eccentric family of artists, animal lovers and dreamers. They're a little bit unfashionably shabby posh but Hilary Mckay has a perfect ear for the universals of family dialogue and dynamics. I think she's particularly good at illuminating some of the trickier dynamics of friendships and school whilst keeping everything manageable and in context. Bullying features but her characters cope with it. Resiliance and humour in adversity is valued, nothing is made histrionic. Quite British in that respect I suppose. And mainly funny. Have I said how funny they are enough?
I want to quote large chunks to show you this- but it's hard to pick a snippet or a line and this post is already unwieldy so instead I am going to take the UNPRECEDENTED step of directing you to Dread Amazon for their handy 'Look Inside' feature that will allow you to read the first few pages and then you will immediately want to buy them too. From your nearest Independent Bookshop natch.

The Casson Family novels by Hilary Mckay, available in various different editions. Essential reading for dear friends who generally share my tastes...AND for Glaswegian bed dealers.

Review Policy

Stands up, clears throat and taps a mug with a teaspoon to gain attention.

It's time for a change here.

Spending my child-free hours focusing on my own writing has inevitably meant my blog posting rate has dropped off.
 I want to commit to continuing to post here once a week or so but I want those posts to only be about books I feel completely passionate about (or have a diversionary story to connect to them that might make you laugh...). There's no doubt that this blog works best remaining as a purely personal communication about our family's relationship with the books that frankly LITTER our house.
So.
I'm going to stop accepting review copies.
Not that I'm going to burn them as they come through the letterbox obviously but I am putting on my blog management hat (navy with gold braiding,  many tassels and two embroidered entwined B's for Blog Boss) and politely hanging a closed sign at the window to new enquirers.
There are a few outstanding copies coming/in the house which will still appear here if I like them enough and think you might too but after that I am going to only write about the ones I have actually been moved to pay my own money for/get out of the library. Goodness knows we still do enough of that. And if you're going to pay for them on my recommendation it seems only right I should too.

To be clear- I don't receive a huge amount of review post and of those that I have there are plenty of books that I have never written about here. I have only written about the books we have really enjoyed. I have never been paid or even pressured to write a post.

Nevertheless it's impossible not to feel some sort of obligation at the goodies and it has stopped me writing other posts about older/different books which might make more entertaining reading. Blogging has opened up new worlds to me and (hold your thumbs) new work for me but it in itself is NOT my work. And the fun slightly goes out of it when you feel under an obligation.

Thank you for your kind attention. Back to the books at the weekend.

Sits back down again and dunks biscuit in tea.

Book of Beasts

I think I may have mentioned before my complicated relationship with a book called 'The Unexplained' that could be found in Cambridge Central Children's Library in the late 70s. I never actually took it out of the library; it was far too scary. I nerved myself up to read snatches of it only within the safety of the book shelves. Having spent 20 minutes or so sidling up to it via the library's tub of old Beanos and Dandys I would feel brave enough to tackle what Lay Within:
First  the ho-hum every day Unexplained of the Loch Ness monster and the Abombinable Snowman (EXPLAINED as just a bear this week? pah.) then through the slightly spookier poltergeist and apparition section, and finally to the most terrifying part of all; the grainy photos said to show sites of spontaneous human combustion. Am I the only child to have spent a disproportionate amount of my pre-teen years worrying that I might spontaneously combust at any moment? If not then 'The Unexplained' has some explaining to do.

The 'Book of Beasts' by Giles Sparrow, illustrated by Colin Ashcroft and Lee Gibbons seems altogether softer stuff to me. But since we were sent a copy a week or two ago it has been exerting a strange pull on Bill who has been sidling up to read sections of it with slightly fake insouciance. Divided into five 'beast' sections including Monsters of the Gods, Shapeshifters and (personal favourite) the Undead, the book is a lavishly illustrated glossy guide to the fancies and foibles of a range of monstrous beings. Bill reads it over breakfast with a nervy laugh and occasional question. "Who would you rather fight Minotaur or Gorgon?" or "So...um..the Black Shuck...is that like real?" It's not too terrifying. There's a fair balance between humour, myth and helpful top fighting tips (make sure you're carrying bullets dipped in white ash if you're tackling a Skinwalker for instance). Plus frankly the swish full colour spreads can hold none of the fear of a small 1970s black and white photo of still smouldering slippers hidden in a dense page of text. The production values of this book are just too high for nightmares.

This is not in truth a book for me but I'm not who it's for either. Should you have an 8 yr old with a penchant for facts in top trump digestible chunks, zombies, Percy Jackson and ilicit watching of dodgy 'Slender Man' myth videos on Youtube they'll love it. Nicely done TickTock; Bill's a fan. He may even be ready for 'The Unexplained' next should you wish to reboot...

'Book of Beasts' by Giles Sparrow, illustrated by Colin Ashcroft and Lee Gibbons, published by TickTock. isbn 978-1-84898-896-5

With thanks to the publishers for a review copy. Our opinions are our own.

The Adventures of Shola

Last Thursday was apparently 'Super Thursday' in the world of publishing; the day when many of the books expected to be heavy hitters for the Christmas gift market were released. In reality this turned out to be just about adult titles; particularly celebrity memoirs and cookery tomes, Super Thursday for children's books happened a week or two earlier.

Having just spent a small but significant fortune on glorious hardbacks for Eddie's birthday I can confirm that bookshops are full of their most irresistible candy  at the moment: Pretty books, stroke-able, substantial, tempting gifty books.

One bidding for a slot on Father Christmas's sleigh is a smart small yellow hardback from new imprint Pushkin Children's Books. This small publishers is carving out a rather classy niche in translating a few interesting and handsome European children's titles and wafting them under our perhaps  less cultured noses.

'The Adventures of Shola' by Bernardo Atxaga was thus originally published in Basque in the late 90s, before being translated into Spanish and now finally reaching us.

It's a curious book but a charming one. It seems relevant to the market divisions of Super Thursday because actually I think this is a 'gift' book which might be as much appreciated in an adult dog-lover's stocking as a child's.

The book has four stories about Shola, a small white dog with healthy self-esteem and ways of getting what she wants from life (mostly food and sleep). Much will ring true to any one who has ever (in Dodie Smith parlance) been 'owned by' a dog. The strongest and funniest story in the book is the first in which Shola becomes convinced she has been wrongly categorised and is in fact a lion.

'Shola, who had been dozing in the armchair, pricked up her ears. What sort of beast was this lion, so like herself in so many ways? She too was strong, powerful and noble. Although she had never actually fought with anyone or seen a hunter, she was sure they would all be afraid of her; she was sure that all animals and all hunters were aware- painfully aware- that she could strike them dead with the last beat of her heart.'

Shola's personality is completely convincing and her encounters on the streets of the city in full lion mode made me chuckle out loud. The mismatch between Shola's indomitable self-belief and the reality of say, coming face to face with a tusked and angry wild boar, provide the book's best moments. She's well served by the book's cartoon illustrations by Mikel Valverde too. He has a good line in doggy eyes of determination and confusion.

There are some translation issues though possibly. This feels like a foreign book and though that's not a bad thing obviously, it's a pretty sophisticated read for the child audience it might be bought for. The last two stories rely on quite a lot of word play in places and perhaps an adult sensibility which I suspect would work better in the original text. I'm all for vocabulary stretching as I've said before but I think Bill would struggle with this on his own.

I think it will work best as a family read aloud. A perfect Sunday afternoon, snuggle by the fire Christmas choice to share. Especially if you have a small, egotistical dog of your own at your feet with one ear cocked listening too.

'The Adventures of Shola' by Bernardo Atxaga, illustrated by Mikel Valverde, pub. Pushkin Children's, isbn 978-1-78269-009-2

With thanks to the publishers for providing a review copy. Our opinions are our own.