Lowly’s Book Blog

It is a popular idea to write books for young people in Australia that are set at about the time of federation. Not that politics enters into this story at all, but Australians lived very differently than they do now. This book carries the reader directly into the impoverished working class suburb of Sydney.

Frankie is from a close, loving family that includes Mum, Dad and his little sister Maggie. Frankie’s nickname is Bookie because he loves to read, even though books are very scarce. Then one day Mickey and his family move in next door. Mickey’s father is violent and abusive. Frankie feels for this new boy and they become unlikely friends. 

Then the plague arrives in Sydney. The government offers a bounty of sixpence for every dead rat that is delivered. Mickey and Frankie and a few other boys from school decide that it would be easier to breed rats than catch them. So each child begins a rat ‘farm’ under their house, with tragic consequences.

This was a short book with a simple storyline, but it certainly provides great opportunity for discussion and further thinking. All the characters are strong and consistent in their actions, and that always makes for a good story. This book will not set the world on fire, but it is certainly an entertaining read. 

It would have been very difficult for children in England at the end of WWII. How many families were still intact? Talk about Post Traumatic Stress, what about those children who lived through the bombing raids? There were no counsellors available for them.

Alice Makin is one of these children. She has survived the war, but can she survive the peace. Her escape is her imagination, and there she can be really happy. But when a new boy joins her class at school, strange things start happening. Strange and fantastic things that used to just happen in her imagination. What is happening, and more importantly, when will it end?

This is a light-hearted fun novel about the power you have to control your own environment. In a time when children are continuously reminded of the bushfires, stranger danger and all the other disasters they may encounter, a happy positive book is a refreshing change.

Jaclyn Moriarty is writes some of the most popular books in the library. So when this book came to the top of the reading list, I was most surprised to see that it have very few borrowings. Now that I have read it, I think I know why.

Listen Taylor has just started year 7. She and her father have just moved in with a woman called Marbie Zing when Listen finds a spell book with a series of very strange magic spells, including a ’spell to make someone eat a piece of chocolate cake’. At about the same time, her friends dump her and life gets very difficult. And there is this strange Zing Family meeting every Friday night where the adults share the Zing Family Secret. 

Confused? I think that is the idea. However, very gradually the picture becomes clear and everything starts to make sense. It really is a lovely gentle book that has a delightful story to tell.

So why does it sit on the shelf? I suspect that the unclear target audience has a lot to do with it. Moriarty has a solid following in the young adult audience, but this story is told mostly by 12 year old Listen. Many older girls will lose patience with her innocence, especially regarding the spell book. But the story isn’t really for young tweens either. There is a significant amount of adultery contained within it’s pages, and I suspect the tweens won’t feel comfortable with that. 

Although I enjoyed reading the book, I simply have no idea who I would recommend it to.

As you may have noticed, much of my reading in the past few months has been for upper secondary and adults. It really is time to get back to my young adult literature. So last night I picked this wonderful text from the pile.

I think by now everyone has heard of the legend of Beowulf. I remember trying to make sense of it in a English Lit course at Uni (and thank goodness I was studying German at the time). Hollywood has also made it’s corruptions.

This book is based on a 1918 translation into modern English. This preserves the epic tone of the story, but the action is relayed completely through graphic means. The reader ‘watches’ the battles rather than reads about them. 

Hind indicates in his notes that he thinks of Beowulf as the original comic superhero. The stories have been around for well over 1000 years, and Hind returns to the original tale rather than the more common Hollywood and pop culture tendency to combine all the battles into one epic fight, and all the evil into Grendel and maybe his mother. He is also very good with the historical content within his graphics, using runes liberally and even in his interpretation of Grendel.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book.

Every now and then I manage to read the right book at the right time. In the past few days I have been thinking a lot about Obama’s inauguration and how the country where I grew up has changed. Then this book that I have been meaning to read for ages reached the top of the pile.

David is nine, and he is growing up in Tennessee in the 1950s. His father is the town doctor, and David starts to learn the bones of the body as soon as he can read. He shares this knowledge with his best friend Malcolm, so Malcolm knows the bones too. Malcolm can play baseball, and he can draw. Together these boys grow up sharing all the trauma and adventure that is involved. But Malcolm is black. Malcolm has to worry about the Klan, Malcolm knows that no matter how talented he is, he will never play baseball. David can see the injustice, and he is angry. But at nine years old what can you do?

This is a gem of a little book. I have recommended it for middle school students, and I think they can handle it comfortably, even if there is a darkness to the tale. Some may disagree. The writing is strong, the characters consistent and the plot very realistic. I loved it.

And perhaps many men and women growing up in the south like David have made this week’s political activities possible. Right now I am very proud of my homeland.

It seems ages since I actually read and reviewed a book intended for an adolescent audience. But yesterday I gave up on my ‘official’ review workload and picked up this little gem for a quick read.

Zac is growing up in a dead end town somewhere in the empty regions of Australia. The nearest cinema is 90km away, as well as shops, swimming pool and most of all skatepark. But Zac and his friends have their own places around town to skate and as long as they rotate through them, there isn’t too much trouble. Zac and his best mate Corey dream of a skatepark for their own town, but it seems a hopeless dream until the school Good Girl gets involved in the issue. Corey teams up with Lauren and together they gather a team that eventually raises the funds necessary to build the skatepark. Then tragedy strikes.

This was a very good read. There is plenty of skateboard action as well as family drama. The characters have a strong realistic voice and the personal reactions to the tragedy ring very true. 

I also liked the fact that the book is presented in large print. There are a lot of reluctant readers that should be attracted to this book and willing to see it through to the end.

I know this review is late when all mention of the book has been removed from the publisher’s website. So probably nobody cares, and if you do, if your local library doesn’t have the book, you probably won’t get it anymore.

Anna is a popular and successful teen with lots of friends, success on the swim team and everything a girl could want, until her mother dies. Then she has to move far away from everything she knows and live with her only relatives, including her batty grandmother. OK so far this is just like any one of a hundred books written for the junior secondary market. But Anna discovers a talent, and a secret coach, and netball becomes her way into making a new life for herself.

This book is co-authored by a real live netball expert and a professional comic. The netball links are very strong, including diagrams of skills development exercises. The comedy is not so obvious, but that is OK, it really isn’t important to the story.

This book is an entertaining read, and a sure winner for all those teens who are too busy with sport to actually read a book. I just wish the publisher had done the readers the courtesy of packaging the book with them in mind. The font is far too small for modern kids that are accustomed to a computer screen. Sadly, they will open the book, flick through the pages and then return it to the shelf. This is a real shame, because the writing is strong and this special interest group will love the training ideas. Too bad that this book is ruined before it was given a chance.

Finally the day arrived. The 20th of September. I had to wait until Monday before I actually laid my hands on a copy of this book, but that gave me time to clear away the reading pile and really enjoy this next offering in the Inheritance cycle.

I won’t spend time with ‘the story so far’. If you haven’t read Eragon and Eldest, stop reading this and go find them. No- seeing the movie of Eragon is not enough. The movie was made on a low budget and all too much of the charm of the story was lost.

Brisingr opens with Eragon and Saphira trying on their way to rescue Katrina. Almost immediately Eragon is presented with a moral dilemma. The solution leads to more adventures and problems to be solved and the reader is rapidly caught up in the tension.

Paolini has demonstrated amazing growth as an author. Eragon was very much your typical quest adventure. In Eldest, the story expanded and demonstrated the hero’s growing concern with ‘big issues’. In this third book the reader can see a developing confidence in the author that enables him to handle almost any issue effectively.

I did have some questions about where to place this book in age. It certainly appeals to older students and adults, but yet there are an equal number of lower secondary students queueing up for their copy.

I met Neil Gaiman at a conference a couple months ago and I have been eager to read this book ever since. Finally I managed to get my hands on it.

On the surface the story seems very typical. A family has recently moved house. Mother and Father are too busy with their own projects to spend any time with their only daughter, and so she finds her own amusement. She considers herself an explorer, and spends her time exploring every nook and cranny of the house and immediate neighborhood. She meets the sisters next door and the man upstairs with the mouse circus. But mostly she is fascinated by the locked cupboard. And then she finds the key …

This is a very interesting book. It is certainly a horror for children, but the age of the children intended as audience is a little hard to pick. Coraline is only in primary school behaves accordingly. But I am a little uncomfortable about the level of violence and horror for primary children. The Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge has graded it for years 7 and 8, and I think that is about right. Certainly the book’s popularity is at that level.

Rarely do I get asked to review information books. I read so much fiction, as I am sure you have noticed by now, that occasionally it is nice to absorb some factual information.

This is very simply a fun book that examines how the brain works and the changes that happen in the brain during adolescence. There is a huge amount of hard information here, but the presentation is such that the reader learns painlessly, and usually laughing as they go. The author is from the UK, so much of her statistical information is based on US or UK populations, but there is enough truth to the stories that any Australian teenager will certainly recognize themselves and friends as they go.

Highly recommended.