Biography: Stephanie Meyer: The Unauthorized Biography of the Creator of the Twilight Saga by Marc Shapiro

In 2006, the Twilight phenomenon began. A previously minor sub-genre of the vampire novel, the vampire romance, suddenly became big among teenage girls. The Harry Potter saga was coming to an end -- the final volume was published in 2007, only a few months later -- and there was room for something new.

The author, a Mormon housewife and mother of three, was suddenly being compared to J.K. Rowling. Well, they’re both women who wrote something that appealed to millions of young people and their parents, although I doubt if Twilight will ever be winning any prizes for children’s literature as Harry Potter did, and if there were separate covers for adult and teen editions, I haven’t seen them yet. I suppose they have that in common.

But many folk have Meyer to thank for the fact that they are now able to sell books in the YA fantasy genre, as long as there are vampires or werewolves in them. As a matter of fact, I'm one of them.

I confess that when this book first arrived for me to review, I hadn’t read any of the Twilight novels, mainly because they’re always out. However, I felt that I shouldn’t be reviewing a book to which I had no background, and as a teacher-librarian, I really ought to be reading what the kids were loving so much. I went to Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, where I found the books in the YA section, right next to Foz Meadows’ new novel Solace And Grief which was facing out. Lucky Foz Meadows!

I read the first book and started on the second. It was easy reading as I had expected, because one of our ESL students read it in a weekend and her reading level at the time was about Grade 3. Other readers of the same level made their way through the entire saga without much trouble.

I found the novel pretty slow-moving, with nothing much happening till about three-quarters of the way through the book, but it certainly told me something about kids’ reading habits that I had never known after all these years of observing their reading: they will be patient if they are hooked early on. (Or maybe what I found slow, they found romantic?) I wasn’t hooked, alas, but I have no problem with anything that gets my students not only reading, but being excited about reading. And they are excited -- the girls, anyway. I have seen them sitting curled up on steps and under trees in the schoolyard, noses deep in the adventures of Bella and Edward, and lending personal copies to friends.

Besides, I think I may be able to “sell” Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights to students who have finished and enjoyed this series. The hero of Jane Eyre is even called Edward! (Edward Rochester, that is.) He has a Deep Dark Secret, a tragic past and a good woman who wants to help him.

Author Marc Shapiro has been thorough in his research. Possibly there’s nothing here that a fan doesn’t already know from the Internet, where he seems to have done a large chunk of his research, but I was certainly enlightened. I found out that the Twilight author was named by a father who wanted a Stephen and got a Stephanie, except he added “ie” to “Stephen” instead. I learned that she got the idea from a dream and that she picked the name of the town off the Internet by looking for the wettest place in the US (and isn’t it wonderful that now writers just need to go on-line to check out these things in a few minutes instead of spending hours in the library?). There was a list of music she played while she was writing and the information that Wuthering Heights became suddenly popular again after she recommended it to her fans. There was a good deal of information about the making of the films so far. And fans will be pleased to know that Stephenie Meyer has lots of ideas for more novels.

I actually ended up finishing the biography before I read the novels and quite enjoyed it; it saved me a massive trawl through the Internet. I do wonder where this story can go now. It is already more or less out of date, because the information went right up till the end of 2009, but things had already changed from some of what was said in the book. Perhaps it might have been better to wait a year or two to see how the phenomenon pans out and find out what the author is writing next and how her own life is turning out. A woman in her 30s is really too young to be the subject of a biography. Unlike J.K. Rowling, she hasn’t had a particularly interesting life. She grew up, went to university, got married and had children. Eventually, she had an idea for a novel that did brilliantly. End of story. Apart from discussion of the phenomenon and what happened when the film was being made, there wasn’t much to say.

It reminds me of when Alice Pung was speaking at a Centre for Youth Literature evening in Melbourne. She had written a book, Unpolished Gem, about her upbringing in Melbourne’s west, and it had been doing very well. Someone asked her, “Will the next book be a novel?”

“It will have to be,” she said. “I’m only twenty-five!”

Children’s Books: The Whale’s Tale by Edwina Harvey

I first read The Whale’s Tale (Peggy Bright Books) as a manuscript. Actually, I first read it as a short story, entered for the Mary Grant Bruce Award for Children’s Literature, which I was judging some years ago. The practice was to read all the manuscripts with the names of the authors removed, prepare a shortlist and hand this to children to choose the winner.

That year, the story the kids chose as a winner was later published as a short -- very short -- book. I can’t remember what it was called and I suspect it’s long out of print. It wouldn’t be the first time, nor will it be the last, that a story that won a prize has been forgotten while one that didn’t win has become a classic. Take the book which won the Australian Children’s Book Council award for picture book of the year -- what was it called? Something about bears? I haven’t seen it around for a while, but Animalia, which didn’t win, is still going strong.

But I felt that this story, “Restitution,” had merit and deserved a Commended at least, which was in my power to give.

Edwina Harvey worked the manuscript into a novel, which got as far as the George Turner Award short list for a new piece of SF writing.

Once again, I was asked to read the manuscript, then pass it on to a teenager to read. I felt it needed work, for reasons I told the author at the time, but the teenager loved it. What can I say? Samantha now has her copy of the finished product and no doubt loves it even more in print. The issues I had with the manuscript have been well and truly addressed.

Edwina Harvey is the kind of children’s writer who can write the most over-the-top things and take them for granted. “What -- you mean people DON'T run into unicorns every day, or travel the galaxy with a sentient whale and a dolphin?” And that’s what makes her so right for this type of writing.

We all, as writers, have the story of our heart. This is Edwina Harvey’s. And that shows in the writing, as well as a whole lot of humor and wisecracking from a sassy teenage girl.

Japanese teenager Uki, a lonely but brilliant hacker who has been using her skills to make friends, is caught stealing a file from the computer of whale singer Targe. This is some time after whales and dolphins have communicated with humans and started touring the galaxy as performers and diplomats. As a punishment, she is ordered by the court to travel with Targe and his dolphin offsider Charlie on a tour. Targe is angry about being stuck with her. Uki is not pleased either. But as the tour proceeds, it turns out she has gifts neither of them knew existed.

It’s not the first time anyone has written about spacefaring cetaceans. David Brin did it years ago. But you really had to concentrate to get the most out of the wonderful Startide Rising, which was the hardest of hard science fiction as well as an adventure. This one is a lot easier to handle and has environmental messages that don’t hit you over the head.

The cover, by rising SF artist Eleanor Clarke, is exquisite. And who wouldn’t love to travel the galaxy in the good ship Antarctic Dancer? I sure would!

I am told that this novel has been nominated for a Hugo Award and an Aurealis.

Children’s Books: Solace & Grief by Foz Meadows

Out now in Australia, Foz Meadows’ Solace & Grief won’t be available in other parts of the world until later this year.

The newest entry from Paul Collins’ Ford Street Publishing is a debut. Hearing the author speak at her launch and seeing her sign books, I think she’s going to do nicely as a professional. She’s also lucky enough to have a surname that puts her novel on the bookshop shelves right next to Stephenie Meyer’s books -- and it has a snazzy black cover that will draw the eye of any teenager browsing for Twilight stuff.

The storyline is likely to appeal to young vampire fans, too. Solace Morgan was a born vampire. Her parents gave up their lives to produce her to act as a sort of saviour in a war with a nasty female vampire who has been “making” followers by addicting the new vampires to human blood. Most of the children of the night in this universe don’t like drinking human blood because it acts as a sort of heroin -- once you drink it, you always need another fix. Solace has been living in a group foster home, uncomfortable out in the sun and limited in what she can eat. She is extremely strong and has other gifts that appear over time.

After some terrifying dreams, she runs away from home, into the streets of Sydney, where she meets a group of other gifted teens. Will her troubles cost the lives of her new friends? And what is her own role? Who is the faceless man? The small grey cat? Why are so many people after her?

This novel has come along at just the right time in the teen vampire fiction revolution. But it’s not quite a vampire novel, despite all the vampire politics. And so far, it’s not a romance, though there could be some in the next two novels planned for this series, depending on whether or not a certain character returns to the group. However, the vampire isn’t the brooding Byronic male, but the girl. To my mind, the fact that this isn’t quite a vampire novel or a romance is a positive feature. When kids get tired of more of the same, they will have something different to read.

Children’s Books: F2M: The Boy Within by Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy

Eighteen-year-old Skye is a member of an all-girl punk rock band. Skye has never felt like a girl. Inside, (s)he is Finn, a boy. Making the decision to let Finn be outside as well as in involves a lot of work. How do you tell your family and friends and the members of your feminist rock band that you’re going to undergo female-to-male treatment and surgery? Fortunately, there’s a family precedent: great-uncle Albert ... or is that great-aunt Alberta?

Skye/Finn could easily be a victim, but refuses. It isn’t going to be easy for anyone, but (s)he decides, finally, that family, friends and rock band will just have to live with it. And they do.

F2M: The Boy Within (Ford Street) goes into enormous detail about the procedures involved in what is known as FTM. It’s a lot less common than the other way around -- male to female -- although it has been in the news in the last couple of years, when a man who had kept his female “equipment” had a baby because his wife couldn’t. I knew a female-to-male myself. Unlike Skye, Jan became “David” in her/his 40s. Nobody, but nobody dared to call Jan a woman, even when she was! And David’s family and friends accepted it as Finn’s family do in the novel. F2M: The Boy Within also explores the punk rock sub-culture, which is interesting in its own right.

Ford Street Publishing has become known for taking on controversial subjects. It probably needs an author as well-known and respected as Hazel Edwards to get away with this one. Ryan Kennedy, her co-author, is himself an FTM, so knows what he is talking about.

F2M: The Boy Within is well-written and answers a lot of questions. It will certainly appeal to those teenagers who are asking themselves questions about their own gender identities. There are some likable characters in it and some nice touches of humour. There’s even the whimsical presentation of a couple who are a female-to-male and a male-to-female. Who are, incidentally, managing just fine. Finn doesn’t like the FTM, Rodney, but hey, he doesn’t have to.

Whether or not it will have appeal for ordinary teenagers I am not sure. I suspect they will be uncomfortable with it, though this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be out there. Will kids who say, “That is so gay!” about anything negative get enthused about characters who are not actually gay but have gender issues? I won’t know until I have put this in my library and seen how the students react. Watch this space.

Children’s Books: The Genius Wars by Catherine Jinks

It began with Evil Genius, in which orphan Cadel Piggott was being raised to become a criminal mastermind. As part of this, he was sent to the sinister Axis Institute in Sydney, where he studied such subjects as Fraud and Disguise and improved his already considerable skills in computer hacking. By the end of the second novel of the series, Genius Squad, he had rebelled against all this and was trying to live a nornal life, though villain Prosper English, who had been responsible for his upbringing, had done everything he could to prevent this.

The Genius Wars (Allen & Unwin) opens nine months later. Cadel, now 15, has settled down with police detective Saul Greeniaus and his wife Fiona, who are hoping to adopt him. Despite his youth, he has begun university and is in contact with some of his friends from the Axis Institute and the Genius Squad, who also want normal lives. Life is pretty good, and he has used his computer hacking skills to make life easier for his best friend, mathematical genius Sonja, who suffers from cerebral palsy. All he wants is to make it possible for her to get around easily in her wheelchair. But old enemies haven’t forgotten him -- and the very things he has done to help his friend may work against him.

This has been a fascinating series. The original premise sounded humorous -- and there are certainly some over-the-top ideas, such as Cadel’s friend Gazo, a human stink-bomb who produces a smell that can literally knock people out when he is stressed. And what about brother-sister computer hackers Dorothy and Compton, mostly known as Dot and Com?

But this is not a comedy. Cadel is angry, frustrated and terrified that even knowing him may kill anyone he cares about. The series has, predictably, been compared to Harry Potter, as anything with a young hero is these days. If anything, it’s reminiscent of Artemis Fowl, if you can imagine that young Irish genius as an orphan, being manipulated by nasty guardians rather than supported and protected by his loyal bodyguard and loving family. Or, for that matter, Mark Walden’s H.I.V.E. novels.

In any case, teens who liked either of those series should enjoy this one. I’d describe it as borderline SF. It never ceases to amaze me how many different genres this writer has clocked up over the years: SF, fantasy, ghost stories, historical fiction, suspense. She is the writer equivalent of the kind of actor who refuses to be typecast.

There’s no point in reading this book if you haven’t read the others, so if you haven’t, go and get them. You won’t be disappointed.

SF/F: And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer

I first discovered Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy when I was studying librarianship, many years ago. We used to throw quotes at each other over coffee, between classes. “Forty-two!” we would cry. “The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!” We needed the humor; librarianship was a heavy, exhausting course which gave us very little time to ourselves.

At home, my brother was taping the radio series. We listened to it and developed a passion for that. The story was over-the-top hilarious. It became a television series and a movie and recordings.

I loved the first two books. The third was not quite as good, though it was still very funny. Since then, I have listened to Douglas Adams reading the talking book and decided I liked it better than the first time around. The fourth book came along and it was not as good as the third. It still had some fun, but it was almost serious. In it, Arthur Dent got a girlfriend, Fenchurch, but she suddenly disappeared from his side and never returned. The fifth book, Mostly Harmless, was such a disappointment to me that I gave away my copy and never read it again. My re-reading rarely goes beyond the second book and never past the fourth

I mention all this so it will be understood that I am a major fan of this universe, but I acknowledge that even Douglas Adams, who created it, had lost the plot, so to speak, by the end. So when I heard that Eoin Colfer, author of the wonderful Artemis Fowl novels, had been commissioned to write a sixth book in the series, I was in two minds about it. If Douglas Adams couldn’t keep it up, how could anyone else, even Eoin Colfer? But the author’s widow had approved him and of course, I was curious to see how he would get Arthur, Ford and Trillian out of the impossible situation in which they had been left at the end of Mostly Harmless.

And Another Thing has been written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It starts with a summary of the story so far, written in an Adams-esque style. It may have been to refresh the reader’s memory, and in any case, Douglas Adams did it himself. It may have been for any potential new readers, but my advice to these readers is not to read it till they have read the original. There’s no point. And Another Thing... was clearly written for people familiar with the universe.

I must admit, Colfer does a good job of getting Ford, Arthur, Trillian and their daughter, Random Dent, out of the fix they were in at the end of Mostly Harmless. I couldn’t imagine how it could be done, but he did it.

He makes a fairly good fist of Adams’s style, except for an irritating tendency to stop for asides. Douglas Adams did it, but nowhere near as often.

The story brings back a lot of characters from the third book, Life The Universe And Everything, including Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was the green-skinned immortal who was trying to liven up his eternal existence by insulting everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. Now, he has returned and he wants to get rid of the immortality; we learn that his insults are aimed at getting someone to kill him.

The original character was there as a single joke. He was funny. Now he has become, of all things, a romantic interest for Trillian. He isn’t funny anymore.

Zaphod Beeblebrox is back too, with one head; the other one has replaced Eddie as the ship’s computer on the Heart of Gold. He has a quest of his own: helping Wowbagger get killed. This involves searching for the Norse god Thor, original owner of Wowbagger’s ship.

Also in the novel are the Vogons, who are still trying to wipe out the last humans to tie up loose ends -- not only Arthur and Trillian, but a colony of middleclass Earthlings who have bought the Magrathean-built planet Nano. The Vogon captain, Prostetnic Jeltz, who destroyed Earth in the first novel, is back, with a son who may not agree with him.

The story bounces around from one storyline to another, but all the ends are tied, although the very end suggests there may be more to come.

I got the occasional chuckle out of this book, but no more. It starts well enough, but just isn’t funny. A friend of mine suggested that Tom Holt might have been a better choice, but personally, I don’t think anyone could handle it.

Eoin Colfer is a brave man to have had a go at something like this, which has a passionate fandom. I commend him for it. I don’t believe anyone could have done it, but he has done as well as anyone could and at least he seems to be a fan.

If you are completist, buy it by all means -- hey, if you’re reading the book at all, you almost certainly are a completist. At least this story extracts our heroes from an impossible situation.

New Today: Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier

Young scribe Caitrin, fleeing an unwanted marriage with a violent cousin, finds herself on Whistling Tor, whose chieftain, Anluan, needs a scribe to do a summer’s work, translating Latin documents. Anluan’s family has been cursed for a century, since an ancestor conjured up a ghostly horde from the Otherworld and then couldn’t either control them or send them back. Anluan can handle them as long as he stays on the Tor, but if he leaves, the spirits could go on the rampage. They want to go back too, and something -- or someone -- is driving them insane, unable to control themselves. There may be a counter-spell in the Latin documents that will help. Everyone is relying on Caitrin to find it.

Despite the curse and the fact that Anluan can’t be the chieftain his people need, Caitrin finds friends on the Tor, some of them supernatural, and also finds love.

Heart’s Blood is a Gothic-style romance that has moved the story of “Beauty and the Beast” to mediaeval Connacht, a part of Ireland facing imminent invasion by Normans from England. Anluan is not a fairytale Beast, but crippled by a childhood illness. The “heart’s blood” of the title is a plant used to make very expensive ink, but also has a much more important use, as Caitrin finds.

It’s an interesting setting for the story, and it works. Western Australian-based novelist Juliet Marillier’s other Celtic fantasies are set in Ireland and she knows her period well. She reminds her readers that Irish law was fairer to women than the laws in other places at the time. Women had positions of responsibility and they had more property and inheritance rights.

The story is very readable; it was my first time reading one of this writer’s books and it won’t be my last. It is, admittedly, something of a Mary Sue. But I have been known to enjoy Mary Sue when well-written and at least this one is lacking long-lost princes, quests, elves and high priestesses. The only evil sorcerer is the hero’s ancestor, who was unpleasant and stupid, but hardly Sauron. And I must admit that “Beauty and the Beast” is a fairytale I like, and the author has done a good job of putting it into an historical context.

If you haven’t read Juliet Marillier’s other books, this one might be a good place to start, as it is a stand-alone and not part of a trilogy.

Children’s Books: Time of Trial: Volume 4, The Laws of Magic by Michael Pryor

Time of Trial (Random House Australia) is the fourth of Michael Pryor’s delightful Laws of Magic series, set in an alternative Edwardian England.

Once again, Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his friends George and Caroline are needed to save the world, as one of the characters observes wryly in the novel. This time, after the usual opening scene of magical mayhem -- in this case, cloud ships attacking a university cricket game in which George and Aubrey are playing. It’s during a trip to Holmland (Germany in our universe) where Lady Rose, Aubrey’s mother, is speaking at a symposium.

But this is where the evil Dr Tremaine, Aubrey’s nemesis, is living. He has influence in high places. Very high places. And then there are the golems, which are far from the lumpy clay things of folklore; you can make them very lifelike, so that it’s impossible to tell them from real people till they’re deactivated. Who can be trusted? Certainly not characters who can get sucked into telephones, as in one memorable scene.

Then there’s the pearl Aubrey took from Tremaine in the last novel -- what mystery does it hide? Our heroes are about to find out -- and they won’t like it.

It’s not all bad, though. Aubrey now has a Beccaria Cage, which reunites the body and soul he tore apart in a stupid experiment before the start of the first volume. If only it hasn’t been sabotaged...

As always, the adventure tears along at a breakneck pace, and is very funny. It doesn’t let you go easily; there’s a twist near the end, just when you think the main story is over.

I found myself falling comfortably back into this universe, enjoying it as much as ever. It’s rarely that a series can continue for this many volumes without losing something, but though it will need to finish some time, at least for this story arc, The Laws Of Magic is one series that doesn’t go downhill.

I think the series will become a fantasy classic. Bring on Volume 5!

Children’s Books: Wow! Animal and Wow! Earth

Wow! Animal and Wow! Earth, like all Dorling Kindersley books, are beautifully presented and gorgeous to flip through. And, like most books in this imprint, they are full of snippets of information, just right for children like my nephew, Max, who are good readers, to browse through and call, “Hey, Dad, did you know that starfish push their stomachs out through their mouths to absorb food?”

Both books are divided into sections that enable children who need them for homework to look up what they want. Wow! Animal has a well laid-out animal classification page that explains how classification works. Wow! Earth starts with the galaxy and works downwards.The double-page spread on the solar system has a paragraph about each planet, with all the information the young researcher will need or that the browser like Max will love to know. A pity it doesn’t mention Pluto. Just because it’s no longer considered a planet doesn’t mean it’s no longer there. But there’s only so much you can fit into a book like this, I suppose.

Wow! Animals reminds me of the books I used to read when I was a child and is nicely broken down, though those ones used to begin with prehistoric animals. But children who read it for fun will enjoy it for the same reason I did: this is a fascinating world and there are some wonderful and horrible creatures in it.

Both books also have good, clear indexes at the back and have handy glossaries. I should repeat, however, that DK Books are usually for good readers. The words are long and difficult and not all of the hard words are explained in the glossary. But if you have a bright, inquisitive child in your life, or a classroom library, or run a primary school library, buy it and watch those young eyes light up.

Children’s Books: Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Micah Wilkins lies automatically. She not only lies to family, classmates and police, she lies to the reader. Over and over. Right until the last page, you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. Not even then.

Micah was Zach’s outside-of-school girlfriend, who ran with him, but now Zach has died and everyone is a suspect: Micah, Zach’s best friend, his official girlfriend -- everyone!

Why is Micah so fast ? Where did she get that incredible sense of smell? Why is it necessary for her to take the pill, apart from the obvious? And why does Micah’s father’s family live out in the middle of nowhere, not bothering with modern technology?

After a time, we realize that Micah isn’t the only member of her family to lie. Her father is a natural liar. Her grandmother is another. She has lied to her son and to Micah. There is a network of lies in the family, centered around “the family illness.”

I can’t go into any further detail without giving too much away. You may guess it as you read -- but bear in mind that Micah is a liar and while she tells you one ending, there are hints in the book that what has happened to her at the end is something very different.

Liar bounces around, backwards, forwards, flashbacks, family history, her own history, and somehow it works and clues build up, but Justine Larbalestier is her typical nasty self and never lets you be sure. All I can say is that at the end, I was thinking “Ouch!”

This may Larbalestier’s best book yet. Highly recommended for older teens -- younger ones tend to like things predictable and may not be happy to have to decide what really happened at the end.

Children’s Books: Vulture’s Gate by Kristy Murray

Some time in the future, much of Australia is Mad Max territory. The outback is filled with folk killing each other, wiping out settlements and running freak shows. Sydney is in ruins with gangs fighting each other and the authorities, from the anti-elder Festers to the nut-case Sons of Gaia who want to wipe out everybody.

Oh, and there are very few women or girls left after a mutated form of bird flu not only killed most females but made it very difficult for the few survivors to produce anything but boys. There is still some technology in service of the Colony government, producing “drones” and “chosen” boys who get to live comfortably with two male parents.

Callum, who has been living with his two fathers in the outback, is kidnapped and sold to a circus, from which he escapes on a motorbike and meets Bo, a girl living on her own since the death of her engineer grandfather, with only the company of a pack of “roboraptors” which hunt for her. Together, Callum and Bo ride off in search of his missing fathers, accompanied by roboraptor Mr. Pinkwhistle, which is as much a computer as a robotic dinosaur.

But there are things Callum’s Colony employee fathers never told him. Like what happens to drones who aren’t useful any more -- and what happens to any girls unlucky enough to be taken.

Vulture’s Gate is an enjoyable adventure kids should like, though I’m not sure at which age group it’s aimed. It reads like YA fiction, but the characters are all very young; Bo is older than Callum, but neither of them has reached puberty. And we’re never told exactly how Australia has been left in ruins -- surely not just the bird flu? It is implied, anyway, that there may be women in other countries. And there is still enough technology to keep the race going, however nasty its use.

But it’s possible to suspend disbelief for the length of the novel, which is a nice road story. The chapters are short enough to make it work for reluctant readers and the characters are good. Who would have thought a robotic dinosaur could be as cute as R2D2?

New This Month: The Devil You Know by Leonie Norrington

cDamien’s father, 88, is coming back. Damien is not happy. 88 is violent. Like many other perpetrators of domestic violence, he is constantly apologizing and promising to reform. Damien doesn’t believe it, but his mother is prepared to take her ex back. His only comforts are a book called Dangerous Creatures and the drawing and cartooning with which he can express his inner feelings.

What Damien isn’t expecting is that his father will be considered cool by his schoolmates, because of his fabulous motorbike, to the point where it will get him an “in” with the elite crowd. What happens to his friendship with the school outcasts? Will hanging out with the school bullies make him willing to be one himself?

The Devil You Know (Allen & Unwin) depicts vividly Arnhem Land, where the author herself lives. Aboriginal culture runs through the story, though the main characters are white Australians. Damien’s drawings are woven beautifully into the tale; the novel begins and ends with pages of graphic story. Artist Michael Camilleri has worked well with the story, doing a lot more than just illustrate. His beautiful illustrations are an integral part of the tale, as they are Damien's.

Children’s Books: Robot Riot by Andy Griffiths

Robot Riot (Scholastic) is the fourth book in Andy Griffith’s Schooling Around series featuring the students of Grade 5B at Northwest Southeast Central School. But like the others in this series, the book pretty much stands alone.

The stories are all over-the-top humorous and the characters mostly have names that suit their personalities. Gretel Armstrong, for example, is strong; Jenny Friendly is the nice one; Grant Gadget is the son of an inventor and invents plenty himself.

The stories are seen from the viewpoint of Henry McThrottle. In this latest adventure, Henry is convinced that logical, unemotional new girl Roberta Flywheel is a robot from the future, planning to wipe out the population of Earth, starting with the students of 5B.

As always, it’s delightfully silly and still makes good points about friendship. And wouldn’t we all like to have been in Mr Brainfright’s class, with a teacher who loves bananas enough to dress up as one and teaches that the world would be a better place if we would all just look at it through colored cellophane once a day?

Andy Griffiths is one of the most popular children’s writers in Australia, for good reason. He knows kids love to laugh and they love over-the-top laughs.

Children’s Books: Parliament of Blood by Justin Richards

I have always wondered what would happen if vampires kept turning people into other vampires every time they bit someone. Most books suggest that it isn’t that simple, that the majority of victims simply die, or that vampires are born rather than made.

Parliament of Blood (Bloomsbury) gleefully runs with the notion that getting bitten infects your blood and turns you into a vampire almost immediately unless you can get hold of silver and holy water right away in order to clear the infection. Late in the Victorian era, the vampires have come to realize that they’re going to run out of supplies if they’re all awake at once. They operate in shifts, sleeping for decades or centuries and waking up to take their turn. Another problem: with the development of photography, they’re finding that they don’t show up. Humans are going to figure it out sooner or later.

Time to waken the Lord of the Undead, an ancient Egyptian mummy who conveniently speaks English. Luckily for the London vampire community, they have members in high places, centred around a gentleman’s club known as the Damnation Club. Unluckily for them, they have to contend with young engineer George Archer, currently working at the British Museum in a mysterious department not known to the general public, his boss Sir William, former pickpocket Eddie and their friend Liz.

The action is almost non-stop as the friends work in their various ways to stop the vampires taking over the Empire. Justin Richards has become known as the author of entertaining fantasy adventures for children and this delicious romp doesn’t disappoint. Kids will love it. Although it’s supposed to be for readers from ten to f14, I’d place it slightly higher, as the characters are nearly all adults or young adults. Still, just hand it to your kids. They will work it out.

Children’s Books: Torn Pages by Sally Grindley

Lydia and her younger siblings, Joe and Kesi, are African AIDS orphans, trying to survive alone. Lydia has had to leave school to support her brother and sister. Most of the villagers are suspicious of them. Their own grandmother, who is well-off, not only won’t take them in but is actively undermining them. She firmly believes her son married beneath him and that it was his wife’s fault he died of AIDS, even though it was the other way around.

The only comfort Lydia has is their mother’s “memory book,” written especially for her as the mother was dying. But her grandmother has plans that might take away even this comfort.

Torn Pages (Bloomsbury) is a touching story that looks at a real problem in the world and brings them down to a human dimension. The children in the story are sympathetic characters you can care about and they don’t simply accept their troubles. At the end, there is hope for the future.

Suitable for children in late primary school to early secondary.

Children’s Books: Just MacBeth by Andy Griffiths

In 2008, Australia’s Bell Shakespeare Company commissioned humorous children’s writer Andy Griffiths to write a script for the company to perform as a children’s introduction to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Just MacBeth is the resultant work, in print, illustrated by the equally funny artist Terry Denton.

Andy Griffiths is enormously popular in Australia for all his work, but especially for the “Just” series which feature characters Andy, Danny and Lisa. Andy fancies beautiful Lisa. In this story, he gets to be married to her. When the three teens have to prepare a scene from Macbeth for school, the witches’ potion whisks them into 11th century Scotland, where they find themselves playing out the roles of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and Banquo. Danny, as Banquo, finds himself with a son who’s older than he is.

Andy rather enjoys being Macbeth, because as King he will be able to eat as much Wizz Fizz as he wants, order people around and gets to be married to Lisa. The scary thing is that he and Lisa make a very good Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who have no problem in killing people, including Banquo/Danny.

This makes an excellent introduction to Shakespeare. Some of the Bard’s lines are used in the course of the play, and the meanings are pretty much explained. Let’s face it, Macbeth may be a short play, compared with some of Shakespeare’s others, but it’s confusing.

For those of us who are reading the book instead of seeing the play, Terry Denton provides hilarious cartoon commentary on the side of each page and even the page numbers are funny, beginning with an increasingly-disgruntled head of Shakespeare who complains about being the world’s greatest playwright, reduced to supporting page numbers, is replaced by a number of other page-holders, including a haggis, devoured by a machine and returns, defeating all other page-holders.

Fans of the Just stories will enjoy this once they get over its being in script form instead of a short story. Schools can buy class sets and have fun playing it out in class.

Children’s Books: Ghost with A Message by Mary K. Pershall

Ruby Clair is a girl who sees dead people. Well, the ghost of her cousin Nicola, anyway, plus any ghosts Nicola sends her way. Because she can see ghosts, Ruby can help them adjust. Ghost With A Message (Penguin Books Australia) is the second book in the Ruby Clair series. The ghost is a small child who has a message for her family, but can’t speak any better than any other three year old.

Ruby wants to help, but it makes things awkward for her with her friends and family, to whom she can’t explain what’s going on. Somehow, she manages to work out what the ghost child is trying to tell her, help the ghost’s family and make a new friend.

This is a gentle story with both humor and serious elements. It is a book that girls in middle to late primary school should enjoy.

Children’s Books: The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Catherine Jinks is one of the most versatile writers I know of. Historical fiction, SF, fantasy, thriller, ghost stories, children’s, YA, adult -- there are very genres she hasn’t set her pen to at one time or another.

In The Reformed Vampire Support Group, she visits the vampire story, although I suspect this is not the kind of novel that would be relished by all the girls at my school who are devouring the Twilight series. If anything, this sends up the vampire tale.

Catherine Jinks asks her readers to think -- really think -- about what being a vampire might involve, especially in modern Sydney. You can’t eat anything you used to enjoy. You’re unlikely to be able to drive, unless you got your licence before you were turned. If you were elderly, like Bridget, a former nun who was turned at the age of 80, you’ll have arthritis and other aches and pains involved with being elderly forever. You still have to make a living, but you can’t do a normal job. Not if you turned in 1908, anyway. Nina, the narrator, who died in the 1970s, writes adventure novels with a feisty vampire heroine. But Nina was turned at 15, which means she will be a teenager forever, with all the problems this involves.

These vampires don’t live in crypts, though they do have weekly group therapy sessions at the local Catholic church. This means they have to find homes with blackout facilities. And they have nothing to do all night but watch dull television shows.

Fortunately one of them has discovered a way to avoid fanging humans, which they really don’t want to do, as biting humans always turns them and the last thing they need is a planetful of vampires.

But someone has killed a vampire. They have to find out who it is and persuade them not to do it again. Trouble is, there’s more to it than vampire killers.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group has a lot of fun with the vampire genre, especially right now when everyone and his dog is publishing it. All I can say is that the authors of the Deadly Serious vampire tales deserve everything they get in this deliciously funny novel.

Catherine Jinks triumphs again!

New this Month: The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth

The Puzzle Ring (Scholastic) begins in Australia, where 13-year-old Hannah is living with her mother, Roz, a science teacher, but the action quickly moves to Scotland and stays there. Roz receives a letter from her missing husband’s grandmother, Belle, who pleads with her to return. Hannah finds out that her father was a Scottish lord, although the only money the family has now comes from tourist visitors.

Meeting some local children, Hannah is soon heavily involved in adventures involving a family curse, a puzzle ring that has to be reassembled before the curse can be lifted and a search for her lost father. The only problem is, she may just have to time-travel to solve all these problems. Right back to the time of Mary Queen of Scots, in fact.

In some ways, this is a good old-fashioned children’s book of the kind I, at least, grew up on. Apart from suggestions that some characters’ parents might not have been married and characters in the past indicating that Mary Queen of Scots is no better than she should be -- and you can’t change history -- there’s nothing in here that you wouldn’t find in one of those books, except for a detailed afterword that discusses the different theories of time travel and wormholes. There’s also an explanation of the story of Queen Mary and a recipe at the end for marmalade cake, as made by the author’s mother.

This book will be perfect for the little girl in your life who likes fairies, although be warned: the author makes it clear from early in the novel that the cute little fairies most children think of have no connection whatever to the ones in folklore. They’re more like Tolkien’s Elves but can also be thoroughly terrifying.

It won’t hurt children to find this out -- and they may even be interested enough to check out the “real” faerie for themselves.

Kate Forsyth is a well-known Australian writer of children’s fantasy. She actually managed to score five junior-section Aurealis Awards for a fantasy series one year!

Children’s Books: Auslander by Paul Dowswell

Peter had been living in Poland with his mostly-German parents before World War II, on a farm his mother had inherited from her Polish relatives. When the parents are killed, Peter goes to an orphanage, but not for long. A few weeks later, he is taken to Berlin, where he is adopted by a well-off family, the Kaltenbachs. At first, he enjoys his new lifestyle. The Kaltenbachs are kind to him and everyone admires his blonde, blue-eyed Aryan features.

But Professor Kaltenbach is involved in so-called racial science research, benefiting from experimentation on prisoners, and the eldest daughter, Elsbeth, has a dark secret of her own.

When Peter meets Anna, daughter of parents who are not enthusiastic Nazis and secretly help Jews, he has the chance to assist his new girlfriend and her family in their acts of rebellion. But there will be a terrible price to be paid if they are caught. And meanwhile, the war goes on around them.

Auslander (Bloomsbury) is a well-written novel that has interesting characters -- some based on real people -- and shows what it might have been like to live in wartime Germany, where children denounced parents, schoolmates spied on schoolmates and a word said to the wrong person could get you executed. Even Christmas carols had been altered to include Hitler, while there were swastikas on Christmas trees and dolls’ house wallpaper. The author’s notes at the end assure the reader that even the more bizarre elements of the story are true. There is also adventure near the end, as Peter and his friends flee the Gestapo.

Auslander should appeal to young adults who are interested in Holocaust-era fiction. Recommended.

New this Month: Worldshaker by Richard Harland

In an alternative universe, Worldshaker (Allen and Unwin) is one of a number of “juggernauts” which fly around the world with permanent residents. Due to something that happened in the mid-19th century, the timeline diverged from ours into a world in which the Victorian era never really ended. In the early 21st century, Queen Victoria the Third reigns aboard the flying ship Worldshaker, with her consort who changed his name to Albert when they married.

Class distinctions are strictly observed aboard Worldshaker. Col Porpentine and his family are aristocrats and hereditary Supreme Commanders of the ship. Below them are those who are merely rich from trade and below all of them are the “Filthies” who are kept in slavery below decks, doing the work that keeps the ship running. Some of them are hauled up like fish on a line to be turned into Menials, servants to the upper classes -- and as Menials are always obedient and utterly silent, there is the strong possibility that they have been modified.

One night, Col wakes up to find a Filthy in his room. Her name is Riff and she is not keen to be turned into a Menial. Somehow, Col finds himself involved in Riff’s troubles and as a result, having major troubles of his own. Nobody has ever told him or his fellow upper decks what is going on in their society or how it got started. Now he must decide what he is going to do about it -- and learn some nasty home truths about members of his own family.

I’ve always enjoyed steam punk -- science fiction centred around the Victorian era -- and this is a very good example of the genre. Despite the serious elements, it has plenty of the dark, often over-the-top humour typical of this author. The characters are also humorously over-the-top, and it works well.

I am told Worldshaker has already been bought for the North American market. If you live there, be patient. It will be well worth the wait.

Children's Books: My Extraordinary Life and Death by Doug McLeod

Although Doug McLeod is best known in Australia as a television writer -- The Comedy Company, Full Frontal and Sea Change and script-editing Kath and Kim -- when he has written books they have usually been for children or young adults. His comedy background led to his writing humorous and downright silly books. Sister Madge’s Book of Nuns, one of these, was on the Australian Children’s Book Council short list.

My Extraordinary Life and Death (Ford Street Publishing) started life as a commissioned blog. Now it’s out there as a book and very amusing it is, too. What the author has done is to “story” genuine Victorian-era illustrations with a supposed autobiography. Even the front and back cover flaps are part of the book. The front flap features “other books you may care to enjoy” -- Shakespeare the Extremely Early Years (a baby), Simple Tricks A Child Can Do (a complicated circus acrobatic performance) and Queen Victoria: Party Girl. The back flap directs you to the Web site which explains all.

The drawings are accompanied by a truly over-the-top storyline. For example, an illustration of a Victorian gentleman and a gardener with a shovel accompanies, “Father had a no-nonsense approach to education. If Denise or I were naughty he would tell the gardener to bury us for several hours.” It’s a good example of the style and humour of the book in general.

I suspect this book will be enjoyed more by adults or good readers who get the jokes than by younger, average or reluctant readers. It is still worth having, though, for its sheer, entertaining silliness.

Children’s Books: Cicada Summer by Kate Constable

Kate Constable, the Tamora Pierce of Australian YA fantasy, is back after two mainstream YA novels for Allen and Unwin’s Girlfriend Fiction imprint. The Girlfriend books were good enough, but fantasy is what this author does best, so her return to the fantastical is very welcome.

Unlike the Chanters Of Tremaris series, Cicada Summer (Allen & Unwin) is set firmly in present-day Australia, complete with drought. It has some elements of Tom’s Midnight Garden and Bid Time Return, but gives the time travel theme a twist. I won’t say more about this lest I spoil the ending.

Eloise, a gifted artist who has “gone quiet” after losing her mother in a car accident, has been taken back to her father’s home town in country Victoria, and left with her crotchety grandmother, Mo. Mo has been writing a book about sea voyages for 20 years, despite never having seen the sea, and has panic attacks on leaving the house and yard. She isn’t crazy about having her granddaughter stay, but feels Eloise is better off with her than with her father, who is throwing all his energies into building a convention center in the town.

Exploring, Eloise visits the huge house owned by her father’s family, which is falling to pieces, and finds herself travelling to a time when the house is an artist’s retreat run by a family with a daughter about her own age, Anna. To her surprise, Eloise finds herself becoming Anna’s imaginary friend, whom only Anna can see or hear. Could Anna be her mother? Eloise doesn’t know, but she does start talking again, if only with Anna. Meanwhile, can she stop her father and his latest girlfriend from tearing down the old house for a convention center?

As well as being a good story, this warm-hearted, gentle tale has plenty of meat for class discussion.

Children’s Books: The Gimlet Eye by James Roy

In this third installment of the spin-off of the popular Quentaris shared-world series, a character from the original series is actually killed off, something that doesn’t usually happen in shared universes. As it happens in the prologue, it’s no secret.

The Archon, ruler of Quentaris, is dying. His horrible nephew Florian is persuaded to finish him off rather than wait for his inevitable death. Florian’s “friend” Janus (as in the two-faced god?) reminds him of the prophecy that declares that anyone who kills the previous ruler will rule properly himself. Janus, of course, has his own agenda.

Meanwhile, the adult magicians have been banished to a very nasty part of the city (well, they can’t be exiled elsewhere, short of being thrown overboard, since Quentaris has been travelling from one vortex to another). The younger ones, such as Tab Vidler, former Dung Brigader and recently an apprentice magician, and her friend Amelia, have been spared the dungeons, but left to their own devices. Tab is back to shovelling dung, though on a farm rather than the streets, while Amelia is working at a pub. Torby, the boy rescued in the first novel, The Spell of Undoing, is lying in hospital in a catatonic state. Nobody knows how this happened, except, of course, the reader.

That conceited ac-tor, Fontagu Wizroth the Third, has been ordered to do a command performance of a play called The Gimlet Eye for the new Emperor’s birthday, and he’s thrilled. Tab, Amelia and their friend, the former pirate Verris, can’t persuade Fontagu that there’s something fishy going on...

In my opinion, this one is the best so far in the new series. We learn more about the characters and their feelings. The adventure is exciting but straightforward enough for the young readers for whom this is an introduction to fantasy. At the same time, there’s a murder in the first chapter; there’s no tiptoeing around the issue. What happens to the adult magicians is also scary. But there’s still plenty of humor, maybe more than there’s been since the original series. In the end, Fontagu is shown in a more positive light than before.

The only thing is, while you can probably get something out of this book without having read the others, you really do need to have read them to understand properly what’s going on. The series is no longer a lot of related but individual titles.

Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.

Children’s Books: How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

If you’ve only read this writer’s wonderful but grim “Magic Or Madness” trilogy, in which the heroine could choose to die young or go insane, you’re in for a surprise from the very, very funny How to Ditch Your Fairy.

Magic is here again, but there are no penalties for using it and no actual magic users anyway.

Imagine a world in which everyone is born with their own personal fairy. You don’t see or hear it, you just see its effects. It might be an always-on-time fairy or one which ensures that cats like you or that you have good hair. You don’t, unfortunately, get to choose. There are ways of exchanging fairies with a co-operative friend, but they’re not easy or pleasant.

Charlie, who attends New Avalon Sports High, is stuck with a parking fairy, which helps find the perfect parking spot. The trouble is, Charlie doesn’t even like cars and is only 14 anyway. Why, she complains, couldn’t she have been born with a shopping fairy like her friend Rochelle, who can always find wonderful clothes at great prices? Or an “every-boy-will-like-you” fairy like that awful girl Fiorenze, who has a constant train of boys following her, including the cute new boy Steffi, who looked like boyfriend material when Charlie first met him?

She just has to get rid of that fairy! Fiorenze, whose parents are fairy experts, is surprisingly willing to trade, and the girls find a way to do it quickly. But Charlie soon finds that you need to be careful what you wish for, as does Fiorenze. Time to find another way to ditch their respective fairies and hope that their places will be filled with more congenial ones. It’s a more dangerous way, but hey, they’re desperate!

This novel is hilarious. It’s a perfectly good young adult novel of the sort teen girls enjoy, but goes where the average teen girl novel doesn’t. One element makes all the difference.

Highly recommended for girls from 14 upwards.

Children’s Book: The Nest by Paul Jennings

Paul Jennings is best known as the author of quirky, over-the-top and often laugh-out-loud funny books, both short stories and very short novels for reluctant readers. As such, he never even got near the annual children’s book awards, though he kept winning prizes voted on by the children themselves. His books sold in the millions, and were adored by children but they just didn’t win prizes from adult judges. In 2006 he finally wrote a full-length semi-autobiographical novel, How Hedley Hopkins Did A Dare, and that got on the annual short list of the Children's Book Council of Australia.

In recent years, the collections of funny stories children love so much have dried up. I have had to keep telling my young library users that no, that thick book of short stories by Paul Jennings wasn’t new, it was just a collection of stories they had already read. There was one book for adults on how to get your kids reading, but that was all.

Now we find that he has, after all, been writing something, this time for young adults. And so sorry, fans of Jennings’ humor, but this book isn’t funny: not even a tiny bit. The Nest (Penguin Australia) is for those who have left the realm of over-the-top humour and want teen angst.

In some ways, even Jennings’ funny books were about angst. That’s what made them funny. They were about the awful things that you go through when you’re growing up, exaggerated and made over-the-top funny. The Nest is just about angst.

In some ways, though, it does still go over-the-top. The average teenager having troubles with family and friends doesn’t suffer vivid mental images of murdering his father and wonder if he’s going insane.

Teenager Robin lives with his father in Victoria’s snow fields. Kids ski as a part of daily life, not as a sport. When Robin was a baby, his mother left, leaving only a couple of relics, which Robin has kept hidden. There is a mystery here. He doesn’t know why she left, though his father keeps telling him it was because of Robin, and he has never found out where she went.

Robin doesn’t seem to have many friends, if any. He is attracted to the beautiful and moral Charlie, who is an environmentalist and raises money to bring refugee children to the snow for a holiday. His feelings are all over the place -- anger with his father, whom he believes has driven his mother away, horror at his own mental images, love for Charlie, confusion and hurt that his mother has never made contact. He expresses his feelings in his short stories, which alternate with chapters of the novel.

It’s a good young adult novel, in an interesting setting, with very good rite-of-passage issues. I would have liked to have seen some resolution of the problems between Robin’s father and himself. Robin does the right thing, even saves his father’s life, but...

The novel does finish with one of Robin’s stories, in which he recognizes that the “snake” he fears is a part of himself and needs to be dealt with. We can only hope that this will end with his reconciliation with his father, some time after the novel ends.

Children’s Books: A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard

A Small Free Kiss In The Dark (Allen and Unwin) by Glenda Millard is a story about ordinary people in an unexpected war.

Skip, a boy who has been living in abusive foster homes, runs away. On the streets, he meets Billy, an old man who has his own painful memories and has been living rough or in refuges. Billy has learned how to survive there without losing his soul and he has begun to teach Skip how to do the same when, overnight, the city is bombed.

The old man and young boy take refuge, at first, in the State Library, where they meet Max, a little boy who was waiting for his mother to pick him up after school when the bombs started to drop. The city is becoming less and less safe and the three head along the railway tracks towards Dreamland, a now-abandoned amusement park by the sea. There, they are joined by dancer Tia and her baby, Sixpence. Skip overcomes his grief at his loss of his father with this family, something he has not known in a long time. Billy also needs to purge his own grief at having made a mistake that lost him his own son.

The city in the novel is clearly meant to be Melbourne, but is never named and there are some differences. We are never told who the invaders are, or why they have invaded, because that’s not the point. The point is, how might people treat each other when suddenly home is no more -- for anyone? In A Small Free Kiss in the Dark, people can be kind to each other -- even an invading soldier can suddenly realize that this horror isn’t what he signed up for. There is a new family made up of Skip, who can’t remember having a family apart from a soldier father suffering post-traumatic stress disorder; Billy, who lost his child; Max, who had a family and misses his mother and Tia, who has become a mother far too young and has no one to care for her and her child.

The book provides food for thought and should appeal to children of 11 or 12 and upwards.

Children’s Books: The Diary of Laura’s Twin by Kathy Kacer

In The Diary of Laura’s Twin (Allen & Unwin) we meet Laura, a middle class Canadian Jewish girl about to do her bat mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony Jewish girls do at the age of 12. She has already raised money for African charities and as far as she is concerned, she has done her bat mitzvah project.

The rabbi running the bar/bat mitzvah preparation class has other ideas. He asks his students to do another project, in which each of them will be “twinned” with a child who never had the chance to do their own coming of age during the Holocaust.

At first, Laura is annoyed. She has studied the Holocaust at school and right now, she has homework, sports and other activities to keep her busy. However, she agrees to pay one visit to Mrs. Mandelkorn, an elderly woman who hands her a diary, translated into English, of a girl called Sara Gittler, who was in the Warsaw Ghetto, just before the uprising. Despite herself, Laura is drawn into Sara’s story. She begins to wonder how she would feel if, like Sara, she had a lot more to worry about than her own small problems. Sara’s diary also inspires her to help a friend find the courage to do the right thing after witnessing an incident of racist vandalism. If people had had such courage during the war, she believes, perhaps the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened.

The Diary of Laura’s Twin ends with some biographies of real people involved in the Ghetto uprising, plus a man who looked after orphans, mentioned in the novel. It includes some useful Web sites for those who want to follow up the subject. The photos throughout the book are well chosen and remind you that while the characters are fictional, the background isn’t. In these days of Holocaust denial that’s important.

I declare my interest, here, as the child of Holocaust survivors, one of whom, my father, was a survivor of the Ghetto uprising. As such, I found it hard even to start this book, though I’m glad I did. To be honest, I didn’t find it quite as powerful as Once, Morris Gleitzman’s child Holocaust novel. However, it’s a good introduction to the subject for children. Apparently, “twinning” is a genuine activity, which the author had witnessed, giving her the idea for the story. I haven’t heard of it, myself, but found it interesting.

The language is simple and even reluctant readers should be able to manage it. Recommended.

Children’s Books: Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell

Riley Rose is stuck at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp, just when she was about to get close and personal with that hunk Ben. It’s filled with Christian teenagers and camp counsellors who blow bugles at you and make you sing around camp fires, when you’re not memorizing Bible quotes or having presentations on the domestic life of the mallee fowl.

Of course, there’s the very hunkish Craig, but he’s not all he seems. Besides, he’s with Riley’s roommate, Fleur, and Fleur is not about to share. Then there’s Dylan, who used to be Craig’s friend and is equally good-looking, before an accident left him in a wheelchair. He’s back at camp, but no one seems sure what the accident actually was, and he’s not saying.

Riley has her own issues, centered party around her mother’s death from cancer, her father’s new partner and her own overweight state.

There’s an entire genre of fiction about a wilderness camp and a troubled teenager who finds answers there, despite being originally reluctant to go. I have reviewed one, Solo by Alyssa Brugman, in the last year. Everything Beautiful isn’t quite as grim as Solo, although it’s also readable and broken into easily digestible short chapters.

Riley has issues to sort out, but she also has things to teach the other campers, even those who mock her weight and call her a slut. That is perhaps less common in summer camp fiction. Before the novel is over, she is also feeling sympathy even for the worst of them, which helps her. And the beautiful Ben, when he appears, is a comical character rather than the hunk she remembers.

I do have a nitpick or two. Dylan’s accident turns out to have been far less dramatic than was implied at the start and has no real bearing on the story. It would be OK if the issue was about how he handles his confinement to a wheelchair, but he seems to have sorted out most of that before the story begins. I can sort of see why the author plays around with the possible reasons for the accident, but for me, it didn’t quite work.

Still, Riley is a likeable, sympathetic character and the novel makes some serious points in a humorous context. Teenage girls will enjoy it, whether or not they follow it up by seeking out Thomas More’s Utopia, which is quoted throughout the book.

H.I.V.E. #3: Escape Velocity by Mark Walden

Escape Velocity is the third of Mark Walden’s H.I.V.E. novels. While a number of loose ends are tied up in this one, it produces some more, including a new antagonist to the heroes, and there will be more in the series -- perhaps a new story arc, now that this one is finished. One prediction I made in my review of the first novel turned out to be correct, if not complete, since there was more information in the second novel.

In this series, the heroes are all villains. H.I.V.E. (the Higher Institute of Villainous Education) is a sort of Hogwarts for young super-baddies, run by G.L.O.VE, an organisation of international criminals. Each of the students has a special skill of one kind or another. The hero, Otto Malpense, has three friends whose particular skills help him to save the day. Scottish Laura is a computer genius who had been caught hacking into a military communications system to find out what the other girls at school were saying about her. American girl Shelby is a former jewel thief who can open any lock. Otto’s best friend Wing is brilliant in martial arts.

Otto has discovered that he can use his mind to interface with computer systems. It’s a skill he’s going to need. After saving the school and the world from an insane artificial intelligence overlord in the previous book, the friends discover their troubles aren’t over by any means. Principal Maximilian Nero has been kidnapped by a mysterious organisation called H.O.P.E (one has to love all these acronyms). His bodyguard, the ninja Raven, appears to have been killed while attempting to rescue him. Number One, head of G.L.O.V.E., doesn’t seem to care. He has his own plans, including replacing Dr. Nero with a woman who had betrayed the school in the previous novel. She, in her turn, has her orders. One of these seems to be “extracting” Otto and his friends from the school, taking them to an unknown destination. Just as well that Raven isn’t dead after all, and that some other characters thought dead are also still alive.

The first book in this series was very funny as well as an entertaining adventure. The whole notion of a school for super-villains was delightful. The trouble is, you can only get away with the joke for one novel, as the author seems to have realized, so the next two novels have put the accent on the adventure and pretty much left out the humor. Another problem is that you forget that these characters are supposed to be in training to be the next generation of super-villains of the kind who plot to take over the world and try to kill James Bond. Dr. Nero is starting to turn into Dumbledore, if not as shrewd or witty. Otto and his friends enjoy their studies, but really, they’re just a technical version of wizards. I think, in the next book, we need to be reminded what these teenagers are actually supposed to be studying, or what’s the point? There’s a tiny bit of humor, but very little.

Still, as an adventure, it works. There’s a lot of hardware and software in this book -- ah, if we could only create invisibility suits in real life.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Graveyard Book By Neil Gaiman

Bod -- short for Nobody -- has been orphaned early, by a murderer known only as “the man Jack” who had killed his entire family and is still on the hunt for him. Not until late in the book does he learn why.

In the meantime he is rescued by a community of ghosts in the graveyard on the hill of a small but ancient town. There, he is cared for by the kindly ghosts of Mr. and Mrs. Owens, tutored by other ghosts and mentored by the only graveyard inhabitant who can leave the cemetery for food and other things a living child might need: Silas, a vampire. Between his toddler years and his late teens, Bod has many adventures.

Sound familiar? It should. In fact, in an afterword to The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins), author Neil Gaiman admits he was thinking of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, although Gaiman’s tale also has a strong flavour of Ray Bradbury, if you can imagine that most American of writers as British.

The Graveyard Book is more or less a series of connected short stories; in fact, Chapter four, “The Witch’s Headstone,” was first published as a short story.

It works, in any case. Like all of Neil Gaiman’s works, this one is very readable, with the elements of good story and good characters. Despite its gruesome background, this novel is gentle, quite suitable for children to read.

Chris Riddell’s beautiful cartoon-like illustrations go perfectly with the text.

Highly recommended.

Children’s Books: Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta

Australian, readers will certainly have heard of Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta’s wonderful first novel about the immigrant experience, seen through the eyes of a young Italian girl living in Sydney, trying to cope with various teen problems, including those headaches you have when you’re having to worry about all the old ladies of the community who mind your business for you. Even if you’re not Australian, you may well have fallen in love with Sydney through the gloriously warm, feel-good movie based on the novel.

In the last few years, Marchetta has written two other books, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road, both of which were a long way from Alibrandi.

In her fourth novel, she has returned to the migrant experience. Or, to be more accurate, the refugee experience. However, she’s done it in a way that many writers have used to make comments about our world: through the medium of speculative fiction.

In Finnikin of the Rock (Penguin Australia), the title character has been travelling the various lands to which half the population of his homeland, Lumatere, have fled since the royal family was murdered and many Lumaterans massacred by the followers of a usurper.

Ten years have gone by and Finnikin and his mentor, Sir Topher, have been visiting the various refugee camps and rulers in the kingdoms surrounding Lumatere. Nobody can get in or out of Lumatere, which is surrounded by a magical mist that was produced by a dying priestess as she was being burned at the stake. Only the rightful heir can lead the refugee Lumaterans home and dispel the mist. There is a rumour that Prince Balthazar -- one of Finnikin’s two best friends -- may still be alive, but no one has seen him since his family died. Should Finnikin and Topher try to create a new homeland for the exiles? Should they trust Evanjelin, a novice of the Lumateran Goddess, who says she can walk through the sleep of the people behind the mist and knows what is happening at home? There is, in fact, something very familiar about her.

There’s magic in this novel, as you’d expect in fantasy, but that’s all. There are no dark lords, no evil sorcerers or large-bosomed witches, no immortal Dark Riders to chase a Chosen One. And when you do finally learn about the Chosen One, you think that if you were chosen that way, you’d plead with God to choose someone else!

There are only humans, good and bad. The bad ones are ordinary people, doing what they can get away with. Even the usurper king is wisely kept offstage rather than made the novel’s villain. Not all Lumaterans are good guys. Some have lost their identity and children are growing up without their language or culture.

In some ways, I think Finnikin of the Rock might have worked better if we could see a few Lumaterans who aren’t victims and who are so comfortable they don’t want to return, despite losing their identity. But the story takes place only ten years after the exile and wounds would still be raw.

Still, it does work, at least partly because the author doesn’t beat you around the head with the message as some writers and artists have done in recent years.

Marchetta manages to explore the overall issue of the refugee experience without preaching about any individual group. The style reminds me just a little of Howard Fast, who, apart from his famous historicals such as Spartacus, managed to write a lot of thoughtful SF and fantasy.

I’m not sure how teenagers will feel about a novel which is written like fantasy but isn’t really fantasy, but it’s a good story, with enough action to hold interest, and despite the apparent male focus, it has plenty of strong female characters.

Well worth a look.

Children’s Books: The Time Paradox: Artemis Fowl Book 6 by Eoin Colfer

In Eoin Colfer’s The Time Paradox: Artemis Fowl Book 6, and only a short time after returning from Limbo, saving an entire fairy species and finding the world has moved on by three years, 14-year-old Artemis -- who should be closer to 18 by now -- has another crisis to deal with. His beloved mother is dying of a magical plague that nearly destroyed the main fairy race some time ago. The only cure for it lies in the past, in an animal the younger Artemis had helped to wipe out.

Time travel is possible with the help of demon warlock Number 1, so Artemis travels back nearly eight years with his friend, fairy police operative Captain Holly Short, in hopes of changing the past. But older Artemis has developed a set of ethics and, although he’s still a genius, he has to compete with his younger self who is a criminal genius and firmly convinced that the end justifies the means. Also, he wonders what Holly will say when he has to confess to her the lie he told to convince her to come along on the time journey.

The pair soon find themselves in the middle of a non-stop adventure involving people from their past -- friends, friends-to-be and one particularly nasty enemy. They’re also having to fight to keep their precious almost-extinct animal from the clutches of a crazy cult that hates animals so much that the members are mostly vegetarians who will happily wipe out entire species but won’t eat them!

As with all Eoin Colfer’s novels I have read, I happily sat back and let myself be swept along. The author has cleverly worked out his time paradox so that the ending explains things about the beginning of the series. Despite that, there are hints that this is not the last in the series, though he’ll have to end it some time -- I mean, how long can Artemis stay a teenager? And what about Minerva, the girl genius he met in the last novel? Will she turn up again?

As in the previous novel, there are “Gnommish” letters forming a message at the bottom of the pages, but I can’t tell you what they say because there is no key at the back of this one. I think there should have been, since it’s less bother than having to go back and haul out Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony. I simply ignored the letters and enjoyed the story.

One more little nit-pick. The novel takes place over the space of three days. During that time, almost nobody seems to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom. Not just that they don’t -- they don’t have time to do it! Well, maybe younger Artemis does, because he has his faithful bodyguard Butler to pilot the plane and make arrangements for him. But present-day Artemis and Holly don’t. Now, it may be that fairy biology allows them to stay awake for long periods (and by the way, fairies do go to the bathroom, as is mentioned in passing). But older Artemis is awake -- apart from a bit of unconsciousness -- the whole time. He gets tired now and then and finally sleeps when the main danger is over. But that’s after three days of running around from Ireland to Africa and back and travelling through time.

Still, the book is a fine addition to this delightful universe. I’ve said it before and will say it again: this series is going to be a classic.

Children’s Books: Word of Honour by Michael Pryor

Rejoice! Aubrey Fitzwilliam, that Miles Vorkosigan of alternative universe Edwardian England, is back for yet another deliciously entertaining outing, along with his friends George and Caroline.

After their excursion to Lutetia (Paris) in Heart of Gold, the trio are finally back to start their first term at university. But Aubrey is never going to be allowed to study in peace. For one thing, he’s still having trouble with his condition (being technically dead). He hasn’t told his parents, though Caroline has figured it out. Then there’s the outing on a new submersible ship for the navy, which someone is trying to sabotage. And that’s not all they’re trying to do. Someone tried to assassinate Lady Rose, Aubrey’s scientist mother, while she and Caroline were on an expedition to the Arctic. And Aubrey’s nemesis, Mordecai Tremaine, formerly Sorcerer Royal, who had killed Caroline’s father while attempting to start World War I, is back in Albion, singing in light opera. Only trouble is, Aubrey seems to be the only one who can recognize him. What can he be up to?

Aubrey, George and Caroline have to save Albion yet again, and very enjoyably they do it too, in yet another breathtaking adventure laced with plenty of humour and characters you care about.

For those who missed out on the first two books of this series, the premise is that magic not only works, but can be taught. It works like science -- hence the “laws of magic” of the series title. I laughed out loud during one scene when George suggests an outing to see a sleight-of-hand artist (this universe’s version of a stage magician) and Aubrey sneers that these so-called sleight-of-hand artists are just using magic. But because of this one difference, the world is run very differently, though it seems very similar to ours. There are medical magicians and research magicians. Even electricity is run by magic. A magical damper is used in one scene to protect a bank from robbers who might otherwise use magic.

This is a terrific series that just keeps getting better. Start with Blaze of Glory or Heart of Gold then come back to this one. You won’t regret it.

Children’s Books: Sovay by Celia Rees

Several years ago, I read this author’s first book, Witch Child, an historical adventure set in 17th century Massachusetts, in a colony started by people thrown out of Salem for being too extremist. It was an enjoyable piece of historical fiction and the author has since written three more books.

Sovay (Bloomsbury) is set in 18th century England and Revolutionary France. As in Witch Child, the story is seen through the eyes of a young woman. It appears to be inspired by a traditional ballad which was about a girl who dressed as a man and held up a coach to test her sweetheart. The boy in the ballad passed the test. The fiancé of the heroine of this novel fails spectacularly, but it turns out to be the least of her worries.

Sovay Middleton, daughter of a middleclass radical, has been left alone on the estate. Her idealistic father has gone missing, as has her student brother, who has similar opinions to their father. She knows someone is coming with papers that could destroy her family, but when she uses her highwayman disguise to get them, she finds a lot more than she was expecting. Her father has some dangerous enemies.

On her way to London, to find out what has happened, she is helped by a number of good people, including her family steward’s son, an American spy and a genuine highwayman. But she needs to escape England and her troubles spill over into France, where Robespierre rules and all English are considered spies.

Sovay is another enjoyable adventure which may appeal to girls who like a little more than the standard teen romance. The only thing is, there are a number of men who seem to be attracted to Sovay and you aren’t quite expecting the man she ends up with. It’s as if the author has decided Sovay has to have someone and added a character for that purpose. Sovay is a strong character, if a little too perfect and the novel gives a good picture of the era.

Children’s Books: Araminta Spookie #5: Ghostsitters by Angie Sag

Araminta Spookie #5: Ghostsitters (HarperCollins) is the fifth in a popular children’s series about Araminta Spookie, who lives in a sort of Addams Family mansion with her Uncle Drac, her Aunt Tabby, Brenda and Barry Wizzard and their daughter Wanda, as well as three ghosts: Sir Horace, his page Edmund and their dog Fang.

Don’t worry if your child hasn’t read the four earlier books in this series. The book stands alone quite well.

In this adventure, the adults go off for a week’s holiday in Transylvania, leaving Araminta and Wanda to be babysat. The babysitter is Minty’s cool Goth cousin, Mathilda. Unfortunately, Mathilda, whose parents are ghostbusters, is accompanied by two teenage poltergeists, Jed and Ned, who proceed to turn the house upside down and cause Sir Horace, a mild-mannered old ghost, to threaten to leave. What’s most annoying is that nobody will be making a fuss of Minty on her birthday.

Children should find Ghostsitters to be just gross enough to be amusing, but not truly disgusting. The worst you’ll find in this is grilled gummi bears on toast and inedible pizza that has been dropped in the mud. It’s likely to be enjoyed by children in the middle to late years of primary school.