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Books to Treasure: Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon

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‘This is a tale about a big city.
It’s a tale of hotdogs and music and the summertime subway breeze.
It’s a tale of singing on rooftops and toffees that stick to your teeth.
But most of all, it’s the tale of Herman and Rosie.’

This wonderful little blurb captures the essence of Gus Gordon’s magnificent new picture book, Herman and Rosie.

From the moment I set eyes on the stunning cover of Herman and Rosie, I fell in love with this book.  Every time I see it I want to read it again. You know that this is a story that Gus loved bringing to life because you can see all the love that has gone into the creation of the book.  Each page is so detailed and filled with different characters.  One of things I love to do in Gus’ books is find all the different characters on each page.  For example, on one page, there’s a bear on a scooter, a fox and a mole in suits, and a mother hippo taking her baby for a walk.   One of the things I especially love about the illustrations in Herman and Rosie is the different media that Gus has used on each page. You can see he has used pencil, crayon, water colour paints, photos of objects, coffee cup stains, bits of newspaper and advertisements, and postcards (among various other bits and pieces).  He’s used all of these different types of media in interesting and imaginative ways to achieve different effects on the page.

The story is all about the two characters of the title and Gus really brings them to life.  I think the reason I love the story so much is because both Herman and Rosie are interesting and quirky characters.  I really like the way that Gus describes them and their likes.  Herman likes ‘pot plants, playing the oboe, wild boysenberry yoghurt, the smell of hotdogs in the winter and watching films about the ocean,’ and Rosie likes ‘pancakes, listening to old jazz records, the summertime subway breeze, toffees that stuck to her teeth, singing on the fire escape…and watching films about the ocean.’  By telling us their likes, we figure out that they’ve got something in common.  It’s a story filled with hope and it and leaves you feeling incredibly happy.  It’s guaranteed to cheer anyone up and put a spring in their step.

Teachers or school librarians who are looking for great picture books for older readers should add Herman and Rosie to their collection.  Older readers will enjoy the story and they’ll love the intricate illustrations.

Herman and Rosie truly is a book to treasure and to read over and over again. It will make your toes tingle and make you feel like you have ‘eaten honey straight from the jar.’

5 out of 5 stars

 

Happy Roald Dahl Day!

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Today is Roald Dahl Day, a day to celebrate the splendiferous Roald Dahl and his wonderful books.  He wrote some of the funniest, most memorable stories for kids.  There are all sorts of ways that you can celebrate, like:

  • Wear something yellow – Roald Dahl’s favourite colour
  • Kalt sdrawkcab
  • Tell a silly joke – Roald Dahl loved swapping these with his kids
  • Write your own Revolting Rhyme
  • Read a Roald Dahl book that you’ve never read before – and if you’ve read them all, read your favourite again!
  • Make yourself a pair of gigantic BFG ears – and waggle them.

Check out these other Scrumdiddlyumptious Ways to Celebrate Roald Dahl Day.  There are heaps of other activity ideas, including quizzes about Roald Dahl and his characters that you can download on the Roald Dahl Day website.

If you love Roald Dahl and have read all his books, here’s some great books by other authors that you might like:

What is your favourite Roald Dahl book?

Eve and Adam book trailer

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Eve and Adam is one of my most anticipated books of the year.  It’s written by two amazing authors (and husband and wife) Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate.  They’re both amazing authors in their own right, but I’m looking forward to seeing how their imaginations come together in the same story.

Eve and Adam is due out in NZ on 1st October.

Guest Author: Cristy Burne on her Top 5 demons

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Today I’m joined by the wonderful Cristy Burne, author of the fantastic spooky, adventure series, Takeshita Demons.  Cristy tells us about her Top 5 demons from her series so far.

Demons. I love them. I also love monsters, mythical creatures, spooky feelings and freaky things that go bump in the night. Woah. I get shivers just thinking about them.

My Takeshita Demons books are overflowing with spooky monsters and demons from Japanese folklore, called yōkai. Anyone who’s heard of Pokemon, played with Yu-Gi-Oh, read manga or even bought a lotto ticket has probably encountered a yōkai. (Remember that lucky cat with the beckoning paw?) There are hundreds of yōkai and they’ve been popular in Japan for hundreds of years. Some are hugely famous, like the nine-tailed fox or the shape-shifting tanuki, but others are obscure and strange. My books feature lots of different demons, but here are my top five from the series so far:

1. Akaname (The Filth Licker) 垢嘗

The demon you really want for a friend. He’s loyal and funny and he loves to clean, so you don’t have to. In traditional tales, he comes out at night to lick dirty bathrooms till they sparkle… In my books, he also cleans laundries, kitchens, dirty faces, you name it. Plus his super-sensitive tongue can taste out clues. He’s like a detective in a frog’s skin.

2. Sagari (Hanging horse-head) 下がり

This demon gets a prize for Weird Monster of the Year: It’s basically a horse’s head that floats around upside-down, has electric nose hairs, sharp teeth, and a habit of dropping on you unexpectedly. St-range! And dangerous!

3. Kodama (Tree spirit) 木魂

I love big, old trees, and in Japanese culture, these ancient trees are often home to kodama (http://hyakumonogatari.com/category/magical-tree-stories/), spirits who mimic the sounds of the forest and cause echoes to bounce through the woods. A kodama’s tree trunk is tied with a sacred rope, called a shimenawa. If you cut down such a tree, you’re in for some very bad luck.

4. Noppera-bō (Faceless ghost) のっぺら坊

This shape-shifting yōkai can wipe features from its face like words from a whiteboard. The noppera-bō can take the shape of any person: it could be your best friend, your mum, your teacher… There’s no way to tell unless you look in a mirror: a noppera-bō’s reflection will have no face! So, is the person sitting next to you really who you think they are?

5. Betobeto-san (Mr Footsteps) べとべとさん

Almost everyone has had the feeling they’re being followed. Well, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is…you ARE being followed. The good news is, you’re being followed by Betobeto-san, a sort of oversized, invisible marshmallow on legs. He eats the sound of your footsteps, but don’t worry: he’s quite shy and not at all dangerous (unless you’re allergic to marshmallows?).

Thanks Cristy for your wonderful post about your Top 5 demons!  I highly recommend Cristy’s Takeshita Demons series, especially if you like spooky, adventure stories.  You can learn more about Cristy and her books on her blog at http://cristyburne.wordpress.com.  Here are some links to some of the cool stuff on her blog:

Monster Matsuri: http://cristyburne.wordpress.com/monster-matsuri/
Takeshita Demons series:
http://cristyburne.wordpress.com/takeshita-demons-series/
Free activities http://cristyburne.wordpress.com/free-stuff/
Monster memory game http://cristyburne.com/game/game.html

Don’t forget to enter our Takeshita Demons Monster Prize Competition for your chance to win a $50 book pack from Walker Books Australia.

Guest Author: Glenn Wood talks about The Brain Sucker

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When I first came up with the idea for ‘The Brain Sucker’ it was quite different.  For a start it wasn’t called “The Brain Sucker’, it was called ‘The Manners Thief’.  This was an idea I’d been mulling over ever since I’d seen a really badly behaved kid running riot at my local supermarket (‘The frozen pea thrower’ was another working title).   It was as if the child had no manners at all and I wondered if someone had stolen them.  Then I started to notice more badly behaved children and decided there was definitely a manners thief on the loose.

From there I had to work out just how the manners were stolen and I came up with the idea of a villain who sucked the manners straight out of children’s heads for his own nefarious purposes.  Clearly he needed a machine that would do this and the brain sucking machine was born.

Now I had an idea and a villain with an evil plan.  Next I needed someone to stop him and I knew that would need to be someone who was really polite and not scared of a challenge.  Callum formed quickly as did his disability because it automatically made him a kid used to adversity with plenty of guts and determination.  Once I knew Callum would be in a wheelchair it opened up lots of possibilities for his friend Sophie to exercise her crazy inventive mind to ‘trick it out’.

Jinx was a character I’d been thinking about for some time.  I love the idea of the world’s unluckiest boy and he is based on me as a kid (and many would argue, as an adult).  I’ve always been accident prone and susceptible to bad luck.  He was easy to write!

Once the story was written my very smart publisher and editor asked if we could have the machine sucking more than just manners out of the kids – it would be much more evil if Lester sucked the goodness out of them.  I agreed and ‘the Brain Sucker’ started to take shape.

Writing Lester and his dumb but dangerous henchmen Darryl and Parson was lots of fun.  Lester is clearly insane but he’s also a twisted genius, my favourite kind of villain!  His plans are grandiose and a bit far farfetched, but I love evil doers who think on a grand scale, which is why I have always loved the villains in James Bond films!

My top five kid’s villains in no particular order would be:

  • Voldemort (of course)
  • Scar (The Lion King)
  • Megamind (best comic villain)
  • Principal Agatha Trunchbull (Roald Dahl’s Matilda)
  • Count Olaf

You can win a signed copy of Glenn’s fantastic book, The Brain Sucker, right here on the blog.  Check out the competition post and tell me about your world domination plan to get in the draw.

Jeremy Corbett reads The Brain Sucker

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NZ comedian and presenter of 7 Days, Jeremy Corbett reads the prologue to Glenn Wood’s fantastic new book, The Brain Sucker.  It’s one of the coolest books I’ve read lately and you can read my review here.

Tomorrow I’ll have 5 signed copies of The Brain Sucker up for grabs, so make sure you pop back and enter the draw.

My Christchurch Writer’s Festival Experience

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Thanks to my wonderful library, Christchurch City Libraries, I was lucky enough to attend some great sessions at the Christchurch Writer’s Festival at the weekend.  We’ve all been waiting for the festival to be held in Christchurch for 4 years so it was great to see it go ahead this year.  And what a festival it was!

The sessions that I attended related more to writing for children and teens, so I got to meet local authors Kate De Goldi and Jane Higgins, and international authors John Boyne and Joanne Harris.  My highlights were interviewing one of my favourite authors, John Boyne, and the Why YA? panel on Sunday.  I was blogging like crazy all weekend on the Christchurch City Libraries blog, so for those who couldn’t be there you can read my festival reports and interviews here:

I’m running two giveaways of books I got signed at the festival too if you’d like to enter:

The Brain Sucker by Glenn Wood

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I love a story with a great villain.  Some of them, like Patrick Ness’ Mayor Prentice and Chris Morphew’s Noah Shackleton, you hate so much because they’re incredibly evil men (and you really want to punch them in the face!).  Other villains are quite likeable because, no matter how hard they try, things really don’t work out for them.  Lester Smythe, in Glenn Wood’s fantastic debut children’s book, The Brain Sucker, is one such villain.

How would you act if part of your personality was stolen with a brain-sucking machine?

Lester Smythe has a black heart. He s invented a dangerous brain-sucking machine that removes the goodness from its victims, and he intends to use it to rid the world of all human kindness. But Lester didn t count on thirteen-year-old Callum McCullock and his two best friends, Sophie and Jinx. The trio vow to destroy the brain sucker. And nothing will stop them.

The Brain Sucker is one of the coolest junior fiction (middle grade) books I’ve read in ages!  The idea is original, the story is action-packed, the heroes are unlike any you’ve met before and the villain is sinister.  From the very first page, when the villain slinks onto the page, I knew I was going to love the story, and I greedily turned the pages wanting to know how it would end.

Lester Smythe is a sinister villain, but there’s also something awkward about him.  He reminded me of a cross between Gru (from Despicable Me) and Professor Doofenshmirtz (from Phineas and Ferb) and I almost expected him to announce that his brain sucking machine was the ‘Brain-suckinator.’ I think Craig Phillips has perfectly captured Lester in his front cover illustration (I especially like the way that Lester’s eyes catch the light).  Lester’s plan is to rid the world of goodness because anyone acting good makes him physically sick, due to a horrible experience when he was younger.  The machine that will help him with his task is the Brain Sucker, which sucks the goodness right out of people’s heads.  It’s up to the heroes of the story to save the day (and the world from becoming a miserable place).

The heroes of the story, Callum, Sophie and Jinx are unlike any heroes I’ve met before.  They all have flaws but they manage to overcome these to help save the day.  Callum is paralysed from the waist down so he’s wheelchair bound, but he’s really determined and doesn’t let his disability get in his way.  He’s also got one of the coolest wheelchairs around!  Sophie is Callum’s best friend and she’s incredibly talented and intelligent.  She has a mechanical mind, so she can make improvements to her toys or invent new gadgets to help her friend.  Her only problem is that she gets claustrophobic.  Jinx is the funniest character in the book, because he has really bad luck.  He’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether it’s a gas main exploding under his school desk or bird dive-bombing him.  You always know something bad is going to happen when he’s around, especially when his thumb starts to dance.

If you’re after a fun story, full of adventure, mystery, magic, exciting gadgets, and great characters, The Brain Sucker is the book for you.  I’d recommend it for 9+ and it would be a great read-aloud for Year 5-8.

4 out of 5 stars

Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield

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I can only think of a handful of books, among all the books I’ve ever read, that I’ll carry around in my head and my heart for the rest of my life.  Sometimes it’s the characters, the setting, or the feel of the book, and sometimes it’s the combination of all those things at exactly the right time.  When I first read the synopsis of Vikki Wakefield’s latest book, Friday Brown, I had a feeling that it was going to be one of those books.  As soon as I started reading it, I knew I wouldn’t be the same when I’d finished it.

I am Friday Brown.  I buried my mother. My grandfather buried a swimming pool.  A boy who can’t speak has adopted me.  A girl kissed me.  I broke and entered.  Now I’m fantasising about a guy who’s a victim of crime and I am the criminal.  I’m going nowhere and every minute I’m not moving, I’m being tailgated by a curse that may or may not be real.  They call me Friday.  It has been foretold that on a Saturday I will drown…

Seventeen-year-old Friday Brown is on the run—running to escape memories of her mother and of the family curse. And of a grandfather who’d like her to stay. She’s lost, alone and afraid.

Silence, a street kid, finds Friday and she joins him in a gang led by beautiful, charismatic Arden. When Silence is involved in a crime, the gang escapes to a ghost town in the outback. In Murungal Creek, the town of never leaving, Friday must face the ghosts of her past. She will learn that sometimes you have to stay to finish what you started—and often, before you can find out who you are, you have to become someone you were never meant to be.

Friday Brown is simply one of the most powerful, beautifully written stories I’ve ever read.  It’s one of those stories that you really lose yourself in and emerge several hours later, with your heart aching and a sense of loss.  You know that you’ll never forget the story, the characters, and the way they made you feel.

Vikki’s characters are always extraordinary and she introduces us to a menagerie of different characters in Friday Brown.  There is a sense of mystery about each of the characters in the book, as they all seem to have something they’re hiding or trying to forget.  I like the way that Vikki peels back the layers of her characters throughout the story and, even at the end, you still feel like you don’t know everything about them.  Although we don’t see much of Friday’s mum, her and her family curse are quite an imposing figure throughout the book.  Friday is forever running to escape the memories of her mother and the family curse that killed her.  If there is one character that I wish I could meet in real life it would be Silence.  He’s one of the most mysterious characters, but also the most loveable.  He’d had such a tough life and I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him everything would be alright.

Apart from Vikki’s characters, I think the thing I liked most about Friday Brown was the mood of the story.  From the first chapter, you get the sense that things aren’t going to end well.  You know that the family curse is hanging over Friday’s head, and this adds a darkness to the story.  You wonder if the curse will catch up to her or will she be able to break it.

Vikki Wakefield’s first book, All I Ever Wanted, was a stunning debut, but Friday Brown has really highlighted her incredible talent.  I would rate her as one of my favourite authors, especially of contemporary YA fiction, and I can’t wait to read what she writes next.  Whatever she does write, I know it will be incredible!

Friday Brown is a book that everyone should read, both teens and adults alike.  You will fall in love with Vikki’s amazing story and make some extraordinary friends along the way.

5 out of 5 stars

Interview with Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of The Tribe

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Today I’m joined by Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of the fantastic new futuristic Young Adult series, The Tribe.  The first book in the series, The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf was released last month and if you haven’t heard all the hype about it you can read my review here on the blog.  I caught up with Ambelin to ask her a few questions about her hot new series.

  • What 5 words would you use to describe The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf?

Wow, it’s really hard to describe your own work!  I guess I can describe what I wanted the story to be…although I think it’s really up to my readers to judge. Here goes:

Mysterious. Dramatic. Thrilling. Smart. Hopeful.

  • What inspired you to write The Tribe series?

Mostly, it was Ashala herself. She is such a strong character, that it would have been impossible for me not to tell her story. From the beginning, the first line of the book has always been the same – ‘He was taking me to the machine.’ Those words followed me around for a few days before I began writing, lurking in my consciousness and demanding that I write more. Then, once I started writing, I had to keep going until I reached the end – I certainly couldn’t leave Ashala trapped in the detention centre!

  • The Tribe has a spiritual connection to the land and the creatures that inhabit it which, I think, makes your story unique. Is this aspect of the story from your own culture?

Yes, it is. Aboriginal people, and Indigenous people from all over the world, have strong connections to our homelands and the ancient spirits of our peoples. Ashala’s world is very different to the one we live in now, of course – the tectonic plates have shifted, creating a single continent, and people no longer make divisions on the basis of race. But Ashala’s ancestors were Aboriginal, so I knew she’d have a deep love for the forest that she lives in. And I knew that her connection to country would be a source of strength and courage for her, the same as it is for Indigenous peoples now.

  • Do you know how the Tribe’s story will end or will you wait to see how the story evolves?

No, I know how it ends. Many of the small details are mysterious to me, but I know where all of the Tribe will be, at the end of the story. And, for this particular story, I think that’s important. I don’t think I could tell it the way that it deserves to be told otherwise.

  • Will we find out more about the abilities of the Tribe and where these came from?

 Oh yes. I didn’t have a lot of narrative space to explore this in the first book, but as the series goes on, readers will find out much more about how all the different abilities function, and what their strengths and limitations are. There’s some tough times coming for the Tribe, too – so they’re all going to have to push themselves, and be able to control their abilities a lot better than most of them can now.

  • How did you find the experience of writing a novel, compared to creating a picture book?

Harder! Much, much harder…also, with picture books, I’d gotten used to being able to pore over every single word until I was satisfied the text was completely perfect. It takes much longer to do that with a novel, which was something I hadn’t realised until I was hopelessly overdue on a deadline.  I think, though, that writing picture books, where you have to tell a complete story in not a lot of text, did teach me to be more disciplined with words than I would have been otherwise. That was helpful. On the other hand, I am going to have to learn to restrain my perfectionist tendencies, or I’ll never get the second book done.

  • What books would you recommend to anyone who enjoyed The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf?

There’s so much great dystopian fiction, and sci fi/fantasy fiction, for young adults – here’s some I’ve particularly enjoyed: Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series, Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series, Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, and Moira Young’s Dustlands series.

 

The next stop on Ambelin’s blog tour is with Celine at http://forget8me8not.blogspot.com.au/.