Four Children and It : Jacqueline Wilson

Four Children and It by Jacqueline Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

E Nesbit was one of those authors who wrote big, thrilling, seditious, moving books that pushed at the boundaries of what defined the genre of children’s literature of her day. And I’d argue, quite happily, that that’s pretty much what Jacqueline Wilson does today. The stylistic parallels of both authors are inescapable.

But for Wilson to write a contemporary spin on Five Children and It? That was a lot for me to think about. I love Five Children and It; I love the darkness, and the family dynamics and the way that sometimes, getting what you wish for may not be what you want. And, to be frank, I didn’t really have high hopes for Four Children and It. If I had anything, I had doubts that it could – well – work.

Four Children and It works. It works really well.

Whilst there’s the obvious plot, kids find Psammead, Psammead grants wishes, wishes aren’t quite what they expect, bla bla yadda yadda, life lessons learnt and that; Four Children and It has a whole whole new level to it.

That level is this: this book is a tribute, a tribute to reading, to literature and to the golden age of children’s literature. In a way it feels like it is closer to Wilson than anything else of hers that I’ve ever read. Four Children and It is rooted in Wilson’s obvious love of children’s literature, of Anthea, Cyril and the lamb, of their siblings one-book-removed of Roberta, Phyllis and Peter, of Mary Lennox, of Meg and Jo and Beth and Amy, of Sara Crewe and of Pauline, Petrova and Posy.

And it’s lovely. It’s genuinely very, very lovely. Each page is full of a sort of palpable pleasure that is impossible to resist.

Four Children and It feels like something quite special. It’s a re-interpretation, a re-imagination of a very lovely text that keeps the source text intact. It’s far too easy to rewrite a story with the noble intention of introducing it to a new audience and through the act of that rewriting suck every inch of pleasure from it. Wilson doesn’t do that. Her writing is so happy throughout that you can’t help but get on board.

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Maggot Moon : Sally Gardner

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There’s a difficulty for me in reviewing this, and one that I hope to address through the act of reviewing. I admit that’s a fairly Moebius-esque sentence but I hope that it becomes clearer the further I go on.

Gardner’s superb. Her writing here is very beautiful, very stunning and occasionally cut from the clearest of glass which shines a little more every time you look at it. But, when I reflect on it, and when that reflection takes days to formulate clearly, I think I realise something. I realise that I don’t think I like this book.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Every book has readers who will fall in love and readers who will collapse in horror at the first sentence, but what I do have my issues with is when people do this and don’t interrogate themselves as to why. And thus, this is my interrogation.

There were elements of this book that I loved; the narrative, spiderwebbing together, pulling images and text and breathless moments of silence into the spiralling bravery and madness of Standish Treadwell. Structurally, it’s brilliant. Short, tight chapters that fade in and out of consciousness, borderline poetic in their brevity and conciseness.

But I think the crux of my curious disconnect with this book as a whole, is the fact that I felt that when it came to it, I didn’t matter. That’s a selfish point of view for a reader to admit to, but I think it’s a vital one to realise. I want to matter to my books, to make some sort of a difference, to actualise and catalyse them, and I don’t think I ever felt like I did matter with Maggot Moon.

That’s all well and good, but what I do acknowledge is that as a conceptual whole, this book is brilliant. It’s doing things that I admire, wholly, and I can admire that. I can admire Gardner’s intense, brave, lyrical prose. I can admire the brilliant addition of the picture based narrative, paralleling the main story as a whole, adding a layer of subtle emphasis to the narrative and the reading experience. I can admire all that and I can admit that.

But I don’t think I can admit that I liked it.

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I want my hat back : Jon Klassen

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are moments when I am dazzled by the wonder of picture books. It happened with Martha and the Bunny Brothers by Clara Vulliamy and it has happened here again. Klassen’s masterful story is perfection. And I love it so.

It is simple, precise, elegant. A bear has lost his hat. He would like it back. He goes out on a quest to retrieve his hat.

Drawn with an intense stillness and coloured in a subtle, woodland palette, the book is a delight. The bear himself is reminiscent of those paintings where the eyes follow you around the room; his emphatic bulk offset by eyes which question everything around him, lost in the suspicion of whole stole his hat. So much of this book rests in his eyes, it’s almost a masterclass in storytelling. Think about it. Two black dots in white space and yet we inscribe so much meaning to them. When you read this, look at the eyes, look at the way they’re positioned in the page, look at the way the bear never blinks, look at how the eyes are the implacable bear embodied in the tiniest of spaces.

What’s vital to note about this book as well is that it is so very clever. The bear is always looking, always directing the reader to investigate the page. It’s almost pantomime in nature and the urge to cry something along the lines of “It’s behind you!” is never far away.

And when a book spills out into the endpapers and gives me the subtlest and wittiest coda to a picture book I’ve ever seen, it has my adoration for life.

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Wonder : RJ Palacio

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m known to my friends and family and colleagues as having a bit of an interest in children’s literature (I know, that’s a surprise right?) They come to me for reccomendations for their brownie groups, their kids – and sometimes they come to me and say “Have you heard anything about this book?”

Now the latter option isn’t one that happens that often. It requires a book to have ‘escaped’, to have gone wild in the world and to be picked up and loved by many many advocates of its wonder.

And that’s what happened here. “Have you heard about Wonder? It sounds right up your street?”

I had. I’m always a bit reluctant to read the books that go stratospheric so swiftly – call it Richard and Judy Bookclub syndrome if you will (“Why isn’t there a copy of this in the library?” “Because 3039394 other people have been in today requesting it before you”). It all means that when I get to the book, I have to read it in a secret, safe manner, Golluming it up in a dark corner whilst muttering “My precious”.

Wonder was one of those books that made me want that moment to never end. Over too soon, it left me breathless, wide-eyed and more than a little teary.

Wonder is precious. It’s full of wonder. It’s a very graceful, elegant title, openly allegorical at points and intensely funny at others. If you’ve not heard the synopsis by now, I don’t think I’m going to tell you. You should experience this book unfolding on you and opening a world of love on you.

I like Wonder. I like it a lot. There’s funny, believable characters. There’s some excellent boys in it, awkward, mean, brave and foolish boys that feel all too rare in books. And there’s Olivia. Via. I love her.

Read this book. Please. It’s very, very good and I think it may become epochal.

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Operation Bunny : Sally Gardner

Operation Bunny by Sally Gardner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I came to this following the reccomendation of the excellent Ali of Fantastic Reads. Her review is here and I urge you all to go read it forthwith because it’s a perceptive, warm and precise review of this book.

Now that that’s done, here’s what I thought. And I’m sorry but I’m going to be repetitive (and I think that may tell you something of the delightful just-another-layer-of-the-chocolate-box quality of this book).

Operation Bunny is a charming Ibbotson-esque tale of Emily Vole who is adopted into a world full of magic. Naturally doesn’t happen straight away. Initially she is adopted by the difficult and demanding Dashwoods and once they have children of their own, Emily is relegated into a nanny-housemaid-cleaner hybrid. She’s rescued from this life of drudgery by the next door neighbours, Miss String and Fidget, the cat. And also by a set of sentient keys.

I love this. Regardless of how I’ve felt about Gardner’s work in the past, I’ve always been aware of the quality of her writing and in this it shines. Operation Bunny gave me the giggles in several places. This is primarily down to Gardner’s talent in sprinting from the ‘normal’ to the ‘magic’ and back again. She spins a story that’s palpably real and one that you sort of genuinely feel might actually occur.

One thing that is noticeable in a book of this nature is how much of a debt is owed to the illustrator. David Roberts’ work is superb and to be honest, even if the book had been hideous(which is distinctly the opposite of what it is), I would be telling you to go and look at his delightfully macabre images. They’re pitched perfectly at that point where the quirky could become a little unnerving and they’re superb. Obviously not everything in this book is scary – Emily and Fidget themselves are beautiful. The confidence of Fidget is a delight. It stands out particularly on the cover where he poses, smiling with a quiet satisfaction, just behind the wide eyed yet repressed exuberance of Emily.

This is a magical, magical book and I’d recommend it for those who enjoy Susie Day’s Pea books and Jacqueline Harvey’s Alice-Miranda series. There’s a similar sense of glorious exuberance in in all these titles that the reader can’t help but respond to.

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