Mimi

My dad and Marilyn often pop over to France to see their friends Dave and Sue. This year, they returned with a borrowed book: Mimi by Irish author John Newman.

Couldn't resist picking it up. I think they know the author, as it was signed. 

Life without Mum is just not the same. 

Everyone's given up. Dad is burning pizzas and he doesn't smile anymore. Sally's new look is black and so are her moods. Conor's all-night drumming is keeping the neighbours awake. And Sparkler hasn't been walked for months. 

But Mimi isn't about to give up on anything. Or anyone. This is her story.

What a brilliant read. It's at the young end of Young Adult, but deals with some really complex stuff. A family of three kids, Mimi, Sally and Conor, trying to survive with the help of extended family after their mother is killed in a traffic accident and their dad loses the will to live.

On top of all that, Mimi appears to have been adopted, and gets no end of racial abuse from the school bully.

Must admit to getting a bit tearful towards the end. A quick read, but one that leaves a lasting impression. 

Absolutely worth it.

Alexandra Soranescu

Having just finished writing an adult retelling of The Children of Lir, I was enchanted by this recent children's retelling, and the stunningly beautiful illustrations by artist Alexandra Soranescu. The website for the book is just as beautiful.

Mortlock

How utterly awesome is this?

Black edged paper. 

That's not actually the reason I bought this book, just a bonus. A while ago I was planning a story with a character called Mortlock. No particular reason I thought of that name, but it was unusual and I wondered where I had gotten it from, so I did a Google search to see whether it had a meaning and whether or not anyone else had used it.

Jon Mayhew beat me to it. 

Josie is a knife thrower in a magician's stage act. 

Alfie is an undertaker's assistant.

They are both orphans and they have never met, but they are about to be given a clue to the secret of their shared past.

A past which has come to seek them out.

And while they flee for their lives, they must unravel the burning mysteries surrounding the legacy that threatens to consume them.

Curious to know what somebody else's Mortlock was like, I put it on my TBR list. The strange thing about our local Nakumatt is that every time I go in there I see a book I've been meaning to read. What with The Pinhoe Egg and now this, it's as though this Kenyan supermarket chain is inside my head, going through abandoned manuscripts and half-forgotten titles and then manifesting them on the shelf each time I go to pick up my groceries. 

This is perhaps the most grizzly YA novel I've read in quite some time. Gothic to a tee. 

She screwed her eyes tight shut as the cabinet toppled over with a bone-jarring crash. The false back of the cabinet splintered off, exposing Josie. She could see Ernie lashing out at the flapping ghul. A deep gash lined his scalp and blood streamed down his face, blinding him. His swinging fists could have laid any opponent low in a street brawl but the ghul bobbed and weaved in and out of the blows with ease. Ernie panted heavily, wiping the blood from his forehead. But the pause gave the crow its chance, and it darted forward, skewering Ernie with its long sabre of a beak. The big man's eyes bulged and he whimpered as the ghul pulled away. A disgusting squelch accompanied the strings of bloody gut that came away in the ghul's glistening beak. Silence fell as the foul bird jerked the gory load down its gullet, Then Enie's blood-chilling scream shook the theatre as the ghul fell upon him again, lashing with talons, ripping and tearing with its beak. Blood spattered the walls and mirrors and speckled Josie's face.

It's the sort of book I would have loved as a kid (and kids do, just look at the success of Horrible Histories), but I wonder at any adult who has the courage to read that out loud at bedtime. Still, I'm glad the option is out there.

It was a good read, and Mortlock himself didn't put in much of an appearance, but it's too unusual a name and too bold a title for me to use in the future. Plus, I doubt I'd have anything as cool as black-edged pages.

The Pinhoe Egg

I'm a huge Howl's Moving Castle fan. I think if I could be any character in any story, I'd be Sophie. We were talking Diana Wynne Jones a while back when my friend Harri told me that I'd also like The Pinhoe Egg.

Then, a few weeks back, nearing what would have been DWJ's 80th birthday, I walked into Nakumatt and there, on the shelf, was the book! 

How could I not buy it?

Anyway, due to crazy amounts of day job and other fantastic reads (including The Swan Thieves and The Shadow of the Wind) it sat on my shelf for a while. Also, because it's a hardback, which is my most favourite type of book to look at, but my least favourite for reading. I'm very much a Kindle convert. I like to carry a library in my bag without fear of damaging it. Also, I find reading in bed with a hardback cumbersome. If you don't hold it right you get hand cramp or hit yourself on the nose with the cover. 

For the past week though, I've taken it everywhere with me. It's surprisingly light for a hardback, and I only hit myself on the nose once.

Cat Chant and Marianne Pinhoe have discovered something incredibly exciting, truly precious, and very strange—an egg.

This egg was not meant to be found. Chrestomanci himself, Cat's guardian and the strongest enchanter in the world, is sure to find it particularly interesting. And that's the last thing Marianne's family of secret rogue witches wants.

But the Pinhoes' secrets are falling to pieces, and powerful spells are wreaking havoc across the country-side. Marianne and Cat may be the only two who can set things right—if Marianne accepts her own powerful magic, and Cat solves the mystery behind the mystical Pinhoe Egg.

I'd never read any of the Christomanci series before, but now I know that I must. DWJ never held back on telling a truly earth-based pagan tale, which is why I think so many love her.

"A new religion came to this country," Millie said, "full of zeal and righteousness - the kind of religion where, if other people didn't believe in it, the righteous ones killed and tortured them until they did. This religion hated witches and hated the hidden folk even more. They saw all invisible folk as demons, monsters and devils, and their priests devised ways of killing them and destroying their magic that really worked."

My friend Paul, who runs The Northern Antiquarian, has often theorised that what we call today 'modern paganism' and Wicca are the broken remnants of what was once a pre-Christian shamanic tradition. Basically, the conclusion of The Pinhoe Egg says something very similar, that there came a period of bloody violence in history, after which those who were left could only pick up the pieced of what they remembered and try to sew it back together as tradition.

Very interesting stuff, and, although my heart always belongs to Howl, Christomanci's quite dashing too. Though I think all those dressing gowns might get a bit overwhelming!

The Robber's Daughter

Back in 2011, I went on a writing retreat to eastern Germany. I made a lovely friend there, Lisa, who has since married and had a daughter. When she wrote to tell me, I was delighted to learn that she had named her after one of her favourite literary characters: Ronia the Robber's Daughter.

Unfamiliar with the story, I promptly ordered a copy. I've only recently had time to read it, and finished it last night.

High on a mountainside, a band of robbers live in a great fortress. 

Ronia, the daughter of the robber chieftain, roams the forest but she must beware the grey dwarfs and wild harpies. When she befriends Birk, the son of her father's greatest enemy, it causes uproar. Ronia and Birk can no longer be friends - unless they do something drastic. Like running away... 

Suddenly they are fending for themselves in the woods, but how will they survive when winter comes? And will Ronia's father ever accept her friendship with Birk, so they can go home?

What a book! I loved it.

It was written by Astrid Lindgren, who also wrote the Pippi Longstocking stories. I remember seeing those on German TV as a child, when visiting family friends, but I had never actually read any of her work.

She reminded me a lot of Diana Wynne Jones in that her characters are anything but conventional, and her chief female protagonist is strong-willed and independent of mind. Not a whiff of the 'little princess' syndrome. 

The descriptions of nature are beautiful, and the folklore is rich. I especially liked the Unearthly Ones who sing people to their deaths. Similar to the Fay Folk of Celtic legend - you get trapped in their world and cannot find your way home.

It's one of those stories for children that deals with some very adult themes. A surprising read, and a beautiful love story. I actually cried at one point! I think it was around:

Truly, there was nothing Ronia wanted to know more. She had wondered a lot why Birk was not worrying at all about winter. 'It is summer now, sister mine,' he would say, as calmly as if winter would never come. 

'We have only this summer, you and I,' said Birk, 'and the way things are with me now, I don't mind very much about living unless you are with me. And when winter comes you won't be with me.'...

Summer would not last for ever; he knew it and Ronia knew it. But now they began to live as if it would, and as far as possible they pushed away all painful thoughts of winter. They wanted to make the most of every hour from dawn to dusk and night-time and draw the sweetness from it. The days could come and go; they were living in a summer enchantment and would not be disturbed. They had just a little time left.

It's one of those books that is not really a children's book or an adult's book, but a book for everyone. I think it probably strikes up wisdom in young people and nostalgia for summers past in older people.

I enjoyed it very much indeed, and I am proud to know that there is a little Ronja in the world, with Lisa as her Lovis. 

Diary of a Dr. Who Addict

Pulled an all-night reading session last night. First time I've done that since The Lovely Bones.

A while ago I did drinks in London with the lovely Will Davis (he of The Trapeze Artist, who is actually a real trapeze artist). As he lives near the Holloway Road, I swapped him a copy of On The Holloway Road by Andrew Blackmann for a copy of Diary of a Dr. Who Addict by Paul Magrs (AKA The Fiction Doctor), that I happened to spy on his table.

We'd all met briefly last year at booQfest, but I hadn't yet read any of Paul's work, so I was rather keen to borrow it.

Flash forward a month or so and I finally made it to that point in my pile. I really have been a pathetically slow reader of late. I tend to get through about a chapter a night. I like books with fewer than thirty chapters because that means I get to finish at least one book a month.

I was pleased to have Paul's book, but I was also a little reluctant to begin, wondering whether I should have chosen one of his adult novels instead. I invariably roll my eyes at YA, and I invariably end up loving it. I think it's because I spent so much of my oh-so-independent childhood proving that I could read Pratchett and Stephen King by Year Six, that I sort of bypassed a lot of the middle ground. There were a few exceptions, such as Point Horror, Fighting Fantasy, My Teacher is an Alien, and a really creepy one where some kids get stuck in a fairground and the elderly caretaker is out to get them... but generally something pretty gruesome had to happen to hold my attention, and those sort of books tend to be adult reading.

In fact, I've probably read more YA over the past couple of years than I ever did as a young adult.

Anyway, I digress. The Diary of a Dr. Who Addict:

It's the 1980s and David has just started secondary school. He's becoming a teenager, but still hanging onto the rituals of childhood, particularly his addiction to Doctor Who: sharing the books with his best friend and neighbour, Robert, and watching the TV show. 

But adolescence is as strange and alien to David as anything the good Doctor encountered, so he's mystified when Robert begins to reject his hero in favour of girls, free weights and new music. Is it time for David to make a choice and move on too?

An evocative and moving portrayal of a boy finding his place in the world, set against a backdrop of Bowie, Blackpool and Breville toasters.

Ah, where to begin?

When you read very late at night, it's sort of like holding a conversation when you're drunk. You feel things more deeply, you fall into stories more easily.

It was a hideously uncomfortable read. There was just too much I recognised within it from my own school years, which I recall as being something akin to cruel and unusual punishment. Everything from the house party to the way teachers can turn, feelings of exclusion to having the desire to curl up and die when 'those' conversations were taking place.

I was totally transported back in time, as The Generation Game had managed with the simple mention of 'psychadelic orange squash', an image that could only ever evoke the 1980s as the chemicals involved are undoubtedly now banned. It was like blowing off the dust on a box of memories. Things I hadn't thought about in years. A bittersweet reminder of the bountiful creativity kids have before the pituitary gland kicks in and murders imagination.

I suspect I was as bug-nuts crazy about The X-Files as David was about Doctor Who, and there was definitely a Robert in my life, and I definitely remember the ouch factor of discovering that shared childhood pleasures were no longer cool.

I was a bit worried that I wouldn't understand this book, because I've never watched Doctor Who, but Will said that wouldn't be a problem, and he was right. Though I'm not a complete ignoramus, and I do know what a TARDIS is, and I loved the bit:

I'm looking for things I recognise in everything I read. I want to feel at home in these books I pick up. I want them to be more familiar than home and ordinary life. I think that's because I can pick them up and carry them with me. I always have the safe dimension of the book to escape into. Books are bigger on the inside than on the out, just like a police box.

I thought that was a wonderful observation.

Even did a bit of real time travelling as I finished at 3:20am, but the clocks went back, so it was only 2:20 and I got that extra hour lie in.

Brilliant book. Also the first LGBT YA I think I've read. Where were these when I was growing up? Don't recall seeing them on the shelves at the CoE school book fete... 

On a parting note, I discovered by accident Harmony Ink Press on Twitter (@HarmonyInkPress) the other day: 'Harmony Ink Press publishes positive LGBT YA fiction.' Good stuff.

500 New Fairytales

 

After nominating Einstein on my A-Z of authors list yesterday for his fairytale quote:

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

I logged into Twitter this morning to discover this lovely news:

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany: 

A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world.

I hope they take their time translating them, I've yet to get through Philip Pullman's retelling of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Point Being?

 

During adolescence, I used to devour Point Horror with a passion bordering on fanatical. It took off in a big way amongst girls at my school. It was always the girls who were reading. 

Some of my favourites included:

• Beach House 
• April Fools
• The Invitation
• The Perfume 
• Hit and Run

Beyond anything else, they taught you not to trust anyone. Not the 'responsible adult,' not your boy/girlfriend, not your best friend, not the teacher, the doctor or the lifeguard - nobody. Whoever you thought you could trust, it was always them!

More than that, though, they introduced the culture of books to me. 

It's hard to describe, but for a couple of years I always had my nose in a Point Horror. They introduced me to the smell of new books. The routine of book shopping. Going into Dillons (as it was before Waterstones took over the world) and shopping for a book, knowing that I'd come away with something I felt excited to read. The ritual of browsing the backs, feeling the covers, considering the price. Then the fun of swapping them with friends at school.

So, okay, looking back it's easy to write it off as the literary equivalent of Home & Away in that you didn't have to think too hard - but one thing adults often forget, is that childhood is very dark. From the brothers Grimm through to Punch and Judy - it's a creepy time, full of petty vengeance, social segregation, the first stirrings of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (or Limp Bizkit and Slim Shady) - whatever - the point being, Point Horror didn't shy away from that stuff. It embraced it as a celebration of our fascination with fear. 

For that reason, it'll always hold a place in my (yes, still beating) heart.

Fighting Fantasy

Well, well, well. 

Resurrection of a past era. 

When I was about ten or eleven, I was in WHSmith - book section (naturally) - choosing something to read on the train. I had recently gone to live with my mum, so Dad would come and collect me every fortnight for the train ride to London. 

The book that I chose was Vault of the Vampire.

My decision was based purely on cover art, I didn't bother to look inside. I was going through a vampire phase at the time. Anything with fangs had to be good.

I remember feeling bitterly disappointed when the joy of seeing how short the chapters were dissolved into the realisation that this wasn't actually a storybook at all. 

About to bin it, the sheer length of the journey forced me to take another look - thus spawning an adolescent love affair with Fighting Fantasy.

If you haven't seen them before, they're sort of a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Point Horror. Each chapter is about a paragraph long. At the end, you have to make a decision - do you go left or right at the end of the hallway? Do you talk to the slightly dodgy guy in the corner sucking his pipe? Do you open the trapdoor?

Occasionally you get into fights. Dice are required for this, and there's a set of rules and a game sheet at the beginning. If you lose, you have to start again (or cheat). Often the storylines throughout the book are fairly complex and several choices lead to dead ends. 

It can get ridiculously addictive. But then, I was brought up on text games. Before all these swanky graphics and VGA monitors, computer games were all like this. Glorified Fighting Fantasy novels. To me, these were just the portable version (long before laptops).

Sometimes I'd forget to bring a book and Dad and I would sit on the train making up stories in the same format. We'd take it in turns to come up with a paragraph and a decision to make. Passed many hours that way. In my late teens I eventually started coding MUDs (Multi User Dimensions) - which were (are?) like huge, international FF books with lots of players.

FF cover all the major bases in storytelling: there's always a beginning, middle and end to your adventure, there's a quest - something you have to achieve - there's adversity and conflict, there's dialogue and character interaction... you're soaking all of this stuff up as you're playing.

Anyway, the other day I was sitting watching my nephew trashing hell out of Transformers on his PlayStation. I felt a swell of pride that he'd opted for Decepticons (the baddies). 

Mum wandered in and I said something along the lines of 'he's really into that, isn't he?' To which she replied 'yes, but he loves his books too.'

It's true, my nephew is an avid reader. He's currently into Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Aha! thinks I. A kid who likes reading and gaming.

So, I've just spent the day rooting around in my old room, scouring the bookshelves of my (mostly mispent) youth. I've managed to find 17 volumes in total.

Plus my pride and joy:

Those last two are sort of like the fanatic's guide to all the animals and cities mentioned in the books. I remember sitting in Mum's office at probation service one Baker day, drawing ground plans for a seedy tavern in Port Blacksand. You can see they've been studied closely.

So, things come full-circle. My nephew is nine now. I've stacked them all up by his bed for the next time he visits. It just remains to be seen whether he'll take to them. I hope so. It would be nice to think they've gone to a good home.

[August 2014: the BBC have devoted an article to Fighting Fantasy.]

Howl's Moving Castle

It's one year today since the wonderfully talented writer Diana Wynne Jones passed away.

She wrote so many wonderful works, including Archer's Goon which was adapted into a kids' TV series that I used to watch when I got home from school. It starred Roger Lloyd-Pack (Trigger) from Only Fools and Horses.

However, the one that she is perhaps most famous for is Howl's Moving Castle, which was adapted to anime by Studio Ghibli.

Like many, I knew the film before I found the books. I fell head over heels in love with Howl, Sophie and Calcifer.

The books run as a trilogy:

Book One: Howl's Moving Castle

The first book introduces the key characters of Wizard Howl, Sophie and Calcifer.

It tells the story of how the eldest hat-maker's daughter, Sophie, is turned into an old woman by the Witch of the Waste. Whilst on her way to find her sister, who is studying magic and may be able to lift the curse, she accidentally ends up in Howl's Moving Castle.

The Wizard Howl is feared throughout Ingary for eating young girls' hearts, but Sophie thinks she has nothing to fear because she has been turned old.

Howl himself is a magnificently complex character: dazzling, dashing, charming and a complete coward prone to depressive tantrums. His antics at trying to charm every woman he meets, even Sophie's own sister, start to raise a modicum of jealousy.

Meanwhile, Sophie has promised Calcifer, the fire demon that keeps the moving castle moving, that she will find a way to break the bond of slavery on him if he will help to rid her of her own curse.

Book Two: Castle in the Air

Book two in the Moving Castle trilogy begins very differently, and in a land far, far away called Zanzib, where Abdullah, a carpet trader harassed by his father's family, is trying to eke out a living opposite his good friend's fried squid stall.

But nobody leads a simple life in these books, and Abdullah soon finds himself the owner of a magic flying carpet and a genie. He has also fallen for Flower-in-the-night, daughter of the Sultan, to whom he is magically transported each night when he sleeps on the flying carpet.

However, a dastardly demon has stolen Howl's moving (and now flying) castle and is using it as a holding place whilst he abducts every princess on earth - including Flower-in-the-night.

This book also introduces Howl and Sophie's son: Morgan.

Book Three: House of Many Ways



For the final book in the series, we move to High Norland, where the King and his elderly daughter have lived in poverty for years because someone is stealing all the gold from the treasury.

Sophie is called in to investigate, bringing with her Morgan (now a toddler) and Howl in the disguise of Twinkle, a second - and very mischievous - child.

The story also involves Charmain, granddaughter of Royal Wizard William, whose house she looks after whilst he is taken away by elves to be cured of a mystery illness. She begrudgingly shares this responsibility with Peter, his new apprentice.

What's more, the strange goings on at the palace have something to do with Lubbocks and Kobolds. The first are giant insects which lay their eggs in people, and the second are small, blue creatures that do housework.

Image courtesy of AnimeGalleries.Net

In the DVD extras of Stephen King's 1986 classic Stand by Me - also an adaptation - he explained (paraphrasing badly) that: 'Books and films are like apples and oranges. Both good, but for different reasons.'

One of the outstanding differences with Howl is that, in the film, he rescues Sophie from a group of letchy blokes outside a pub. In the books, he is the letchy bloke outside the pub.

For that, I loved these books from the first moment I turned the page. The film also neglects to mention Howl's Welsh heritage. Yes, Howl is a good name for a Wizard in the Waste, but actually his real real name is Howell Jenkins, and the black door in his castle leads not to the abyss, but to Wales... though you could argue...no, I won't.

The wonderful thing about Diana Wynne Jones is that her characters are flawed, and therefore real. Like all the best fairy tales, Prince Charming isn't always that. As for the Princess, well, she can kick some arse if she needs to. It's good soul food for young and old alike.

I shall leave you with one of my favourite pieces of music. It's from the Ghibli adaptation, titled The Merry-go-round of Life, played by Joe Hisaishi.