JuniorBookWorm.com

The Boss by John and Patrice Aggs

Could you have ever imagined your whole class getting together to solve a crime or even a crossword puzzle? That is what happens in The Boss when the class goes on a school trip. A few children notice something suspicious before they even set off on the trip. By the time they arrive at the castle museum, the whole uniformed class is engaged in stopping the crime before it happens. From The DFC Library comes, what appears to be, a new series of graphic novels for fairly young children (6-9). 

Having seen children who refuse to read a word, cuddle up with a graphic novel and get lost, I have become sold on them. In fact, I never really had any problem with them to begin with except for the way women are clad in the typical DC model (skimpily). These characters are dressed in maroon blazers and grey trousers which makes them easy to spot when the action gets going.

Although the villain whom they thought was the thief at the beginning, proves to be so, there are a few good twists on the way to end. The pictures are littered with typical scenes from English life; mobile phones make the story possible and a rainbow coalition of students appear on every page. 

Zeus Sorts it Out by John Dougherty

You  may have read Zeus on the Loose or Zeus to the Rescue but I hadn't. I guess these books came out after my little boys grew too old for silly Zeus stories. But I was curious. I am always curious about Greek Gods (and Goddesses) because my childhood did not contain them. So when I hear about Hermes, I think handbag rather than God of the herds or herald of the Gods. When I read the name Cupid I think of someone on a Hallmark card. I feel sad about it and try to mug up from time to time. But watching Hercules, the Disney film is not enough to get one in touch with Zeus. Neither will this but it is very funny nonetheless. And on the principal of the more a child hears about Zeus, the more they will pick up their D'Aulaires' and not have Greek myths missing from their childhood, Zeus Sorts it Out is recommended.

Basically, Zeus is summoned to fight bullies. Charlie, our anti-hero, keeps getting his head flushed down a toilet. So Zeus sets up his headquarters in the boys' lavatory. Zeus has violent ideas of revenge which Alex, Charlie's best friend, has to minimise. Dougherty manages to slip in Heracle's Labours, vocab like Cerynian Hind and Erymanthian Boar, characters like Artemis and Hippolyta. So that eventhough roast bull flavoured crisps with mustard feature in the story, there is more substance and a lot of humour than one would expect.

Six to eight year olds are going to love this but younger folks too.

The Guardian part 2 - free CD's

The reason that I mentioned the first part of Flood's article is because it is of interest to adults who wish for a little serendipity in their lives. Part two is dedicated to children because of their free audio book give away this week. If you don't subscribe but love young people's books on CD for those endless car journeys, then all this week there is a children's audiobook CD giveaway during Children's Book Week (3 to 9 October). So far they have had The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson and today's was Michael Murpurgo's This Morning I Met a Whale.

Always Something Interesting Going on at the Guardian Newspaper

Series: Books season

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Guardian launches national Book Swap with 15,000-volume giveaway

Thousands of books left in public places around the UK for curious readers to discover

A copy of Gormenghast, the first book to be left as part of the Guardian and Observer Book Swap. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

"The Guardian is launching its six-week autumn books season by setting 15,000 titles free in the wild this weekend," writes Alison Flood in the Guardian.

From fiction to design, and children's books to science, the Guardian has gathered thousands of books from publishers and authors and is distributing them around the country for free. Books will be left in public places where readers are liable to chance upon them, from stations and coffee shops to galleries and museums.

The giveaway is part of the Guardian and Observer Book Swap, for which readers and writers are also being asked to give their own favourite reads away. After inserting a bookplate sticker (which will come free with the papers on Saturday and Sunday, or can be downloaded online) into the front of their book, and writing a message for the finder, readers can then leave the book somewhere it will be picked up by a new owner and upload the details of where they left it at guardian.co.uk/bookswap or on Twitter (#guardianbookswap). The bookplate sticker asks the finder to upload a picture of the book where they found it, and to read it and review it on guardian.co.uk/bookswap.

Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw is among those taking part. "In deciding what to read, serendipity is something we need more of," he said. "The Book Swap is a fascinating idea because you might get a book placed in your hands invisibly, out of nowhere. I've chosen Tolstoy's novella Hadji Murad partly because it is a work of authentic genius, and it's relatively short. I envy the person who finds it and reads it for the first time."

Author and columnist Grace Dent, meanwhile, is keen to spread the word about her choice, Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. "I finally picked up and read this beauty last year. Frankly, I'm rankled it took me so long. I've determinedly tried to make others read it ever since, so Book Swap is a great chance for me, hopefully, to charm a stranger."

 

Booked Up for Year 7's

 (I love this cover)

Booked Up is a scheme to encourage book reading in the UK. All Year 7 students in Great Britain are entitled to a free book. Most people get them through their schools but libraries can apply, as well as individuals on behalf of their children. 

The website has fun games and a competition. The free books range widely from a cute Jean Ure book called Frankie Foster to a very serious book for eleven year olds, The Truth About Leo, about a boy whose mother dies of cancer and father sinks into alcoholism.

For those who have been reading great books over the summer to those who have not turned a page, the time is now to start curling up with literature. Nothing beats a fantastic read.

Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz

 Scorpia Rising slipped past so many people's radars. Usually an Anthony Horowitz arrives with great fanfare. Certainly in our household, we wait eagerly, often knowing the release date, certainly amongst the first to buy it. Some people wait in line for Iphones, some for Horowitz's. But Scorpia Rising, the last of the nine Alex Rider books, came quietly, cheaply (£3.99 now £2.99) and without a fuss.

I bought it for my 13 year old son who then passed it to my 15 year old but I did not read it. I had no willing audience and I had an ulterior motive. I love listening to Dan Steven's voice. He is the reader and has been of all the Alex Rider's. We were in Portugal last week and as soon as the rental car rolled away from the airport, the disc started spinning. Eight discs later, I finished listening to the final chapter, the end of the Alex Rider stories. As sad as I am to stop hearing that lovely voice (he is amazing at accents - American, South African, Egyptian speaking English, Australian...), Alex Rider has run its course. It must very difficult to finish writing a long series of novels but Horowitz managed it very well. Unlike our hero Lemony Snicket who gravely disappointed the Junior Bookworm with The End, his 13th and final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. Nothing was tied up and although, as in Scorpia Rising, a main character dies, it was still an open ended ending.

My only main criticism of this book is that he name drops products too much. Every gun has a name, every mobile is an Iphone, every helecopter has a serial number, a flying range, every bicycle, every camera. I think Horowitz must have been making a joke. I just don't know what it was.

Horowitz you have done well. Alex we will miss you. xxx

Sarah Kessler in Mashable has discovered something interesting about US readers

(editor's random thoughts: The other day, a friend of mine told me that he has been reading to his 11 and 13 year old daughters. They were really enjoying Orwell's Animal Farm and he was explaining the politics. I went home and started reading the Diary of Young Girl to my 11 year old because I thought she should read it but perhaps she needed her hand held through it. I loved it. She liked it a lot. Hopefully, she will read it again on her own in the next few years. When I had my first baby, one parenting book said to read in front of your children. Then they will become readers. My husband said that advice was for people who did not read. When I am on the New York subway, I see far fewer vacant faces staring out, like in London. Many people have a book with them. But Gainesville, Florida, that was a surprise. I must do some research on why that is.)

Stereotypes about which areas of the United States are “more literate” than others are common, but actual data on the matter was hard to find until Amazon volunteered its records on Thursday.

The company tallied all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since January 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.

It found that academic hub Cambridge, Massachusetts, topped the list of cities that purchased the most reading material, as well as the most nonfiction books. Boulder, Colorado, purchased the most material in the Cooking, Food & Wine category. And Florida had the most cities in the general top 20.

Here is the full list of the most well-read cities in the U.S., according to Amazon sales data. Adjust stereotypes accordingly.

 

 

 

A Publisher's postbag from The Guardian

A Publisher's Postbag shows the highlights from a collection of envelopes.During his 30-year career as a children's book publisher, Klaus Flugge received almost 100 beautifully illustrated envelopes by artists including Posy Simmonds, Tony Ross and Axel Scheffler. Here he introduces some of his favourites. They are delightful and inspiring. It is hard to illustrate an email in the same way.

World Book Night - Adult Book Special

    World Book Night started as a little dinner table conversation between Jamie Byng of Cannongate Books and some of his friends. The publishing business is at a fragile time. How can we excite people about books? Friday night was the culmination of a few years of bringing that conversation to light. Friday night was a celebration of epic proportion. Trafalgar Square was filled with people, celebrities, Boris Johnson and authors of all sorts from JK Rowling to Alan Bennet.

The strap line of the event is a million reasons to read a book. And on World Book Night, they did exactly that - they gave away a million books away. A team of people were chosen to decide which twenty five books should be chosen to be given away. How could they have possibly chosen?

Go to the site and find out. The key thing is that the Junior Bookworm supports this endeavor and others like it. 

Check out the edge of Notting Hill's latest book hang out The Idler's Academy. It is a cool place to read, hang out and watch the world go by. If you are just reading this, then you have missed the sewing class run by an 85 year old woman on the 3 March. If you ever wanted to learn the ukelele, you can do that there too!

The chosen books below, what would you have chose?

A Fine Balance

A Life Like Other People’s

Agent Zigzag

All Quiet on the Western Front

Beloved

Case Histories

Cloud Atlas

Dissolution

Fingersmith

Half of a Yellow Sun

Killing Floor

Life of Pi

Love in the Time of Cholera

New Selected Poems

Northern Lights

One Day

Rachel’s Holiday

Stuart

The Blind Assassin

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The World’s Wife

Toast

More on world book day and Linda Newbery soon.

The Costa Prize for Children's Literature

 

Zimbabwe, 1980s.  The fighting has stopped, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans.  It is the end of the Old Way and the start of a promising new era. 

For Robert Jacklin, it's all new - new continent, new country, new school.  And very quickly he is forced to understand a new way of thinking, because for some of his classmates the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on.....white boys who want their old country back, not this new black African government.  Boys like Ivan.  Clever, cunning Ivan.  For him, there is still one last battle to fight, and he's taking it right to the very top.

Jason Wallace was born in Cheltenham in 1969 but moved  to London after his parents split up. Aged 12, his life was turned upside down when his mother remarried and the family emigrated to Zimbabwe. It is his experiences of growing up in a tough boarding school during the aftermath of the war for independence that forms the foundation of Out of Shadows.  Jason is currently a web designer and lives in South West London.

Judges: "A stunning debut novel without a false note.  Accomplished and powerful, it changes the way you think."

 I copied this from the Costa Prize website because I have not had a moment to get a hold of this book but it does sound super and relevant. e