JuniorBookWorm.com

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If Shadow of the Wind missed your radar then like me, you may not be familiar with the most success modern writer in Spain, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The Prince of Mist was my first exposure to his magical story telling. Since this is a young adult novel, I started listening to it with my skeptical grown up ear intact. But like a few of the audio CD's I have listened in the past few years, this one kept me driving, made me long for red lights, traffic and school runs.

It is not a perfect story for the grown up but for children who aren't bogged down by whether stone statues of clowns were the right image to repeatedly describe, it is wonderful. I suspended disbelief when my three young urbanites land in a seaside town in 1943 to escape the impending doom. But the devil incarnate has a history on these chosen shores and the children are excitingly and tragically caught up in it.

They have parents but when the youngest falls into a coma, they take her to the hospital and leave the teenagers to cycle, swim, dive and get to know a local who changes their lives forever.

Dan Stevens reads the story beautifully. I am on a quest now to listen to everything he reads. He most famous to us at the JBW for reading the Alex Rider novels on CD. So when I embarked on the Prince of Mist, it was like being read a story by a family member. His voice, like that of Martin Jarvis is so familiar, so versatile. 

I found this unputdownable. But if you loved Shadow of the Wind, pretend it is by someone else and judge it on its own merits.

Diana Athill and Derek Bannatyne

Sometimes the post comes and one can't imagine what one is going to receive in one go. It might be a bank statement in the red alongside a pair of New York taxi yellow Birkenstocks. That is what happened to me this week. And it made me think about the package I received about a month ago, which didn't include Horrid Henry nor did it include a new Anthony Horowitz, but a funny pair of audio CD's. One was a book about a life told by an 89 year old woman. The other a book about personal finance. I never would have bought either of these books, no less on an audio CD, both were terrific in their different ways. The only similarity is that in both cases the readers were superb. David Rintoul read the Bannatyne book in a surreal, 1950's style, personal and yet parental. Somewhere Towards the End begins with an intro by Diana Athill herself. One longs for her to continue but she says she couldn't possibly be able to read her autobiography aloud without losing her voice. This cover says Juliet Stevenson is reading it, my version was read by Claire Bloom. Funny that. Ms Bloom was brilliant as a reader. She certainly became Ms Athill. I am sure Juliet Stevenson is just as good. I could listen to her read the phonebook. (Her best reading is on Penguin Grimm Fairy Tales ).
What do these books have to do with children's literature? Nothing. But as most of my readers are mothers, these two books are apt. Somewhere Towards the End is about a woman, a publisher, a writer, who never married, never had children and had a full and eventful life. She talks about being old, which is fascinating when one is far from it. She talks of her relationship with her mother and her mother's death. She raises subtle and provokative issues and tells an interesting tale.
    How to Be Smart With Your Money is amusing but also informative. It talks about this recession so it really feels like it was written yesterday. I can't tell you how many women I want to send this to. It asks basic questions like how much money do you have in your bank account? What do you earn and what are you spending? But it goes deeper than that. As I don't have a television, I have not seen Dragon's Den, so I went in with an open mind. I am not sure that it would appeal to everyone and I certainly would not read this book, but the friendly way the advice is given and the personal details that are sprinkled into the narrative, keeps me tuning in.

The Boy Who Could Fly by Sally Gardner

As one who reads the Junior Book Worm regularly, you will know that if we are reviewing Sally Gardner, there will probably not be a stray negative comment. After harping on about  The Red Necklace in December to anyone who would listen, we are back with The Boy Who Could Fly which has just been re-released in a nifty little book and CD set. In fact, five of her short novels have been repackaged like this to great effect. The Boy Who Could Fly along with two others are read by Andrew Sacks. He was born to be telling stories about ordinary people having the ability to do extraordinary things. The book is geared to the ages of three to nine year olds. We had eight to forty two year olds listening to Sacks' magical voice on a ride from West London to Richmond. The drive flew by and the story took off immediately. Puns apart, if Gardner is not on your shelves yet, race out or click somewhere here.

The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner

The Red Necklace, A Story of the French Revolution by Sally Gardner , is an engaging story right from the start. Due to the descriptive title, many ten year old and ups would conjure up the image of a guillotine or the beautiful and decadent Marie Antoinette.  The listener or reader of this story can place the characters in time. Gardner doesn't waste time on the time period alone but weaves in necessary details as the plot moves forward.
The story focuses on a trio of magicians that includes Yann Margoza, an immediately likable mind reader. And an opposite group of Marquises and Counts which includes the lame daughter of a particularly vile member of the aristocracy and his buddy who seems to be the devil incarnate.
    Tom Hiddleston, a RADA trained actor, reads this story very well. He changes voices and accents with ease. But the star of this recording is the story that has all of us in its grip. Those going on a long car ride during the holiday season can bank on this as a family listen. There is death and gore, it is the French Revolution after all. But there are good guys who triumph and make the past seem like a bad dream.

CD The Tragic Treasury

Lemony Snicket may have written The End, but that doesn't mean he must be finished and forgotten. The Tragic Treasury is a CD of songs that pay tribute to the thirteen volumes of a Series of Unfortunate Events. The Gothic Archies sing in a smooth, early Talking Heads, Elvis Costello or Jonathan Richmond style. From the first track Scream and Run Away, followed by The Reptile Room, the listener can relive the trials and tribulations of the Beaudelaire  Orphans. Track  number seven entitled Crows, is our favourite one. It is a brilliant song in itself but all the more so because it reminds us of the village of fowl devotees and other VFD recollections.

Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Some books are better left on the page. Gatty's Tale is one of them. Kevin Crossley-Holland has fulfilled his dream of writing a story of a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1203 by nine people, including Gatty. Gatty is a character from the King Arthur Legends. He has plumped her up into a main character and she becomes the unlikely heroine of this story.
The six of drove to Paris and back earlier this month listening to Gatty's Tale. By the end we felt as if we had been to Jerusalem and back. The reader, Claudia Renton, might have been at fault. She had to take on many different English, Welsh and foreign accents. It was a difficult job and sometimes some of the characters became confused. And in the case of Lady Gwyneth, the sponsor of the trip, her way of speaking was annoying.
    Perhaps the fact that this book only had a wisp of a subplot also added to the tedium of it. The six CD's last for eight hours.This is a book for serious young teenage girls. The odd boy might like it too. But we were a car made up of four boys and two girls (the two girls being me and my seven year old daughter). But to our credit, we listened to the end. We laughed, we cried and we spoke about the story when we were out of the car and bouncing around Paris. But unlike Ark Angel and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, we frequently turned it off for breaks.
To sum up, read it, don't listen to it and don't read it out loud to your kids.

Lucy Willow audio CD

 Sally Gardner has done it again! She has taken a subject and turned it on its head.
Lucy Willow starts out as a story about a girl who lives on a train instead of a house. Lucy Willow starts out as a story of a happy girl, until her much younger baby brother is born. Lucy Willow starts out as a story about an ordinary girl until she finds out that she has incredibly green fingers (a green thumb, in American English). Lucy Willow starts out with a reader who seems average, Dexter Fletcher, and turns into an actor who has a gift for accents. He does posh women alongside thuggish men. He was just as convincing as a common girl, as a yobbish boy.
I put this audio book on in the car for a brief but possible traffic-filled set of journeys from Notting Hill to Chiswick (should take about 20 minutes) and we were all disappointed that the roads were clear. The rest of the afternoon was spent finding quiet activities in order to be able to listen to this 3 hour long unabridged book. Suggested ages 8-12. Our seven year old girl enjoyed it all the same.

Stormchaser The Edge Chronicles

AUDIO CD REVIEW by Amos Jackson age 9
Stormchaser is a story about a boy called Twig who is a crew member on a sky pirate's ship. They have been ordered to collect stormphrax, a valuable material created inside a great storm.
I really like Twig because he does not get everything right, which makes him a realistic character. The reader, Alex Jennings is one of Britain's leading actors. He has won three Lawrence Olivier Awards, the London Evening Standard Theatre Award and the London Critics Circle Theatre Award. He changes the story from a fantastic book to an amazing CD. He is a terrific reader and that makes all the difference.

Ralph again

We went to the Tate Britain for Sam's birthday party. They were having festivities relating to Guy Fawkes Day, a funny little British excuse to do the 4th of July and Halloween kind of all wrapped up. The good thing is that fireworks are sort of legal here. I can't quite figure it out. Anyway, half of us drove and half of taxied it. I drove and put on my current favourite kids album, The Amazing Adventures of Kid Astro by Ralph's World. They don't sell him here. You just have to bite the bullet and Amazon.com it. It is so worth it.
Oliver, one of our eleven year old guests, loved it so much, he made us listen to the title track 4 times in a row. My favourites are the last 2 songs on the album. I even listen to them when the kids are not in the car with me. That is how good they are. He has a beautiful voice. He knows grown ups are listening and so there is no synthesizer in site. There is just lots of excellent guitar playing. Find him, play him, don't look back.
ps. No one seems to take kids to the  Tate Britain anymore because Tate Modern is so groovy. But it is really worth going back there. They have an art trolley too and the Turners are massive, action packed and there are so many of them!

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

    We drove to Amsterdam for the week, a six hour drive from London, not including the Channel Tunnel. We are not big drivers but we were trying out a GPS navigator called a Tomtom, and we actually had a pleasant journey. We, in the front seat, didn't fight about map reading, and funnily enough, those in the back seats hardly did either. I don't think marital bliss was the reason for the children's harmony. I think it was Michael Maloney's succulent voice reading John Boyne's brilliant book, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
    The jacket gives nothing away about the plot, but I had an inkling they were worried that people would say, "not another holocaust book". It is a holocaust book but told from the perspective of a nine year old boy, son of a Nazi commandant at Auschwitz.
    The back of the book says that it is not for nine year olds. I had not read that before the trip. But we launched into the four and half hours and were gripped (listeners aged between 6 and 41 years old). We listened to half of it to Amsterdam and the rest on our way back to  Antwerp. Even though we were really tired, it was late, we sat for ten minutes in the car, in front of our terrific hotel (check out: Slapen Enzo) and waited till the heartbreaking end. Sandwiched between the beginning and the end was our trip to the Anne Frank House. Going there made the story that much more powerful. Going there made it seem perfectly natural that there cannot be too many holocaust books. The idea that such an atrocity, so carefully planned, on such a scale, only 60 years ago, is simply unfathomable.
    Like Morris Gleitzman's book Once, that I recommended last month, this book is really worth reading. But I must admit that listening to it together, as a family, was the perfect way to experience it.
It is probably appropriate for ages 10 and up but like Once, it is for any age that you as a parent or friend feel ready to discuss it.