Book Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

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monster callsFirst published on 3rd July, 2011 in StarMag

A MONSTER CALLS

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books, 215 pages

IN a radio interview, Patrick Ness said that he wept during the writing of A Monster Calls. “If I’m writing anything that’s this difficult and I’m not upset, then I’m not doing it right,” he said. “If I’m not crying why would I think anybody else will be moved?”

When I received my review copy of the book, I read the last couple of pages and found myself simply blubbing. I then read the book all the way through and, at the end, I cried again. Ness has obviously done it right.Read More »

Book Review: Four Seasons by Jane Breskin Zalben

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FOUR SEASONSFirst published on 17th April, 2011 in StarMag

FOUR SEASONS
Author: Janet Breskin Zalben
Publisher: Knopf, 336 pages

ALLEGRA (Ally to her friends and family) Katz has been playing the piano since she was four. She’s now 13 and belongs to a pre-college music programme at the Juilliard Music School. Her dad is a violinist with a famous quartet, and her mother trained in opera and now sings the blues in jazz bars in Manhattan’s Alphabet City.

Ally’s life revolves around music. She has to practice six hours a day and spends practically the whole of every Saturday at Juilliard, attending various music workshops and classes – theory, chamber, composition, solfege, master class, and her piano lesson proper with the relentlessly demanding and unsympathetic Miss Pringle.

“It felt like the world was passing me by,” says Ally when she can’t make it to her best friend, Opal’s art exhibition. Slumber parties, just hanging out eating hotdogs or watching movies, dating, all the things that most teenagers take for granted have to take a back seat to her music career, or rather making sure that she has music career to look forward to – “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice.”

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Susan Saves the Day!

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susan sandsI couldn’t resist buying this book today: The Riddle of Raggedrock Ridge, #4 in Marilyn Ezzell’s Susan Sand Mystery Stories series.

I found it at that grubby secondhand bookstore in Amcorp Mall – the very one where I once found a first edition of Antonia Forest’s The Player’s Boy; and where, today, I found two old Kaye Webb-era Puffins: Catweazle by Richard Carpenter, and The Rifle House Friendsby Lois Lamplugh.

But back to Susan Sand. O.M.G.

I’ve never seen or heard of this series before. It’s a Nancy Drew wannabe of course, but I think it’s also  a parody of sorts.Read More »

Book Review: So Much to Tell by Valerie Grove

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First published on 5th September, 2010 in StarMag

kaye 1
Kaye Webb, from archiveshub.ac.uk

SO MUCH TO TELL
Author: Valerie Grove
Publisher: Viking Books, 302 pages

WHEN I was a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Segamat and Batu Pahat in Johor, I often received books as gifts. Many of them were Puffins, but I wasn’t really conscious of the publisher’s name then. What I did notice after a while was the name Kaye Webb. It appeared on the synopsis page, above the book’s title – Editor: Kaye Webb.

I didn’t then know what an editor was or did, but I supposed she must be quite important to have her name appear even before the author’s. So I decided that Kaye Webb was the name that guaranteed a good read – not Puffin Books, but Kaye Webb.Read More »

Interview: Emily Gravett

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First published on 23 April, 2010 in Star2

emily 1

EMILY GRAVETT must be the most prolific picture book creator in existence. In five years, the 37-year-old Brighton-native has produced 10 books – nine wholly by her, the 10th, a collaboration with Julia Donaldson (author of The Gruffalo and many other much-beloved picture books).

But when I speak to her on the phone, Gravett frets about being unproductive: ‘I don’t think I’ve published that many books,’ she said from Singapore, the final leg of her recent Asian tour to promote Cave Baby, her collaboration with Donaldson. ‘I could be publishing more – I feel a little uneasy whenever I’m between books.’

Gravett is inspired by everyday situations, conversations on the radio, things she overhears in shops and on the bus. She claims to work in a ‘very chaotic’ way.

‘I have a sketch book and I mess about with ideas. A book usually comes together in a bit of a mess. There’s a lot of reorganisation and sorting things out.’

Gravett’s books are either deceptively simple (like Orange Pear Apple Bear, The Odd Egg or Blue Chameleon) or extremely complex, full of subtle jokes, witty asides, and visual gags.

Emily 2

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Book Review: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamilo

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edward-tulaneFirst published in 2009 in The Star

THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE

By Kate DiCamillo

Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

Publisher: Candlewick Press, 208 pages

(ISBN: 0-763-62589-2)

EDWARD Tulane is a china rabbit, finely dressed, trimmed with real fur. He has jointed limbs, leather shoes and a gold pocket watch. He doesn’t sound very cuddly, but he is an exquisite object, specially made for a little girl named Abilene.

Abilene adores Edward and Edward … well, Edward thinks he is “an exceptional specimen”. The rabbit never ceases to “be amazed by his own fineness” and takes Abilene’s love totally for granted. Why wouldn’t she love such a beautiful toy?

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Book Review: Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

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rules of summerA version of this piece was first published on 22nd December, 2013 in my column, Tots to Teens in The Sunday Star

RULES OF SUMMER
Author & Illustrator: Shaun Tan
Publisher: Lothian Children’s Books, 48 pages

NEVER BREAK the rules. Especially if you don’t understand them.’ That’s on the back-cover of Rules of Summer, Shaun Tan’s latest picture book. One might also say, ‘Never discount a Shaun Tan picture book. Especially if you don’t understand it.’

I hardly ever understand Tan’s picture books. Or rather they usually leave me feeling perplexed and with many questions. I once remarked to a fellow-Shaun Tan fan that his art is so beautiful that it doesn’t matter that his stories don’t quite work or make sense. At that point, I believed that Tan would not be a published author if he wasn’t such an outstanding artist. However, I’m starting to change my mind about that. Now I think that when Tan makes a whole book, providing words and pictures, you can’t have one aspect without the other. The words may be cryptic, they may not make up the usual story pattern – conflict, climax, resolution – but they offer the reader a starting point to create that structure for herself. They set the wheels of the imagination in motion, and that’s also what his art does.Read More »

Interview: Shaun Tan

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A shorter version of this interview was first published on 27th September, 2009 in The Star.Shaun_Tan_portrait300px

MOST PEOPLE tend to associate picture books with simple stories, illustrated with simple, brightly coloured pictures. Of course, those with a more intimate knowledge of this medium of storytelling know that there is more to picture books than just pretty pictures that simply offer a visual description of a straightforward, basic text.

Picture books may deal with complex and difficult themes and subject matter, and this may be reflected in either the text or the art, or both.

Shaun Tan is a picture book artist whose work is definitely more complex than what the average person might expect to find in a alphabet or counting book. I know people who started collecting picture books after they read one of Tan’s. The Melbourne-based 35-year-old started his career drawing for science fiction and horror novels. His art appears in picture books written by John Marsden (The Rabbits) and Gary Crew (The Viewer and Memorial) and he also illustrates his own books (The Red Tree, The Arrival, The Lost Thing, Tales from Outer Suburbia).

 

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Book Review: Matanya Teleskop, Hatinya Kapal Dalam Botol Kaca by Sufian Abas

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matnya-teleskopFirst published on 23rd August, 2009 in The Star

MATANYA TELESKOP, HATINYA KAPAL DALAM BOTOL KACA

Author: Sufian Abasa

Publisher: Sang Freud Press

ALTHOUGH HE doesn’t write specifically for adolescents, I think Sufian Abas has the sort of weird and wonderful imagination needed to create the sort of romantic fantasies teenagers would be only too eager to lose themselves in. They would most certainly identify with Sufian’s love-sick characters, his delusional young men and wide-eyed young women, all wandering through a world lit by fluorescent strips and filled with dusty roads, stuffy LRT coaches and gaudy fast food joints.Read More »

Timeless Tales of Malaysia by Tutu Dutta

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A version of this piece was first published in The Star in 2009.

Timeless TalesTimeless Tales of Malaysia is a collection of 11 folktales, retold by Tutu Dutta. Born in India, Dutta grew up in Malaysia. However, she now spends much of her time away from the country as she’s married to a Malaysian diplomat whose next posting is to Cuba!

Dutta has always been interested in folktales, legends and myths, which, she says are “little capsules of culture, history and also human nature”. She read and researched a great many stories before selecting those that appear in Timeless Tales. Some of them were tales Dutta remembered from her childhood; others she had read on the Internet and discussion forums; a few were from travel articles and also from published collections. The final selection was based solely on what appealed to Dutta most. “First of all, they had to have an interesting plot and the possibility of character development,” she explained to me via email, adding that she also favoured stories that end with twist. Most importantly, the stories had to “speak” to her.

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