The Places You Will Go

Old but Always New

The late Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time deserves to be introduced to a whole new audience. Forty-four years after it was first published its contents still ruffle feathers.

Junior Reading Room

Social Misfits and resourceful children are featured in this week's selection. Get a 25% discount with the coupon in StarTwo.

Dido and Pa

This week's featured illustrations are from Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken. The pictures are by Pat Marriott.

Dido and Pa is part of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series.

Scary Stuff

I interviewed Tunku Halim (left) on Friday and felt like a worm when he said that hardly anyone had reviewed his Children's History of Malaya.

(I interviewed him when that book was first published.)

I squeaked: "I mentioned you in my column."

OK, so it was a very, very brief mention ....

No excuses, so let's just look forward to his new book, 44 Cemetery Road, a compilation of his supernatural shorts.

For what it's worth, I still read CHM to my kids and have recommended it to a couple of home-schooling centres (where it is now used). The book makes history interesting for children. History is, of course, interesting anyway, but most textbooks have an uncanny knack of turning bloody battles, scandals and betrayals, turbulent lives, cruel dictators and courageous people into chunks of boring, lifeless facts. Quite a gift, that!

To get your kids interested in Malayan history, get them CHM.

And check out Tunku Halim's blog Write Lah! Writing for Malaysians.

44 Cemetery Road is due out in April.

Mini Review: The Whispering Road

The Whispering Road
By Livi Michael
Puffin Books
ISBN: 0141317035

Main Characters:
1. Joe
2. Annie

What It's All About
Brother and sister, Joe and Annie, run away from their master, a cruel farmer who bought them from a workhouse. The children were left there by their mother who promised to come back for them. Like most workhouse children, Joe and Annie are ill-treated - beaten, starved and over-worked.One night, Joe decides to flee and takes Annie with him. So starts a journey full of dangers and evils.

What I Like About It
It's a fast-paced, exciting story, with characters (Joe and Annie as well as the people they meet along the way) you can really believe in.

What I Didn't Like About It
It's very sad. However, that's also what makes it good. Michael is simply describing a state of affairs that actually existed. This is no fantasy but the grim truth of 19th century England. What's really heartbreaking is that Joe and Annie's life is really not too different from that of children living in poverty in many countries, right now in the 21st century!

If You Like The Sound of This book, You Should Also Try:
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Reviewed by: Daphne Lee

Independent Reading

I enjoyed a couple of books over the Independence Day bank holiday: The Mirror-Image Ghost by Catherine Storr, and The River at Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston.

I only found out last night that Boston started writing her Green Knowe books when she was 60! Wow! There is hope for me yet! And until last night I thought all the books were about Tolly, the little boy who arrives to live with his grandmother in an old manor house by a river. It seems that the characters in each book vary somewhat.

In River, it's Ida, Oscar and Ping, who explore the water in a canoe. Like in the first book (The Children of Green Knowe, which is the only other in the series I've read) it is pretty plotless, and simply describes the children spending long, idyllic days, exploring and enjoying the countryside. I must say it's a rather magical and evocative read.

I'm keeping my eye out for other Green Knowe books, epsecially Stranger at Green Knowe, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1961 and once again features Ping!

The books are illustrated by Peter Boston, the son of Lucy Boston. In fact, Green Knowe is based on Lucy Boston's own home, Hemingford Grey Manor House, in Huntingdon, Cambrideshire. You can actually visit the house, by appointment. Alas, I did not know this when I was living in the UK!

The other book I read, The Mirror-Image Ghost, is a grimmer, much sadder tale about Lisa, a young girl adjusting to her new step father and siblings. The ghost of the title appears in a haunted mirror, and it is not so much a spirit as a figure from the past. I found the book quite creepy in places, especially near the end ...

Catherine Storr's best known novel is Marianne Dreams, another very spooky tale about a girl who dreams vividly about whatever she draws. The sequel, Mark and Marianne, is weirdly uncreepy though. It's like Marianne forgets totally all the strange things that happened to her in the first book, and goes on to lead a horribly mundane life. I wonder what Storr was thinking! Not that it's a bad book. I'm just baffled by how different it is, up to the point of being rather inconsistent. Maybe Storr just wanted to use the two characters in an ordinary teenage novel.