The Places You Will Go

Picture Book of the Month: Beyond the Great Mountains

July 2010

Beyond the Great Mountains

Author: Ed Young

Illustrator: Ed Young

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 36 pages

Year: 2005

ISBN: 978-0811843430

THIS uniquely formatted book showcases a poem of not just with words, but also pictures, with Ed Young basing his paper collage illustrations on ancient Chinese characters.

Eoin Colfer to bid farewell to Artemis Fowl | Books | guardian.co.uk

A sad goodbye ... Eoin Colfer says Artemis Fowl has to grow up and put away childish things. Photograph: Antonio Olmos

The child genius Artemis Fowl, whose criminal schemes have powered seven children's novels to bestsellerdom since 2001, selling 20m books around the world, is under a sentence of execution. His creator, Eoin Colfer, has revealed to the Guardian that this summer's outing, The Atlantis Complex, will be his teenage mastermind's penultimate adventure.

"One more book, and then that'll be the end of that," he said. "He will be faced with a choice where he can be kind to somebody and he won't gain anything, or he can be unkind and he will find a million dollars in a suitcase, and he will choose the nice way, and that will be the end," he explained. "That's how I'm going to finish it, on a very simple choice."

The child mastermind has changed through the series, Colfer continued, from being "pretty much your standard bad guy ... kind of two dimensional", to someone with "a bit of a conscience". "He's gone from being this horrible bad guy to being more of a Robin Hood kind of guy, where he does commit crimes, but you feel they're kind of warranted," he said.

Like Peter Pan, Colfer explained, Fowl will put away the magic, the childish things, but he will also do something "that could be considered very human". "There's not going to be any huge battle, and going up the stairs to heaven, it's not going to be that kind of finish." he added. "There will be the big adventure, but the end will be in a little epilogue. End of story."

Enid Blyton's Famous Five get 21st-century makeover | Books | The Guardian

Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels have undergone a 'sensitive' revision, says her publisher, to make the books more relevant to today's children. Photograph: Corbis

Farewell to the awful swotters, dirty tinkers and jolly japes: Enid Blyton's language is being dragged out of the 1940s by her publisher in an attempt to give her books greater appeal for today's children.

Not Your Typical Kid

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

THERE is a scene in The Mozart Season when the main character, Allegra, starts getting stressed about not being like other children her age. Her brother who is by no means your average teenager either, starts taking the piss, teasing her about the tragedy of not wanting to hang out at malls all day and obsess about boys and clothes.

 

Allegra does worry about her appearance and is starting to feel prickly about the opposite sex, but what she’s mostly concerned about is playing Mozart’s 4^th violin concerto just right.

 

If she did spend all her time doing her nails and styling her hair, Allegra would of course be in another book, perhaps by Cecily von Ziegesar or Zoey Dean. However, like most of the young protagonists in critically acclaimed, award-winning children’s and YA novels, Allegra is not a typical kid.

 

Usually, these characters so beloved of award committees are complex and eccentric individuals who think deeply and feel intensely, and are prone to bouts of melancholy. They also usually love to read.

 

Perhaps they are created in the image of the writers who remember only too well their youth, buried in books while their peers sunned themselves in barely-there bikinis. Perhaps the award committee members are wishful thinkers, wanting to believe that these kids do exist outside the pages of the books they are in. However, I doubt they reflect the reality of most American or British or (name any nationality) children.

 

That’s why I love them though. I love the quirky characters, the unusual love of words, the over-active imagination, the overwrought emotions. Thing is, these characters escape being and sounding like every melodramatic, emo teen you’ve ever known because they usually really do have something serious to deal with. (Note to emo teens: Please stop talking about and posting on Facebok and Twitter every minor detail in your life as though it’s a major catastrophe. It’s just embarrassing.)

 

Marcus Sedgwick: 'There is almost nothing you can't tackle in a teenage novel' | Books | guardian.co.uk

'Why does it have to be heaven and hell? Why are those the only options?' ... Marcus Sedgwick Photograph: unknown

A gruesome secret hidden in an abandoned manor house, an intense friendship between two teenage girls, a village of crumbling graveyards and deserted churches, grisly experiments investigating the afterlife ... Marcus Sedgwick isn't understating things when he says with a grin that his latest novel White Crow - shortlisted for the 2010 Guardian children's fiction prize - is "not a bunch of laughs".

A Relevant Read

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

 

I AM reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Not re-reading, but reading for the first time. I don’t know how I’ve managed to arrive at my 43^rd year without having read the book, especially when so many around me love it so much.

 

I am now two chapters into Part Two, and enjoying it thoroughly. I am loving Scout, the narrator, especially. She’s six years old at the start of the book, and there is nothing more insulting to her than to be told she behaves like a girl. “Scout sometimes you act so much like a girl, it’s mortifying,” is the sort of thing her beloved brother, Jem, says whenever Scout shows any inclination not to take part in his plans.

 

Jem is four years older than Scout and, as big brothers go, is actually a pretty good sort … most of the time.

 

By the way, I have not watched the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird either, but I’ve been told that it’s a very faithful dramatisation of the book. Harper Lee liked it and became close friends with Gregory Peck who plays Atticus Finch, the kids’ dad (Peck’s grandson was named Harper).

 

The children call their father Atticus, which would be unusual even in the 21^st century let alone in the deep south of the 1930s, where and when conventions, manners and appearances were everything. This is one of the first indications that Atticus is not like most fathers.

 

He is a widower (his wife died when Jem was six) and has raised his children himself, with only the help of a cook and cleaner, a black woman named Calpurnia. Atticus is that most rare breed of parent who actually listens to his children, not that he doesn’t ever lecture them. However, at least he practises what he preaches.

 

Scout mentions that she can’t remember her mother, but observes how Jem sometimes goes off by himself and recognises this as a sign that her brother misses their mother and leaves him alone on these occasions. Like most children, Jem and Scout are often acutely sensitive to and considerate of others’ feelings. They are also frequently tactless, selfish and indifferent.

 

The Moomins – a family affair | Life and style | The Guardian

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Beryl Bainbridge dies, aged 75 | Books | guardian.co.uk

Grande dame of British literature ... Beryl Bainbridge. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

Maverick, unique and horribly funny, according to her fellow authors: the world of British literature felt an emptier place today following the death of Beryl Bainbridge, aged 75.

She was admitted to hospital last week following a recurrence of cancer, and died suddenly in the early hours of this morning.