The Places You Will Go

Fairyland: It's Not ALL Sweetness and Light

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens, StarMag

AFTER years of being asked by StarMag fashionista Dzireena Mahadzhir to feature fairy stories in this column, I am finally going to do so.

However, I'm not sure if Dee will like the sort of fairies I am going to write about. Her preference is for those dainty little things who wear ballet tutus made of flower petals and flit about gardens on gossamer wings. The fairies she likes are innocent, sweet and kind. At worst they are merely naughty. Perhaps they tease children by doing something ridiculous like rearranging the nursery furniture, but they would never deliberately harm anyone.

Enid Blyton shaped many children's ideas about fairies. Remember Silky in the books about the Faraway Tree? She now has her own series, Enchanted World, by Elise Allen, published by Egmont under the Enid Blyton brand. The fairies in these books have names like Bizzy, Petal and, of course, Pinx! They fly around doing good and fighting evil.

And now there's also Barbie Fairytopia to further brainwash little girls into believing that life is incomplete without a pair of strapon wings.

Junior Reading Room

Emily Gravett's latest picture book is featured in Junior Reading Room today. There's also the hilarious tale of a hypersensitive hippo and a board book that helps babies learn about shapes. Junior Reading Room also highlights a YA novel about the son of a archvillain, groomed to continue his father's plans to rule the world, and a graphic novel about a group of teenage art terrorists.

Cut out the coupon (available only in the newspaper) to enjoy 25% discount, on the featured books, at Kinokuniya Bookstore.

Gene Wins!

The winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award (which honours excellence in Young Adult fiction) is Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese.

From the ALA website:

Yang draws from American pop culture and ancient Chinese mythology in his groundbreaking work. Expertly told in words and pictures, Yang’s story in three parts follows a Chinese American teenager’s struggle to define himself against racial stereotypes. “American Born Chinese” is the first graphic novel to be recognized by the Michael L. Printz Committee.

Yang, who began drawing comics in the fifth grade, is a high school teacher in the San Francisco Bay area. The annual award for literary excellence is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of ALA, and is sponsored by Booklist magazine. The award, first given in 2000, is named for the late Michael L. Printz, a Topeka, Kans., school librarian known for discovering and promoting quality books for young adults.

Dead and Alive

I'm currently biting my nails over Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which is part-detective, part-horror fiction, about a group of scholars investigating the truth behind the legend of Vlad the Impaler, the cruel medieval ruler whose crimes formed the basis of the myth of Dracula.

Reading this book, prompted me to re-read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Coincidentally, two new versions of the classic tale arrived on my desk about a month ago: an illustrated edition, and a graphic novel.

Train Man Rides On …

TRAIN MAN: A Shojo Manga

Story: Hitori Nakano

Art: Machiko Ocha

Publisher: Ballantine Books;

179 pages

(ISBN: 0-345-49619-1)

For ages 13+