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These are the diaries of Jamie Kelly, a girl for whom life is never easy. Sarcastic, gloomy, slightly cynical (with hair like that, who wouldn’t be?) and beset with problems – mainly caused by the oh-so-perfect Angelique – Jamie suffers through middle school. She trusts her innermost thoughts to her diary, and that is what we read – a dairy complete with cartoon-style illustrations and complaints about everything including school, teachers, Stinker the dog (he stinks AND eats her homework), her hair (which will never be long, blonde and perfect), boys and life generally. Luckily for us her complaints are hilarious.
So hilarious that, despite Jamie being a girl, these books are too good to keep just for female readers – boys get them too. In fact they make a perfect ‘next’ after the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.
In America the Dear Dumb Diary series is up to book twelve, though here in the UK we’re just catching up and the first in the series is just available. Go read. Then be patient and wait for the rest of the series – anticipation will only sweeten the fun of each book as it appears.
Recommended by Leonie Flynn
Next?
- In case you’ve missed them, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney.
- Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce is a slightly easier read, but is just as American and just as funny.
- The original and best diary? Sue Townsend’s genius, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾.
Hi -
We're taking a fortnight off our Books-of-the-Week - back with the next one on the 28th.D.H.
A story of changing friendships, of lust, hope and hopelessness, a creature unlike any other and an ordinary box – a box, which has been closed for many years; a box which if opened could have devastating consequences for the world…‘Let. Me. Out.’ The voice is bleak. A sandpaper rasp. Pandora’s box is a well-known Greek myth and is marvellously interpreted by Julie Hearn. Set in a time and place after ‘the attack’, when England is seemingly isolated from the rest of the world – quaint and peaceful. Inter-tellies are novel, Inter-phones and automobiles a rare sight and Eco-Christianity is the main religion as the world tries to reverse the devastation of pollution. Five friends on a quest for entertainment decide to visit the old abandoned mansion. Five friends who have known each other since potty training, who naturally fall into the same boy-girl line up wherever they sit or walk. Yet, they are growing up; roles are changing and on the way to the mansion they swap places, their ‘first big mistake’. On entering the old house each reacts unexpectedly, the brave timid, the timid brave. Then they hear the sandpaper voice behind the wall… ‘Let. Me. Out.’ (…) ‘Do it, Maude,’ says Gurnet, his voice low and urgent. ‘Let the poor little creature out.’ Julie Hearn’s skill of developing believable characters with clearly distinguishable voices is as evident here as in her other novels. As a reader you rapidly befriend the characters and are effortlessly carried along and involved in their journey. The narrative is told primarily from four of the five friends’ perspectives, with Maude’s kept effectively minimal. These chapters are interspersed with a separate narrative reminiscent of a Greek chorus – an omnipotent narrative utilised to add depth and understanding to the history and mystery of Pandora’s box. A tense and gripping read, Wreckers is a captivating story which forces reflection on the daily interplay of hope and hopelessness that dances through life.
Recommended by Tessa Brechin
Jamie Matthews is ten years old when his Dad relocates him and his teenage sister to the Lake District. A fresh start away from London. He has his cat Roger to keep him company, a brand new Spiderman T-shirt from his birthday, and has just made a new secret friend at school; a Muslim girl called Sunya, the superhero match to his Spiderman.
But beneath the surface the Matthews family is falling apart. His dad is an alcoholic and an emotional wreck, his mum stayed behind in London, and his sister Jas, wilting under a weight of comparison, has dyed her hair pink, gotten a piercing, and stopped eating.
Jamie’s other sister, Rose, lives on the mantelpiece in a golden urn. Jas’s identical twin who was killed in a terrorist attack five years ago. He can’t really remember her and doesn’t understand why the cottage is full of boxes marked ‘scared’. What he does know is that his dad must never find out about his new friend Sunya; and that his mum is going to come back to him soon.
When Jamie sees an advert for a talent show he’s convinced it’s the way to get his mum back and unite his family again.
Dealing with the extreme emotional stress that bereavement places on a family, Pitcher shows us an intimate, forthright, and ultimately heart-warming portrait of a family desperately trying to cope with an unthinkable loss. The character of Jamie Matthews is a genuine and captivating narrator that draws you deep into his complicated life. Not shying away from the serious emotions of grief, or the complications of racial pressure, she presents a brave and beautiful debut novel that is sure to draw a few tears, but leave you feeling hopeful.My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is Annabel Pitcher’s first novel. Grown out of a travel notebook, it spans the heavyweight topics of terrorism, grief, and family in one bold masterful stroke; and I greatly look forward to seeing where she goes from here.
Recommended by Matthew Humpage
I love David Lucas’s storytelling. Picture books such as Peanut and The Robot and the Bluebird convey emotional depth in a few simple words which are never beyond the grasp of young readers. His illustrations have a very distinctive style – they are both simple, reminiscent of naïve art, yet the way they are assembled on the page is very current, and the result is beautifully decorative. Lost in the Toy Museum is no exception, although it is more light-hearted than some of Lucas’s other work.
Set in Bethnal Green’s Museum of Childhood, which is one of my favourite museums in London, it is basically a hide-and-seek game which the toys play with their surrogate parent figure, Bunting the cat. Bunting in his hat, suit and suitcase obviously cares about the toys’ welfare and education, but like many parents and teachers, he can sometimes be a bit stuffy and serious. What he needs is to let go and have fun, and this is what the toys’ game is designed to teach him. As he searches for the rebellious crew, Bunting moves from setting to setting in the museum. The scenery and the toy characters featured in the book can be found in the museum itself, so the adventure has the potential to move beyond the page and become interactive as the child reader can join the game by visiting the galleries, following Bunting’s trail and searching for the actual toys. Lucas comments that he often visited the museum as a child, and I can’t think of a better way to thank this lovely institution for preserving memories of childhood gone by and inspiring new ones daily.Recommended by Noga Applebaum
Well, a new project...I've just signed a contract to compile a new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Many of you will know the original volume, by Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Pritchard, which OUP published back in 1984 and is long overdue an overhaul.
The original OCCL is a great book - very broad, very opinionated; it's a reference book, but far from being purely about conveying information it also takes a quite critical look at its subject; and with only two writers having put together the whole thing (Carpenter and Pritchard didn't assemble work by hundreds of contributors, they wrote the whole lot themselves) it's also got a distinctive voice.My book will be taking the original volume as a starting-point, cutting parts of it away, updating some of it, and writing probably about eighty thousand new words. It's a big job. The daunting part, however, isn't the scale (I've done many reference books before), but the scope. Because it's not just about English children's books, but should have good coverage of other English-language work. Oh, and a bit about everything else, too. At least five hundred brand new entries - a teen novelist from Australia, a popular picture-book character from the US, an entry on folk tales from Greece, on Manga, on the Charlie and Lola TV animation, on children's publishing in Mexico, writing for young adults about sexuality, picture-book apps for the iPhone, Anthea Bell and Lemony Snicket, along with armoured bears and daemons and Dust. Books from Austria and Israel and Turkey and India.
The initial fun part, of course, is drawing up the list of what/who goes in. But first I have an awful lot to learn...
(Sounds fun, tho', doesn't it?)
D.H.
It’s 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass, with its wave of Nazi attacks on Germany's Jews. Franz and his parents have left Berlin behind and are in England on an extended holiday. Franz has distanced himself from his parents, disgusted by their Nazi loyalty, their abilty to turn their backs on those in need and frustrated by their refusal to provide answers. As an outsider in the local village, a boy with the wrong accent and wrong coat, Franz spends all his time alone on the nearby common, watching the wildlife, considering the ferocity and beauty of nature.
Then one day Franz is surprised to find himself being attacked by something, something icy cold, something he can’t see…Eldrin is of the tribe, beautiful, vicious and hungry, hungrier than she’s ever been before. As her hunger grows her fascination with the daemon boy grows too. She watches him, sees him stare in her direction, careful to avoid looking into his eyes for fear of being captured by daemon slave vines. Yet realising there is something different about this daemon - he doesn’t seem to be enslaved. Spending increasing time near him, following him, she starts to change. Her Tribe grow suspicious, turning against her, forcing her to run or fight. Franz and Eldrin are two outsiders, drawn together through fascination and survival.
An interesting interplay of the distressing reality of Nazi doctrine and the supernatural realm of Faeries, exploring notions of being an outsider, the dangers of being perceived as different, of trust, misunderstanding and of survival. Ice Maiden can be read alone but it is the prequel to Sally Prue's award-winning Cold Tom, a re-imagining of the folk legend of Tam Lin, the human man tempted by an elvish queen.
Recommended by Tessa Brechin
These are the diaries of Jamie Kelly, a girl for whom life is never easy. Sarcastic, gloomy, slightly cynical (with hair like that, who wouldn’t be?) and beset with problems – mainly caused by the oh-so-perfect Angelique – Jamie suffers through middle school. She trusts her innermost thoughts to her diary, and that is what we read – a dairy complete with cartoon-style illustrations and complaints about everything including school, teachers, Stinker the dog (he stinks AND eats her homework), her hair (which will never be long, blonde and perfect), boys and life generally. Luckily for us her complaints are hilarious.
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