Momo celebrates

Hello to all the people who read my blog.  I don't know who you are but I am celebrating!  I now have 300 book reviews and there have been 30,000 hits on my site!  I love numbers (and reading too of course) so the neat synchronicity of this makes me smile.

I thought I might use this post to talk about the books I am reading right now and the books I plan to read soon.  I have been a little distracted recently because I bought an ipad and a Kindle.  This means I can read books electronically but I have also found these devices to be quite sinister just like the grey men in the novel Momo - stealing all my time.

As far as print books go I am reading Jay by Elizabeth Laird, Alison's camels by Christine Gregory (a visitor to my school library in recent weeks) and The true story of Lilli Stubeck by James Aldridge which is a old book from my bookshelves.

On my Kindle I am reading Nanberry by Jackie French and over the next few months while I travel I will read (or re-read) Outlaw by Michael Morpurgo, Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt, The Present takers by Aidan Chambers, Over sea under stone by Susan Cooper, The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood, Septimus Heap book one by Angie Sage and Dicey's song by Cynthia Voigt.

Finally this is a big thank you to my 16 followers and to all those other people who have dipped into my blog.  We read to know we are not alone and I blog to know I am not alone as a reader. It is great fun sharing books through my blog. I have set a target of 500 titles by the end of the year.  I probably won't reach this but I do plan to do heaps of reading in the next few months so keep visiting to find books you might like to read too.

The Blood Stone by Jamila Gavin

The blood stone is a diamond that becomes part of a fabulous jewel. “The whole effect must be white …he surrounded the diamond with white stones : white jade, white sapphire, crystal, moonstones and pearls interspersed, to emphasise its whiteness with contrasting tiny rubies, amber and emeralds, as if remnants of rainbows were trapped within the white water of the diamond.”

The maker of this marvelous pendant is Geronimo. He is the father of Flippo but in an odd twist of fate this father and son have not met. Flippo was born eight months and thirteen days after his father left for Hindustan. So now you should be able to guess this will be a story involving a quest.

Elisabetta, Carlo, Giuseppe, Sofia and Gabriella along with their mother Teodora are now living under the tyrannical rule of Bernado Pagliarin. Greed and power are his motivations so when he discovers Teodora has this fabulous jewel called The Ocean of the Moon his true nature rises and he will stop at nothing to own it. Pagliarin is, however, not the only man who wants to posses this exquisite diamond and so the chase is on. Flippo journeys from Venice to India and Afghanistan. He is taking The Ocean of the Moon to pay a ransom so his father will be freed from prison but carrying a jewel of such value is far to dangerous so Carlo arranges to have it sewn into his skull!

If you want to read another book with a similar flavour look for The Thief Lord by Zizou Corder. 

I am reading books by the authors who will speak at the IBBY Congress in London. I have already talked about one other book by Jamila Gavin but I must say The Blood Stone is even better. I think I almost held my breath through the whole book feeling so anxious for Flippo and all the danger he faces. Jamila Gavin gives you such rich insights in to the smells, scenes and tastes of all the exotic places we journey to in this book.  The words on the front cover are so true this is "a fabulous epic novel".  I recommend you grab this one quickly you will not be disappointed.

Oranges in no man's land by Elizabeth Laird

Recently a friend asked me for a novel where the main character is a hero.  I happened to be reading  Oranges in no man's land at that time and so was happy to make this connection.  Ayesha, the main character in this book is indeed a hero.  She takes an enormous risk travelling through check points with armed guards so she can get some precious medicine for her grandmother.

Elizabeth Laird once again takes her readers into countries and cultures they may never experience. Oranges in no man's land is set in Beirut during the Civil War. The story opens as bombs begin to fall once again on the ruined city.  Ayesha, Latif and Ahmed, her brothers, and their grandmother flee the house assured their mother is close behind.  "And a shell fell on our house, wiping out our little shack of a house, and everything in it.  I never saw Mama again."

Survival means taking refuge in a house once meant for a single family but now home to many.  The wonderful Mrs Zainab and her daughter Samar befriend and comfort them.  Daily life is hard but they learn to cope until one morning Ayesha sees her grandmother is very ill.  She has now run out of medicine.  Ayesha decides to travel through the dangerous city to find the doctor.  This doctor lives on the other side of the Green Line.

This is a very short novel but it contains a powerful story.  A few years ago I recommended this book to a young student and I was so happy when she came back to me and said it was the best book she had ever read!

Secret Friends by Elizabeth Laird illustrated by Jason Cockcroft

Books should teach us things about ourselves. Secret Friends is an honest account of how children react to bullying and the power of the peer group.  If you have read The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, Wonder by RJ Palacio or The Present Takers by Aiden Chambers then you might be ready to read Secret Friends but be warned this is another very sad and quite confronting book told in a very slim novel (93 illustrated pages). I would recommend this book for mature readers aged 10+.

Rafaella does not fit in.  Her appearance is different and her name sounds odd.  From the first day she is teased and given the awful nick name of 'Earwig'.  "I don't know what got into me.  Perhaps it was the nervousness of starting a new school. Perhaps it was the way she looked down at me."

Lucy immediately regrets the nick name she has bestowed on Rafaella but it is now too late.  Others quickly adopt the name and Rafaella becomes an outsider.The dilemma for Lucy is that she becomes friendly with Rafaella - even visiting her home and meeting her lovely family but Lucy knows this friendship needs to be kept a secret at school.  "You were a social outcast if you were seen with Earwig and I didn't want to risk it."

After Christmas Rafaella does not return to school.  Something truly dreadful has happened. 

For younger children who want to explore this important theme of friendship and loyalty and bullying you might also look for Second Best Friend by Sally Rippin or Lady Long Legs by Jan Mark.

When I read a book I often think about who I will recommend it to.  I first read Secret Friends over ten years ago and I regularly recommend it to mature girls who are looking for a short book with strong emotions - a sad book yes but also a book well worth reading.

Post update.  I found a copy of Secret Friends in a charity shop last week for just 50 cents. This copy is from 1996 but I thought I should check if by some miracle it might still be available - and YES! it is. I do love the illustrations in the original edition by Jason Cockcroft.  Here is the new cover:

Lost Riders by Elizabeth Laird

When you step into a new book it is like holding the hand of the author. You have to trust that he or she will protect you from harm. Right from the first page I knew Lost Riders by Elizabeth Laird would be a harrowing journey and it was but thankfully Elizabeth Laird is a master storyteller with huge compassion. There were times when I almost stopped reading this book but now I am glad I persisted. Do not expect a trivial happy ending but our hero and his brother will at least be returned to their home and family. This is a powerful, emotional and important book suitable for a very mature Primary reader.

Rashid lives in Pakistan with his mother, baby sister and younger brother. Their father is dead and they are living in extreme poverty although as a young boy of eight Rashid has not yet realised the extent of his mother’s struggles.

One day a young Uncle arrives with an offer to take the boys to Dubai where they will have the best of everything “Clothes, toys, good education … rich Arabs bring little friends for them (their children) into their families. Treat them like their own. Give them bicycles and toy cars and all the food they can eat. They pay very well for them too.” This magical picture of life in Dubai is so far from the truth. The utterly horrible place where the boys are taken by people smugglers and the brutality of working as a camel jockey is, as I said, almost too awful to read but Rashid is a boy with a deep intelligence. He learns quickly which is partly how he survives but he also has an emotional intelligence well beyond his tender years.

I did not know anything about camel racing. Thankfully this practice is now banned. All of our reading is an experience and so although it was a difficult one I am glad Elizabeth Laird gave me the experience of meeting Rashid and other children like him.  I am really looking forward to hearing more from Elizabeth Laird at the IBBY Congress in London this year.

If you read this book you should also look for Ibqal by Francesco D’Adamo in our school library which is about a boy who is forced to work in a carpet factory.

Journey to Jo'burg by Beverley Naidoo

The next three books I will talk about in this blog contain extremely powerful stories of heroism and oppression yet all are very slim novels. These books make ideal reading for senior and middle Primary students. They show young children living in complex communities during times of injustice or war.

In Journey to Jo'burg we meet Naledi who lives in South Africa, the South Africa of apartheid. Her mother works in Johannesburg. This is three hundred miles from the family home. The three children are in the care of their grandmother. With their mother working so far from home it seems they rarely see her and her work for the rich white family is a mystery to the two older children until Dineo their baby sister falls ill. Naledi decided she and her brother Tiro need to get to Jo’burg and the only way to do this is to walk. Surprisingly, while the journey is long, they strike some good fortune firstly in the form of a place to stay the night near an orange farm and later when they are given a lift in a truck to a place quite near their mothers work place. This luck continues when they meet Grace Mbatha. Grace’s mother works quite near Mma.

“There it stood, a great pink house with its own grass lawn and trees in front, even its own road leading up to the front door!” The Madam reluctantly gives Mma permission to go home to Dineo but she must work for one more night and so the children are returned to the care of Grace. It is at this point their journey becomes very frightening when the two children find themselves separated from Grace and stranded on a railway platform with police angrily checking for identity cards.

My copy of Journey to Jo’burg has an excellent introduction by Michael Rosen and this is made even more special because both Michael Rosen and Beverley Naidoo are speaking at the IBBY congress in London. There is also a "More than the story" section at the back with the letter that shows this book was once banned.  Read more here.  If you click this link you will also see the whole range of different covers which have been used for this book.  I find cover design a fascinating area - the appeal of covers to different groups of readers in different cultures.

Journey to Jo’burg was first published 1987. I do hope it might still be in print because this is such an accessible story which allows young readers to glimpse this oppressive regime and perhaps make some sense of this important time in world history.  I also found some excellent teaching notes.

Forbidden Memories by Jamila Gavin

In a few months I will attend the IBBY Congress in London so I am trying to read as many books as I can by some of the major speakers. I started this week with a book I have loved for years and years – Forbidden Memories by Jamila Gavin. Several decades ago there was a movie called Logan’s Run – Forbidden Memories has a similar theme as does The Giver by Lois Lowry and The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.

The world has been destroyed and people have been forced to set up a new society underground or in a dome far removed from the surface of the earth. In Forbidden Memories, as in the other books I have mentioned, the government controls all aspects of citizens' lives. Babies are raised for specific occupations and roles in the community. In Forbidden Memories we read “The dome controlled everything; it decided who should be born, how, when and with what genes. From the egg bank, the determiners selected future citizens for the different zones and fertilized them to be thinkers, artists, wealth creators and operators, adding or manipulating genes as necessary.”

Sasha and Devi are twins.  They have been raised as an experiment and so they are under extra scrutiny. Devi will become a scientist and Sasha will be a dancer. The story opens on separation day. Their childhood is over and the girls will not meet again until Regeneration Day which happens every ten years but Devi has a plan. She has made sure the girls can still communicate via their thoughts. This is highly illegal and dangerous but they are desperate to stay connected. Chapter two opens one hundred years later. It is once again Regeneration Day and Devi is excited to be seeing Sasha. Regeneration is like a car service with all sorts of new parts added so that the aging process is all but eliminated in this world but this time the regeneration goes horribly wrong. Devi sees an image of the sky and she transmits it to Sasha during the process. Mind pictures are forbidden. Sasha is immediately taken away to be decommissioned. Devi must now race to save her sister and in the process she will discover the truth about the Dome and about the Earth outside.

This is an old book. It is a very short novel with only 80 pages but it is such a powerful and thought provoking story. It is in my school library and I do hope it is in yours.