CHERRY GREEN, STORY QUEEN, by Annie Dalton - reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title:  CHERRY GREEN, STORY QUEEN
Author: Annie Dalton
Age group:
Publisher: Barrington Stoke

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Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn reviewed by Lynda Waterhouse

‘If you like those kinds of stories, stories where the lead characters seem to blunder through life, much as you do through your own, then you might like this one.’

I loved this biography of how Tracey Thorn grew up and tried to be a pop star. It is a self-effacing, funny and moving description of the music business from the 1980’s onwards.

Reading Tracey’s account of her life  took me straight back to my own student days in 1980’s with my big hair, flowery Oxfam dress (vintage didn’t exist then) and my precious ‘I get no love’ Buzzocks badge.

Tracey describes her experiences as a 16 year old joining a band and then forming her own all-girl band , The Marine Girls. We follow Tracey to Hull University where she meets up with Ben Watt and together they form the band Everything But The Girl and their lives change.

Each chapter is rounded off with the lyrics of one of Tracey’s songs from that period.

Tracey’s experience of pop stardom is full of high and lows. The book is also about the relationship between Ben and Tracey and how it is affected by the pressures of fame, by Ben’s illness and by having children.

Tracey does not tell us everything. It is a thoughtful account and she is a great role model for women who want to create music on their own terms.

Bedsit Disco Queen is published by Virago

ISBN 978-1-844088669

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Eleanor's Eyebrows by Timothy Knapman and David Tazzyman, Reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

I'll be honest, I didn't intend to review Eleanor's Eyebrows at all today. But from the moment I saw the cover, complete with some of the most amazing eyebrows I've ever seen, I was sold.

The eponymous Eleanor knows what all the parts of her face are for. But her eyebrows bother her - they're just 'silly, scruffy, hairy, little bits of fluff'. Affronted by her lack of faith in their abilities, the eyebrows high-tail it off into the world, where they try out various new and often dangerous careers.

Eleanor, meanwhile, has realised that a face isn't quite the same without eyebrows and starts noticing them everywhere. She tries a range of hilarious replacements before deciding that she might have been a little hasty in dismissing her little bits of fluff and launches a campaign to bring them back.

Timothy Knapman's text is delightfully silly and even without the pictures, I could imagine Eleanor re-drawing her eyebrows. The story is cute and funny and skillfully weaves in a message about accepting yourself (and your eyebrows) for who you are. David Tazzyman's illustrations are everything you'd expect from the man responsible for bringing us the face of Mr Gum and they made me giggle just as much as the text.

Eleanor's Eyebrows has something for everyone because, as I commented on Twitter the other day, who hasn't fallen out with their eyebrows at some point? Just make sure you keep the Sharpies out of reach of small children once you've read it to them.

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Vampire Dawn by Anne Rooney: reviewed by Gillian Philip

Real Vampires - as the ageless Spike would tell you in many a fetching internet meme - Don't Sparkle. Anne Rooney's don't, that's for sure. Nor do they disappoint.

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The Vampire Dawn saga is a cleverly constructed series of short novels in the hi-lo style, ideal for the reluctant reader but no small fun for the enthusiastic one, either. The stories are compact and bijou - ideal for devouring on a bus journey to school, say - but packed with incident and character, not to mention blood and guts. If you know a teen or a slightly-pre-teen who isn't particularly keen on romance but likes a decent bloodsucker, point them in the direction of Vampire Dawn.

The books are readable in any order, but it would undoubtedly help to start with Die Now Or Live Forever. The whole story begins here - in the fine tradition of horror movies, with a group of mildly bickering friends on a hike in the woods. In this case it's the Hungarian woods, which seem to be populated by especially big and Hungary mosquitoes (boom boom).

This is the lonely spot where Juliette, Omar, Finn, Ruby and Alistair stumble across a dead body that doesn't stay dead for long. They also run into the (temporary) murderer: a downright panicky Australian called Ava, who doesn't understand why she's just had to stick a tent peg through the heart of her beloved boyfriend.

And in the morning the appeal of sandwiches and ginger beer seems mysteriously to fade, and the group begins to look peckishly upon the bewildered Ava...

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The other books in the Vampire Dawn series focus on each individual member of the group, and what happens to them in the aftermath of their ill-fated camping trip: Juliette (Drop Dead, Gorgeous), Finn (Life Sucks), Omar (Every Drop Of Your Blood), Alistair and Ruby (Dead On Arrival) and Ava herself (In Cold Blood). Pretty much at random I chose Ava's story: some time after the events of Die Now Or Live Forever, the bewildered Australian girl is stumbling around Kosovo in a borrowed fur coat, with no memory of how she got there. All she knows is that she's hungry, and that she doesn't feel as jittery around a creepy and dilapidated circus as she normally would. In fact it could be a source of raw meat of several kinds...

Given the tightly restricted word count of each book (around 6,000?), the various characters and their relationships are briskly and efficiently drawn. Alistair, my particular favourite, is an OCD boy who likes to count things.

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For the teen who's especially keen on traditional vampires, there's even a guide book: Bloodsucking For Beginners. Like the mysterious Ignace, a handsome stranger who seems to have strolled into the group's lives out of a 1930s black-and-white horror movie, it's full of advice for perplexed immortal newbies...

These books are terrific fun, and they're a great, snappy read. I adore the device of giving a book to every character, and Anne Rooney (who apparently doesn't eat meat in case she gets too much of a taste for blood) has clearly had a lot of fun with the genre's tropes and traditions. Yet she never loses respect for the primal, terrifying ferocity of vampires. There's romance and teen angst here, and the delights and agonies of friendship, but there's plenty of blood too - just as there should be.

I can't imagine many teens who wouldn't love a brief trip to the world of Vampire Dawn. I had a great time. (Also, the covers are fabulous.)


Die Now Or Live Forever
Dead on Arrival
Life Sucks
Every Drop Of Your Blood
Drop Dead, Gorgeous
In Cold Blood
Bloodsucking For Beginners

By Anne Rooney; published by Ransom Publishing, April 2012

I mean, that guy's scary. He just IS.

www. gillianphilip.com

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JINX, THE WIZARD'S APPRENTICE by Sage Blackwood. Reviewed by Penny Dolan.

(Warning. This review contains plot spoilers.)

Looking through a pile of children’s books, I opened up Jinx and was immediately drawn in to the fantasy. Sage Blackwood’s writing has an attractive openness and confidence. Familiar folk tale tropes appear in a nicely simple, matter-of-fact manner that makes them perfectly acceptably to the intended mid-junior fantasy reader.

The novel starts as young Jinx is led, Hansel-like, by his stepfather away from the village and into the Urwald, the dangerous forest that is almost a character in the book. Just as he is about to abandon Jinx to the trolls and werewolves, Simon Magus appears on the path. After some cunning trading, the wizard claims Jinx as his apprentice.

Jinx’s life as a servant in the wizard’s strange cottage.is safer, better-fed and more interesting but it is also full of contradictions. Is the short-tempered, self-centred magician good or evil? What does Simon really want from young Jinx?

Grumpy and bad-tempered, Simon insists the boy is too stupid to instruct in any magic or - at first - allow into his secret workroom. Jinx tries to match what he sees, feels and knows with the evidence around him, including Simon’s mysterious room. Naturally, as time goes on, Jinx becomes curious, especially when he feels that Simon is somehow travelling to other places and receiving visitors in his room, and curiosity always causes trouble.

The book has an interesting range of characters, all strongly depicted and often eccentric. Jinx ends up with two young companions. The heroine is young Elfywn, a girl in a red hood. Suffering from the curse of truthfulness, Elfwyn is trying to find her grandmother so the curse can be removed. The other boy – and often the source of Jinx’s jealousy - is Reven, the self-styled “king’s son” who speaks and acts like a hero learned from a book. Reven has his own secret curse too, one that brings fear to the forest.

There are magical adult characters too. Jinx is partly terrified by Dame Glammer, a lively sharp-tongued witch with her own morality and travelling butter churn. On the other hand, he grows fond of the good wizard, Sophie, who arrives from a land where magic is forbidden, even though her meetings with Simon often end up in wrangling. I feel that many children will half-recognise this pair as two adults who care for each other but who are unable to live together: the couple’s squabbles are very convincing. Finally, the plot includes the most powerful wizard of all - the evil Bonemaster – the enemy that Simon Magus warns Jinx about, even though Jinx gradually discovers the two have a far more complex relationship.

Simon is so busy with his own plans and projects that he does not recognise Jinx’s own supernatural gifts. The first is an ability to see the true feelings of people as swirls of coloured light, as auras that help him know how they are feeling. Jinx imagines everyone has this; he never thinks of it as just his power. However, when Simon casts a power spell on Jinx, he removes this gift. Bereft of this extra sense, Jinx’s faith in Simon’s intentions crumbles.

Jinx still has one secret skill left. Jinx is the Listener, the one able to hear the conversation between the trees, the one who can understand the voice of the vast Urwald, even if the meanings are not always clear.

Eventually, trying to get free of their curses, the three children are imprisoned in the Bonemaster’s towering castle and the wizard decides to use Jinx to lure Simon into his power. When Simon does not come, Jinx becomes convinced his old master is as evil and uncaring as the Bonemaster, and enters his own world of sadness. Were his worst fears right?

Nevertheless, the trio try to get free. While Reven tries to find an escape route, Jinx and Elfwyn search for the Bonemaster’s souce of power. Under the castle, in a hidden cellar, they find rows of bottles. Each contains a small, silently screaming, human figure: the Bonemaster uses these captive deaths as an energy source. Then, within a second chamber, Jinx finds an even greater magical source, an object that makes him feel even more confused about Simon’s possibly wicked intentions. But the way out has been discovered!

Here comes the spoiler. Trying to protect Elfwyn while she climbs down the Ladder of Bones, Jinx falls to his death. His spirit floats above his body, floating over above the whole Urwald. From high up, he witnesses the arrival of Dame Glammer and Simon Magus. Eventually, with his power source gone, the wicked Bonemaster is imprisoned.

The grieving Simon makes sure that Jinx’s body is carried to safety. There by a reversal of the big mysterious spell, Simon returns Jinx to life again. One by one, the major conflicts are resolved, especially between the wizard and his pupil, for as Elfwyn points out, being rude and ill-mannered isn’t the same as being evil.

Personally, although I really enjoyed the early part of the story, I rather feel that the hero’s death and apparent restoration to life after sleeping for three days means that Jinx may not be a book for children who have recently had a sudden death in the family, even if the storyline is echoing the classic hero’s mythical journey structure. Maybe my reaction was because the characters had felt so very believable until that turn in the plot? And maybe top juniors are less sensitive and much tougher than I am?

To conclude, I really liked the brave and compelling young hero at the heart of this novel. I enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the magical world described within these pages, as well as the many twists and turns not yet mentioned. The ending suggests “Jinx” is intended to re-appear in more books so here’s a few good wishes to this particular wizard’s apprentice.

JINX, THE WIZARD’S APPRENTICE by Sage Blackwood.

Published in 2013 by Harper Collins (USA) and Quercus (UK)

Review by Penny Dolan

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TORN by David Massey. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

This novel by David Massey has won the 2103 Lancashire Book of the Year Award. The prize is almost unique in being judged by Year 9 pupils chosen from schools in Lancashire. Adults are part of the process, of course. The librarians in the county distribute the books to the schools taking part; the teachers give the books to the pupils who then read them and by a very complicated system that I don't quite understand, a short list emerges. Then there's a meeting where much debating and discussion goes on and a winner is chosen. All the shortlisted writers are invited by UCLAN, the sponsors of the prlze, to a slap-up meal and next day the award is made (£1000 and a very handsome trophy) at a ceremony in County Hall in Preston.

I've been the Chair of the Judges for 6 years but this time I've had to cede my place at the debating table to Helen Day, a lecturer at UCLAN and someone whose knowledge and love of Young Adult novels is second to none. She and her students read such texts all the time and I was very lucky that she was able to stand in for me. I had to withdraw from my position this year because of the ill-health of my husband, who is undergoing a series of treatments for cancer, and I'm very grateful to Helen. Her willingness to step in at short notice means a great deal to me. I also know she'll have chaired the meeting in the best possible way and will be a wonderful speaker at the Award Ceremony itself.

I didn't have time to read all the books, but I did read TORN, by David Massey. He's not a writer I know, but on the internet I found out that he has had a much more adventurous life and background than many writers. He actually sounds like someone who knows something about war zones of one kind and another.

TORN is told in the voice of a young female squaddie in Afghanistan. Ellie, known as Buffy since the day she was observed in the shower by some young men on the base, is a sympathetic and brave heroine and it's easy for a teenage audience to identify with her. The book follows her adventures and is a marvellously wide-ranging and immediate glimpse into life in a war zone. I liked it because the voices seemed authentic and Massey is careful to describe the truth of such hard and desperate situations in a way that's honest without at any time being gratuitously violent. the whole novel is in Buffy's voice, in the first person and it sounds convincing at all times. She's both sensible and sensitive and the element of the supernatural that's included in the book is perfectly believable.

Above all for me, Massey succeeds in the most important thing a writer has to do: create a whole world for the reader.Thankfully, turning the pages of this novel is the nearest thing many teenagers will get to actual service in the Armed Forces and I particularly appreciated the way the landscape comes to life: dust, heat, sand and the day to day conditions of camp life are recreated in a most economical way, with not too much description but more through an accumulation of telling details.

Buffy's comrades-in-arms and the young man she falls for leap off the page. It's easy to see why modern teenagers in Lancashire responded to this story of young men and women not much older than they are living through difficult and dangerous times and coming out triumphant. The ending is all you could wish for, even though there are tears on the way there.

I'm very sorry I won't be meeting David Massey at the Award Ceremony in June, but I'm sure it'll be a grand occasion. It always is. Meanwhile congratulations to the young judges for picking another winner.

Publisher: THE CHICKEN HOUSE pbk.

Price: £6.99

ISBN: 9781908435170

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AT YELLOW LAKE - by Jane McLloughlin

Review by Jackie Marchant

A debut that was longlisted for the Carnegie, and rightly so.  Set in the US, three completely different teenagers find themselves on the run, heading for Yellow Lake – Peter is secretly heading to his mother’s log cabin to fulfil her dying wish and bury a lock of hair, Jonah has run away to find his Native American roots and Etta is fleeing from her mother’s latest abusive boyfriend.

What they don’t know is that the log cabin where they all end up hasn’t been used by Peter’s family for a very long time – and an abandoned cabin is the perfect place to commit all sorts of atrocities without anyone knowing.

As the danger become clearer, you’d expect the teens to stick together.  But they each have their own agenda and they don’t.  Instead they allow misunderstandings to become major issues, detracting from the real danger they are in, until it’s too late.  And that’s what I love about this book.  The way the characters fail to cope makes it so real – and all the more chilling.  There are no gimmicks here, just a believable tale of what really could happen.  That’s what makes you keep turning the pages.

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