"Grief feels like love. Sometimes you press on that tender spot, because it’s as close as you can get to the person who is otherwise gone.” – Kate Brody
Posts tagged "children’s books"
So they know it's Christmas – and why that matters

So they know it’s Christmas – and why that matters

It’s that wondrous, mystifying, awesome and perchance disorienting time of the year when trees come out, baubles roll about, nutcrackers grin and gnash their teeth, elves get busy, and we revel in company, or brace ourselves against yet another formidable bewilderness of loneliness or mere aloneness, when we find ourselves in opulence, common enoughness, or...
The seductive spark of danger

The seductive spark of danger

I still remember the awe and unease I felt as a child at the arrival of the wrecking machines in Barbapapa’s New House, a brilliant but unnerving picture book by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor that channelled the urban alienation of its time. And, with his “terrible teeth and terrible claws”, Maurice Sendak has surely...
Read in order to live

Read in order to live

IT SEEMS THAT PEOPLE WHO SHOULD be experts on the subject of reading and of writing, perhaps also on the subject of children and the books that could open their minds, fashion their lives, vitally define their future, are of many minds as regards that very special unicorn of a genre, children’s books: For C.S....
Looking ahead by looking behind

Looking ahead by looking behind

“Where did you go to, if I may ask?” said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along. “To look ahead,” said he. “And what brought you back in the nick of time?” “Looking behind,” said he. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit   2020 has been without a doubt, and without exception, an unexpected journey to the...
Keep calm and carry on giving

Keep calm and carry on giving

Christmas books for the young, the very, very young and that lost generation, the ever youthful old   We live in dark and desperate times, we often remind ourselves. And we seem determined, wherever our minds, souls, or ideas may lie, to do our mightiest in order to cast off the hex that has been...
Marvellous and mischievous

Marvellous and mischievous

Marvellous and Mischievous: Literature’s Young Rebels (8 November 2019 to 1 March 2020) is a free British Library exhibition spotlighting famous rebels in children’s literature. Featuring such perennial favourites as Tracy Beaker, Pippi Longstocking, Jane Eyre and Matilda, as well as new characters including Omar from Planet Omar, Billy from Billy and the Beast and...
Where the wise and wild things are

Where the wise and wild things are

Amanda Brettargh is a quiet torrent of a woman. A conversation with her starts sotto voce, her Australian lilt making you think of vast landscapes and limitless horizons. And this would also sum up exactly her vision of Barnes Children’s Literature Festival, a weekend of talks, activities and workshops dedicated to children, to children’s imagination...
Kingly reads and mistletoes, yule logs, childish games and silent nights

Kingly reads and mistletoes, yule logs, childish games and silent nights

As the year 2018 draws to a dumbfounding or resounding close, the words to speak the tales of both tragedy and joy become perhaps the most precious of gifts. Especially for young – or not so young – ears and eyes searching for a meaningful narrative, a thread of sense through a life whose text...
A perpetual advent calendar

A perpetual advent calendar

Our world is ever more in need of the solace, wisdom and power of books. Good books are often hard to come by, so here is a bumper list of some of the most gripping volumes recently published for the young, the younger and the no longer so young in search of the music of...
Timely and timeless books

Timely and timeless books

Book browsing in a bookshop is as much an art as it is a way of life. Here is my trawl through some rather beautiful children’s books, with delighted thanks to Hatchards and Waterstones Piccadilly, for being not only shops but especially worlds of books, with wonderfully rich departments dedicated specifically to children.   Seasonal...
Three Christmas hampers

Three Christmas hampers

Still pondering gifts for the smaller people in your life as the winter holidays loom? Here’s a selection of non-perishable treats for Discerning Young, Not Very Young and Definitely Older readers, featuring books that have been published, reissued or rediscovered in 2015, as well as one or two earlier favourites. Hamper #1 – A Box of...
War stories for children

War stories for children

“Maybe humans aren’t such a terrible animal after all,” reflects a whale that daydreams about aeroplanes in the sky and fatefully falls in love with a Japanese submarine. As the whale insouciantly navigates the sardine-filled waters of nature, the human sea-routes of warships and submarines and the airways of military planes are rife with death...