I have a pile of TBR a mile high, including two of Paul Collins' Maximus Black tales(and two TB reviewed picture books from Ford Street, which I'll do as soon as I find them in my messy lounge room.)
Right now, I'm reading several - among others, including several downloads, a review copy of Tank Boys by Stephen Dando Collins, a boys' novel of World War I, The Cracks In The Kingdom by Jaclyn Moriarty - quite readable, though it's Volume 2 of a series and I haven't read Volume 1 and when I put it in the library, the kids will ask for 1, another one which is the second in a series which is quite impossible to read without the first - I did ask for the first and promise to review it, but no response so far - and this week's more-or-less random read, Sonya Hartnett's Children Of The King.
I never got around to reading it when it was on the CBCA shortlist. See, I'm not a great Hartnett fan, I hate the way her books end depressingly and even when they don't, like The Silver Donkey, the only one I liked, she imagines them ending depressingly! (The book is donkey stories told to some children in France during WW1 by a downed British pilot and she told children who asked about him in her school visits that the pilot would be shot for desertion! Thanks, Sonya, for spoiling for me the only book of yours I liked, not to mention spoiling it for your young fans. Kids generally enjoy depressing, but this was a book for younger readers and the pilot would be a character they cared about). So no, I don't care greatly for this author's work, no matter how many awards she gets for her depressing fiction. And I am a Richard III fan, as you might have noticed if you've been following this blog, even if he never wrote any children's books. And this one has a link to the story of the Princes in the Tower. But my friend and fellow Ricardian Anne Devrell recommended it, so I picked it off the shelves and took it home. So far, so good.
I'll get back to you with my report!
Right now, I'm reading several - among others, including several downloads, a review copy of Tank Boys by Stephen Dando Collins, a boys' novel of World War I, The Cracks In The Kingdom by Jaclyn Moriarty - quite readable, though it's Volume 2 of a series and I haven't read Volume 1 and when I put it in the library, the kids will ask for 1, another one which is the second in a series which is quite impossible to read without the first - I did ask for the first and promise to review it, but no response so far - and this week's more-or-less random read, Sonya Hartnett's Children Of The King.
I never got around to reading it when it was on the CBCA shortlist. See, I'm not a great Hartnett fan, I hate the way her books end depressingly and even when they don't, like The Silver Donkey, the only one I liked, she imagines them ending depressingly! (The book is donkey stories told to some children in France during WW1 by a downed British pilot and she told children who asked about him in her school visits that the pilot would be shot for desertion! Thanks, Sonya, for spoiling for me the only book of yours I liked, not to mention spoiling it for your young fans. Kids generally enjoy depressing, but this was a book for younger readers and the pilot would be a character they cared about). So no, I don't care greatly for this author's work, no matter how many awards she gets for her depressing fiction. And I am a Richard III fan, as you might have noticed if you've been following this blog, even if he never wrote any children's books. And this one has a link to the story of the Princes in the Tower. But my friend and fellow Ricardian Anne Devrell recommended it, so I picked it off the shelves and took it home. So far, so good.
I'll get back to you with my report!
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