Magpies Current Issue Sample Review
The Return of the Word Spy (2010)
Ursula Dubosarsky, ill. Tohby Riddle, Viking, 236pp.,
978 0 670 07354 2 $24.95 Hb
Like an old friend, the charming Word Spy is back once more to extend our knowledge of written and spoken English and entertain us with the fascinating peculiarities of our language.
The Word Spy loves the English language, everything about its origins, its evolution, its usage, every quirky little aspect of written and spoken English. It is an enthusiasm never seen in English textbooks. When the Word Spy becomes a grammarian and tells about written English, shows how sentences are formed and explains the various parts of speech, it all becomes very clear, indeed fascinating.
What distinguishes the Word Spy books more than the broad, entertaining coverage of the subject of the English language is the manner of the narration. The books speak to the reader in a very engaging conversational way, like a chat between friends. There is not an iota of didacticism or educational intent, it is about sharing a love of the language in its myriad manifestations and taking the reader on a journey through the subject. Turn every corner and there is another intriguing or amusing topic.
The Return of the Word Spy includes tacit language such as mime, gesticulation, sign languages and Braille which can be experienced through the inclusion of a special page of Braille alphabet. It also considers such topics as dead languages, the development of writing and writing utensils, neologisms and spoken English.
Again, the entertainment of the book is enhanced by Tohby Riddle’s cartoons with the amusingly literal interpretations of the topics. A handsome book, highly recommended.
Kevin Steinberger
There's a Goat in My Coat (2010)
Rosemary Milne,ill. Andrew McLean, Allen and Unwin, 32pp., 978 1 74175 891 7 $24.99 Hb
I am an Andrew McLean enthusiast: I have only to see one of his jackets and I’m immediately predisposed towards liking the book. Here, a self-satisfied goat in a blue jacket kicks his heels in the air, watched by a cheerful little girl, a cat and a dog while a boy with a bare midriff stands on his head. Open the cover and on the endpapers are a boy and a girl leaping, singing, balancing on one hand, watched by a cat. At the other end of the book, a row of kids are struggling into night clothes, Teddy has fallen over, wearied by the day, and the cat is already asleep.
Rosemary Milne has written a collection of simple poems primarily, as she writes in a Foreword, for fun and pleasure, but also to help children practice new sounds and words. To this end she has used various figures of speech, straightforward repetition, for instance, in a poem called 'Stripes': Stripes on hats,/ Stripes on cats,/ Stripes on skirts,/ Stripes on shirts... In 'Piglet in Puddles' she uses onomatopoeia with lovely sound words like squeak, squelch, snuffle and snort; in 'One Old Octopus' it’s alliteration in lines like, Five funny flying fish / Six silly seals. In all her poems, sound matters above all: they are fun to say, lines like I’m a hip hop / flip flop / tip top dancer. Occasional lapses in metrical structure are offset by the sheer delight of an opening like Round and Round the Roundabout where Milne's jaunty poem is beautifully decorated with a lovely sequence of pictures by Andrew McLean.
Moira Robinson
The City (2010)
Armin Greeder, Allen and Unwin, 32pp.,
978 1 74237 142 9 $29.99 Hb
In another enigmatic and powerfully atmospheric fable that at least visually partners The Island, Armin Greder seems to be saying that you can take the boy out of the city but you can't take the city out of the boy. Whether he is suggesting that this is a good thing or a bad thing may lead to interesting debate from a middle primary level up.
The city is portrayed (almost exclusively on the front cover in a book that is rendered in oil pastel dark browns and blacks on white) in terms of colour and entertainment, frivolity, possibly licentiousness: there is dancing and music; people wear carnival masks; a long-running war is mentioned. On the first page a woman of the city gives birth to a beautiful son whom she loves obsessively. When her husband dies in the war she determines to take the child away to a safe place where he will be spared all the terrible things that happen in life. She takes him into the trackless wastes where she builds a house and tends to his every need. Greder reports that She was happy but says nothing about her son's feelings until a colourful little band of travellers appears, lost on their way to the city. The woman puts them right and the boy asks if she will take him to the city one day, but the question only further ignites the woman’s exclusive love.
On a moonless double page full of sharp-beaked black birds the woman dies and the boy is left to fend for himself as everything disintegrates around him. Eventually he packs up his mother's bones and sets out to find them a resting place, but in true fairytale tradition the bones refuse his every suggestion, citing the dangers that might befall. Debate may have to decide the identity of the looming wolf-man that frees the son from his burden: Greder simply puts it that one day the night surprised him and shows the cowed boy become a man able to defend himself and make his own decisions.
As in The Island Greder gives his dark, minimalist pictures a distancing medieval touch and provides a spare, singing, poetic text to huddle at their edges. The effect is of a darkly traditional fairytale, but the message, accessible to the youngest reader, again like The Island, has a distinctly modern reference: overprotection and withdrawal are no answer to life's problems and a love which fails to teach a child resilience and coping skills hardly deserves the name.
Katharine England
A Girl Like Me (2010)
Penny Matthews,
Penguin, 312pp., 978 0 14 301148 4
$19.95 Pb
Against her wishes, Emmie has left school and is occupied in helping her mother with the housework until she is inevitably married off to one of the local farmers around Towitta. In this small town in South Australia, the 'English' and the 'German' settlers each have their own churches and traditions transplanted from the old countries. While Emmie chafes against the restrictions of early twentieth century society and is determined to write a novel in imitation of her favorite author Emily Brontë, her friend Ada is resigned to her position and thinks only of snaring Emmie’s brother James in marriage. When her mother employs a young German girl, Bertha, as a casual servant, Emmie is drawn into a friendship which opens her eyes to the world beyond her immediate family. As the girls share confidences, it becomes obvious that Bertha’s family is very different from her own straitlaced but loving one. However, Emmie’s remonstrances about Bertha’s risky behavior are not enough to save her friend from a tragic death.
A prolific writer of children's literature, Penny Matthews has now emerged as an author for Young Adults, depicting life in a small country town and vividly evoking the awful entertainment provided by the murder of a young girl there. The mores and prejudices of the society of that period are provocatively depicted and are underlined by excerpts from Mary Wood-Allen's instructive text: What a Young Woman Ought to Know. However, Emmie's narrative voice, in turn curious and rebellious about the world she inhabits, frequently punctures these pretensions. In parallel with the novel she is attempting to write, Emmie gradually matures from the romantic heroine of her own life into a young woman who knows what she wants. Family relationships are delicately explored, particularly those between Emmie and her mother, though the adults' stoic acceptance of fate does not allow for a great deal of open communication. The friendship between Emmie and the unfortunate Bertha develops slowly but strongly in the face of opposition from their families. Readers share with both girls their experiences of unrequited romantic love and observe Bertha leading Emmie to question the hypocrisy, inequity and injustice of their society. In particular, the double standards of gender inequality and the more serious issues of child abuse, both physical and sexual, are starkly depicted. The appeal of the novel derives in equal parts from its faithful rendition of rural Victorian society and the sly humour which permeates the story.
Anne Briggs
Destiny's Right Hand (2010)
Michael Wagner,
Puffin, 226pp., 978 0 14 330421 0 $14.95 Pb
Eddie, a youth journalist who has failed to write any stories for the paper he works at—is facing getting the sack if he doesn’t cough up the goods. He thinks he’s onto a good thing when he meets Destiny, a private-school shoplifter. Here’s the scoop: Destiny doesn’t actually want to steal the things she does— it is her right hand, transplanted after hers was crushed in an accident. The hand forces her to steal and will not let her return the items. Destiny convinces Eddie, helped by her hand making a frightening 360° turn as she holds onto a rail on the tram, and together they try to figure out a way to stop this from happening. They decide to contact the donor’s parents. For that they need the help of Eddie’s friend Noah from the newspaper, a computer nerd with Aspergers.
Noah is a delightful character, my favourite. Destiny’s Right Hand is told from Eddie’s perspective though narrated, curiously, from a separate narrator. It begins, Not only could I see Eddie in the little supermarket on Glenferrie Road, but to my amazement I could also sense his every thought, memory and feeling. As the book goes on, this construct isn’t nearly as jarring as I anticipated, but instead works well as a neat little trick to make the narration more mature and reflective. Sometimes the language veered to the over-explanatory 'telling' rather than 'showing' but possibly this only happened because it wasn’t Eddie telling the story, but an almost omniscient narrator. On the whole, however, it was clever without alienating young people. A little bit odd, very quirky and possibly just what is needed in books for those middling teens. Ideal for fans of Doug MacLeod and Marion Roberts.
Kate O'Donnell
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