Book Review: Song For A Scarlet Runner

From Goodreads: Peat is on the run — forced to flee for her life when she's blamed for bringing bad luck to her village. She heads for the endless marshes, where she's caught by an old healer-woman who makes Peat her apprentice and teaches her the skill of storytelling.
But a story can be a dangerous thing. It can take you out of one world and leave you stranded in another — and Peat finds herself trapped in an eerie place beyond the Silver River where time stands still. Her only friends are a 900-year-old boy and his ghost hound, plus a small and slippery sleek — a cunning creature that might sink his teeth into your leg one minute, and save your life the next.

Thoughts: This is the fifth and final younger reader book on the Children's Book Council 2014 short list. There are usually 6 books on the list and I'm not sure why there is only 5 this year. All the books are very strong and very worthy of being on the list, so maybe there just wasn't anything else that measured up.
Song For A Scarlet Runner is, I think, the first in the series. Once again the characters in this are strong and believable. Hunt takes you into another world where words have power and stories can be dangerous. People you think are evil aren't and people who appear evil at first may not be. Through her characters Hunt explores friendship, loss, the importance of making your own decisions and how decisions made a long time ago can affect the here and now. I really hope there is a sequel to this book as I would love to catch up with all the characters again.

Book Review: Violet Mackerel's Possible Friend

From Goodreads: Violet Mackerel has moved into her new house. There is a girl next door who could be a possible friend. Her name is Rose and she has a pink and white bedroom and a doll’s house. Violet hopes that Rose might not be just a possible friend for very long. Instead, she would quite like Rose to be a very good friend.

Thoughts: This is the fourth book I've read for the Children's Book Council younger readers short list.
The Violet Mackerel books are a lovely  little series. I reviewed the first one in the series, Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot  for the 2011 short list. This is the 5th one in the series and I read it during a one hour stint on the check out counter at work one slow night. I was so happy to be drawn back into Violet's world that I then got number 2,3 and 4 and pretty much read them the same way over the next couple of weeks. 
In this particular volume, Violet discovers a knot in the fence at her new house. When she accidentally pushes it out, she leaves a small thing and a note to apologise. Soon Violet and Rose from next door have exchanged small things via the knot and have arranged a play date. When Violet goes to Rose's, she discovers that quite unlike her house and room, Rose's place is tidy, sparkly and new looking. Now Violet is worried her less than tidy, sparkly and new house is not good enough for Rose.
Branford beautifully explores Violet's insecurity and fear, giving a wonderful insight into issues that appear big to children, that adults may just dismiss. I love the wonderful caring support Violet gets not only from her mum and step-dad, but her older sister and brother. Branford writes a family that is full of love and support, a family that clearly reaps the benefit of such a relationship. I also love that in this apparently perfect family, tempers still run short and children get grumpy. 
Violet Mackerel books are beautifully written and easily accessible. I highly recommend them for younger readers.

Book Review: A Very Unusual Pursuit

From Goodreads: Monsters have been infesting London's dark places for centuries, eating every child who gets too close. That's why ten-year-old Birdie McAdam works for Alfred Bunce, the bogler. With her beautiful voice and dainty looks, Birdie is the bait that draws bogles from their lairs so that Alfred can kill them.One life-changing day, Alfred and Birdie are approached by two very different women. Sarah Pickles runs a local gang of pickpockets, three of whom have disappeared. Edith Eames is an educated lady who's studying the mythical beasts of English folklore. Both of them threaten the only life Birdie's ever known.But Birdie soon realises she needs Miss Eames's help, to save her master, defeat Sarah Pickles, and vanquish an altogether nastier villain.Catherine Jinks, one of Australia's most inventive writers, has created a fast-paced and enthralling adventure story with edge-of-your-seat excitement and chills.

Thoughts: A Very Unusual Pursuit (which has also been published under the title How to Catch a Bogle) is the third of the Children's Book Council short listed younger readers books for 2014.
Birdie's sweet, pure voice makes her the perfect apprentice for Alfred, the Bodger. It's Birdie's job to stand in an incomplete circle of salt and sing to lur out the child eating bogle so Alfred can kill it. It's a respectable profession and preferrable to the alternatives of mudlarking or the work house.
Set in the Victorian era, Jinks exposes her reader to a fairly historically accurate (apart from child eating bogles - but then again, who really knows!) picture of the era. The description of life for those less fortunate and their choices could lead to some great discussion with kids.
I've been a fan of Jinks for quite a few years now, especially liking her Pagan's Crusade series. She writes really interesting and believable characters, including the adults who I often find become two dimensional figures in children's books - almost fringe dwellers or very stereotypical. Jinks' adults are varied and real. This is one series where I will be searching for the next book.

Book Review: My Life as an Alphabet

From Goodreads: This isn't just about me. It's also about the other people in my life - my mother, my father, my dead sister Sky, my penpal Denille, Rich Uncle Brian, Earth-Pig Fish and Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. These are people [with the exception of Earth-Pig Fish, who is a fish] who have shaped me, made me what I am. I cannot recount my life without recounting elements of theirs. This is a big task, but I am confident I am up to it.
Introducing Candice Phee: twelve years old, hilariously honest and a little ... odd. But she has a big heart, the very best of intentions and an unwavering determination to ensure everyone is happy. So she sets about trying to 'fix' all the problems of all the people [and pets] in her life.

Thoughts: This is the second of the younger readers books I am reading as part of the Children's Book Council short list. Candice's teacher has asked teh class to write about themselves, starting each paragraph with a different letter of the alphabet. Candice decides she will do a chapter for each letter and thus begins a look into the life of this lovely, quirky child, her family and her school life.
Candice is dealing with quite a few things - a dead sister, a depressed mother, a lack of friends (except for Douglas Benson from another dimension)and a father who is estranged from his brother, Candice's rich Uncle Brian. Through it all she keeps upbeat, looking for solutions - some which work and others that fail spectacularly.
Barry Jonsberg never gives Candice a diagnosis, preferring to allow her to be "just me". It would be easy for adults reading the book to give an amateur diagnosis of  Asperger's, but I think most kids reading the book wouldn't even consider it, even missing the one clumsy reference by a teacher to it being a possibility.
On the whole, My Life as an Alphabet is a lovely read and well deserves it's place on the shortlist. 

Three, no Four Week Library Challenge

Earlier in the week I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook.

Then my friend Car, from Carrose Creations asked how many I could read in three weeks. That sounded like a challenge to me so I said let's find out!

Now to be fair, some of these books were already on their way back to the library, but it has still left a substantial pile of books, CD's and magazines to get through. So here's the challenge - get through as many of these items as possible in the next 3 weeks. Actually, lets make it a little longer - the latest due date on any of these items is June 11, so that will be my deadline - just under four weeks.

Just so we are clear on what's in the pile, I will list them. Some of the books aren't so much "reading" books, but looking through and pulling out the the stuff I like books, like the recipe books. To count towards my total, I must use the book to the purpose I intended. For example, the recipe books were borrowed to get inspiration from - go through and pull out the recipes I like. The DVD's need to be watched and the magazines finished with. So, here's my list. (By the way, I'm too lazy to link all of the books to their Goodreads profiles, or the DVD's to their IMDB profile. If you want to know more about a particular item, I suggest you go to one of those websites and search for it!)

Magazines
The Monthly - Issue 99
The Monthly - Issue 100

DVD's
Dexter - Season 7 - Disc 3-4
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 1-2
Dexter - Season 8 - Disc 3-4
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
My Place Volume 1

Non Fiction
Save with Jamie - Jamie Oliver
Band-aid for a Broken Leg: being a doctor with no borders and other ways to stay single - Damien Brown
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua
Ugly: my memoir - Robert Hoge
Fast Ed's Dinner in 10 - Ed Halmagyi
Blood Ties - John Suter Linton
The 17 Day Diet Cookbook - Mike Moreno
Dangerous Allies - Malcolm Fraser
Lazy Loser - Marie Bean

Fiction
Past the Shallows - Favel Parret
Six Impossible Things - Fiona Wood
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Hawkes Harbor - SE Hinton
The Cold, Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty
The Sky So Heavy - Claire Zorn
The Incredible Here and Now - Felicity Castagna
The First Third - Will Kostakis

By my count that is 22 items. Let the challenge begin! 

Book Tour: When Camels Fly Tour

Welcome to my stop on the When Camels Fly Tour.

Category: Contemporary suspense, thread of Romance 

Available in: Print & ebook, 370 Pages  

A mother’s fatal shot. A daughter’s deadly choice. In Israel, archaeologist Grace Madison shoots her daughter’s abductor. Seconds later, a handsome shepherd drops from the sky to kill a second assassin. Their world changes in two blinks of an eye. Unbeknownst to them, a fiercely ambitious evil is destroying everything in its path—the unconventional path Grace and Maggie take. They struggle to right a wrong as old as time, and discover time is running out in the race for their lives. Family and friends are swept into their vortex, extinguishing old flames while igniting new loves. While the scale tips dangerously toward disaster, millions of lives hang in the balance. And the mother-and-daughter team soon realizes nothing is as it seems. Even each other. Because choosing what’s right is all that’s left.


My Review

OK, time to be honest - I haven't finished the book, I'm only half way through it, but as happens occasionally, life has got in the way. I will however review what I have read so far.
Taking place in the Middle East, When Camels Fly follows the hair raising adventures of mother and daughter Grace and Maggie as they uncover a plot to steal one of the regions most valuable commodities - water. It's fast pace has you moving through the story with surprising speed as you jump from Grace and Maggie's story, to that of the conspirators and Mark and Jeff (Grace's husband and son) as they in turn try to stop the girls or rescue them. And that's where I run into trouble. I want to really like this book, but I actually am finding it fairly confusing. I can see a really great story in there - one that is funny and entertaining - but I am finding it frustrating at the moment. There are secrets hinted at, but not expanded on, secret lives lived and stories untold, but so little revealed you are left uncertain as to the validity or truthfulness or importance of them. I understand the need to keep the reader in some level of suspense, but as the story goes, no extra information is revealed and I just feel like the author is holding out on me. The connections between the different aspects of the story are jerky and often come at a time when I'm just starting to settle into the current story. This unfortunately adds to the confusion and frustration I feel as a reader.
Hopefully as I read, all of these frustrations will iron out and the story I know is there will emerge. I will persevere and would encourage anyone who likes the premise of the story to give it a go - remember my view is only one.


About NLB Horton: After an award-winning detour through journalism and marketing and a graduate degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, NLBHorton returned to writing fiction. She has surveyed Israeli archaeological digs accompanied by artillery rounds from Syria and machine gun fire from Lebanon. Explored Machu Picchu after training with an Incan shaman. And consumed afternoon tea across five continents. When Camels Fly is her first novel. Her second, The Brothers’ Keepers, will be available November 2014. Website: http://www.nlbhorton.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/NLB-Horton/289059931145461 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NLBHorton Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/nlbhorton/

Book Review: Fairytales for Wilde Girls

From Goodreads: A deliciously dark bubblegum-gothic fairytale from a stunning new Australian talent.

‘He's gone the same way as those little birds that bothered me with their awful songs! And you will too, you and your horrible heart-music, because you won't stay out of my woods!'
There's a dead girl in a birdcage in the woods. That's not unusual. Isola Wilde sees a lot of things other people don't. But when the girl appears at Isola's window, her every word a threat, Isola needs help.
Her real-life friends – Grape, James and new boy Edgar – make her forget for a while. And her brother-princes – the mermaids, faeries and magical creatures seemingly lifted from the pages of the French fairytales Isola idolises – will protect her with all the fierce love they possess.
It may not be enough.
Isola needs to uncover the truth behind the dead girl's demise and appease her enraged spirit, before the ghost steals Isola's last breath.

Thoughts: This is the second older readers CBC shortlisted book for 2014, and while it is very different from Wildlife, it is just as good - glad I'm not a judge! This is young people's Gothic at it's best - dark, moody, twisted - throw in  a bit of romance, intrigue and grief and you find yourself being drawn into the world of Isola Wilde and her princes. 
I loved the individuality of Allyse Near's characters - clearly defined, well drawn, flawed, quirky. I also love the issues this book deals with - mental illness, grief, bullying, friendship. However nothing is clichéd, nothing is predictable or stereotypical. The book won't appeal to all YA readers, but for those looking for something different to what is usually served up, looking for something with a bit more depth, this is the one to go for.