Review: The Little Street Library

One of the best things to come out of perpetual lockdowns the world over, is the emergence of random, unique and welcoming street libraries.

The Little Street Library is an absolutely gorgeous book about one child’s vision to bring her street together with one of these libraries. 

Review: A Twisted Tale Anthology

The Twisted Tales were first recommended to me by one of my ChocLit (book club) readers a couple of years ago. 

She suggested we get them for the library, and that was an exceptional success. They were very literally never on the shelves and in high demand in our reserves.

At the time, I admit, I was a little baffled. I mean to say, fairytales? For secondary kids? Now that I’ve had the delight of delving into this anthology, I can totally see the appeal.

This is the first anthology based on the successful series and is a collection of short stories written from a ‘What if...’ angle.

Using Disney fan-favourite movies as their foundation, writers (of other stand-alone Twisted Tales) have brought together some highly entertaining hypotheticals.

On the 11th day of Christmas: The Pied Piper

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eleven pipers piping…and The Pied Piper, adapted and illustrated by Ayesha L Rubio. 

Hamelin is overrun by rats, and the town’s cats can’t keep the numbers down.

Then, one day, a stranger with a magical flute arrives. The stranger offers to provide a solution to the rat plague, and the mayor agrees.

But promises made in desperation can easily be broken. Will Hamelin survive the wrath of the stranger and his flute?

Read our review.

Title: The Pied Piper
Author/Illustrator: Ayesha L Rubio
Publisher: The Five Mile Press, $19.95
Publication Date: September 2016
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781760400477
For ages: 3+
Type: Picture Book

On the 7th day of Christmas: You’re Not Ugly, Duckling!

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, seven swans a-swimming…and You’re Not Ugly, Duckling!, written by Steve Smallman and illustrated by Neil Price.

A fairytale with a twist!  

Mother Duck is shocked to discover that one of her ducklings looks a little different to the rest. 

He's large and grey, with a funny quack and an even funnier hair do! It's not just Mother Duck who has noticed - poor Ugly Duckling is bullied by the other farm animals and his siblings too!

Ugly Duckling decides to run away, but when he spots one of the farm animals in danger he rushes to the rescue. Are his actions enough to prove that you should never judge a book by its cover? 

Title: You're Not Ugly, Duckling!
Author: Steve Smallman
Illustrator: Neil Price
Publisher: QED Publishing, $ 24.99
Publication Date: 2016
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781784935337
For ages: 4+
Type: Picture Book

Review: Bedtime Stories

If you're looking for some brilliant stories to read aloud at bedtime, or for independent reading, then Bedtime Stories by RA Spratt is a great go-to book.

It's a spin-off from the popular weekly podcast, Bedtime Stories with RA Spratt (check that out here).

In Bedtime Stories the book, you'll find 25+ short stories to enjoy.

There are tales shared by RA Spratt's character Nanny Piggins, and featuring another of her characters, Friday Barnes (in the case of the purloined pudding). 

Re-tellings of myths and legends (Medusa) are mixed with fairy tales (The Ugly Duckling), contemporary stories (A Tall Tale About Bees ... And Alien Invasion), and history (The True History of Marie Curie).

There's also a short pronounciation guide which can be checked before, during or after reading aloud (words like Sheherazade). Plus a map and a couple of recipes.

Review: The Fix-It Princess

Shona is a problem solver. She's the kind of girl who always finds a solution, an answer. So what will Shona do when her parents go missing? 

This is the story of her attempts to find them when they don't return from a flight on the Wing-Thing she made.

Shona is a princess, dubbed the fix-it princess by her father. Her parents are known to Shona as Dad-King and Mum-Queen. And the three of them live together in the Castle-By-The-Woods. There's also Shona's horse Wildfire, and a bunch of escaping chickens.

The Fix-It Princess, written by Janeen Brian and illustrated by Cherie Dignam, is a fairytale-like story, with Shona off on a royal quest. 

First she needs to wrangle the escaping chickens into some kind of order, and get a 'disagreeable drawbridge' working.

Review: Miss Understood

Little Red Riding Hood is one of the most widely recognizable stories in the world. Over the years, there have been many MANY adaptations of the folk story, from movies to books and everything in between. But, has anyone really gone and thought if it was all just one big misunderstanding? 

Maybe there is no villain, but rather a set of unfortunate circumstances and a touch of bigotry that resulted in one of the most popular stories of the last 400 years?

Review: Get Back In Your Books.

Guest Post: Martine Murray on Trusting Your Creative Self: Writing The Wanting Monster

When I started writing for children, I had not had my own child. I still brought children’s picture books, as I had been to art school and was attracted to the artfulness of them. Once I had a child, something began to shift in the way I looked at picture books. I saw beyond the ones I considered beautiful or poetic, to the ones that I could tell a child would love. 

Each Peach Pear Plum was a book I’d never had chosen, as the illustrations did not draw my eye, but our copy was soon so well thumbed and torn, it felt like a favoured relic. 

At the same time and also due to having a child, I became less interested in the city and started to envisage a life in which we were surrounded by garden rather than pavements. So we moved to the country. 

Guest Post: Lucy Thatcher on The Power of a Tale

Some say fairy tales are dreams, others say fairy tales lie.

I say the truth lies between them.

Do real-life Cinderellas get their happily ever after? Maybe, but definitely not all the time. 

Does that mean the fairy tale lies? Does it deceive us into dreaming of the day our prince will come?

Depends what you’re looking for.

If you’re looking to a fabled princess for answers, then you aren’t really seeking the truth. No, you’re looking for something far more coveted; you’re looking for hope.

Junior Review: The Iron Raven

Puck the protagonist, joker, prankster and fool has had a lot of adventures in the past, fighting alongside his best friend and longtime rival Ash the Iron King and best friend Meghan the Iron Queen. 

He encounters Keirran (who is attempting to contact his mother, the Iron Queen, about some disturbing events in the Between) and Nyx (an assassin who works to protect Keirran) and must go on a thrilling journey with his beloved friends and new companions.

In the subsequent battles with a terrifying shadow beast, Puck clashes with his bitter past and long-buried secrets and has to find his way back to his true self. 

What follows is a story filled with sarcasm, pranks, battles, heartaches and friendships.

Review: All Our Hidden Gifts

It feels like a deck of tarot cards has selected Maeve -following her in fact. 

But that’s impossible, isn’t it?

Yet they just seem to end up in her school bag even when she swears she’s locked them away in her desk at home.

Regardless, the cards are Maeve’s ticket to social popularity.

Since she started doing readings at school, she’s discovered that she has an eerie accuracy with her predictions – which is like crack cocaine to her teenage classmates.

They line up for her readings and pay.

The only person unimpressed by this is Lily, Maeve’s ex-best friend.

The girl that Maeve dropped once they started secondary school, because she was detrimental to Maeve’s image amongst the cool set.

When a bunch of girls harass Maeve to read a very reluctant Lily’s cards, Maeve is stunned to find a mysterious card, the Housekeeper, in the deck.

Review: The Midnight Guardians

What if there was a place where our childhood imaginary friends came to life? 

A place where not just our private imaginary friends resided, but where the collective fantastical characters of mythology lived too?

Col no longer believes in his imaginary friends. He had three of them when he was younger – a tiger, a badger and a miniature knight, his guardians, all sworn to protect him. 

But now he’s too old for that, so he is as puzzled as he is wary of their sudden appearance in his life.

Unfortunately, Col needs protection. 

Set during World War 2, Col has been forced to flee his home in London and take refuge in the country with his cantankerous old aunt. 

He misses his adult sister Rose, particularly now that they have become orphaned. 

He is determined that they should spend Christmas together, so he runs away to London to find her. 

Review: Little Jiang

Poor Mei! Some people just don’t get much luck in life. She’s a misfit at her school. Spirits seem attracted to Mei and often provide her with advice that nobody else can hear, a phenomenon which just increases during Hungry Ghost Month.

Her father's eyesight is failing and her mother appears to be getting more ill and frail everyday. Her family’s restaurant is next door to a funeral house and graveyard, so it’s hardly any wonder that few customers ever dine there.

The last thing Mei needs is a vampire stalking her.

Well, a different sort of vampire. A child who died years ago and was reanimated by the thoroughly creepy funeral home director. The reanimated, the jiang, need to survive by sucking not blood, but the chi force from a person. Or so the legend goes.

Review: The Stone Giant

Another gorgeous publication from Gecko Press, The Stone Giant is a tale that reflects the determination, cunning and courage of a child to save the person she loves.

Presented as a gift book, its fantastic front and back cover, plus the extraordinary end pages, herald the beautifully told story. 

With stunning illustrations, translated by Julia Marshall and based on a Swedish fairytale by Elsa Beskow, the tale is a winding road the protagonist takes to reach her destination, regardless of the obstacle she encounters along the way.

A knight goes out to fight a giant who has turned everyone and everything into stone.

Review: Good Question

Full of humour and cheeky prose, Sue Whiting’s new book is amazing! Different sized text in waves across the page, promises the reader adventure and fun. 

Follow me! it invites. 

Elegant design and layout draw attention to Annie White’s stunning vibrant illustrations.

Fox is up a tree, hiding from the giant that probably wants to make him into fox stew. Why does he want to do so? Good Question! Lots of them appear in this book that has an adventure with hunger and food at the centre of it all.

Guest Junior Reviewer: The Land of Stories: Beyond The Kingdoms Book 4

KBR welcomes your thoughts on the books you read and wish to share. This guest review is provided by a young student with a passion for adventure tales, Ishi Kawar, aged 10. Here's Ishi's review.

The Land of Stories Beyond The Kingdoms (Book 4) by Chris Colfer is definitely going to blow your mind with adventure-packed and a bit of comedy, Alex and Conner set out on a journey to save the fairy-tale world!

In the book the twins Alex and Conner Bailey find out they have an evil uncle who is trying to form an army by going into books and recruiting the villain's armies. 

He wants the fairy tale world so he can rule but Alex and Conner Bailey need to put a stop to that. Alex and Conner go through the stories using a potion called the portal potion. They follow their evil uncle and put a stop to his nasty plan.

Alex and Conner have one lifetime of an adventure travelling from book to book with their friends. There is trouble along the way but Alex and Conner always have each others’ backs. The twins face challenges along the way but there up for it. 

Saving the fairy tale world is the most important thing the twins have to do, but is their courage enough to save the fairy tale world and defeat all of the literary army and most amazing villains of all time?

Recommended for kids age 9 to 12.

Title: The Land of Stories: Beyond The Kingdoms Book 4

Author: Chris Colfer
Publisher: Hachette, $16.99
Publication Date: June 2016
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780349124407
For ages: 9 - 12
Type: Middle Grade Fiction

The House with Chicken Legs

This book took me by surprise. A middle grade Slavic fairy tale retelling about a house that walks around on chicken legs, a grandmother that guides the dead to the next world, and a girl struggling with her destiny, that is told with such heart and emotion that it is hard not to shed a tear.

Mariska lives with her grandmother, Baba Yaga, whose job it is to guide people who die from this world to the next. Mariska knows she is destined to one day take over from her grandmother but she doesn’t want to be a Yaga. She can’t bear the thought of listening to the dead and guiding them through the gate.

The house Mariska lives in has chicken legs and its own personality. As with all Yaga houses, it gets up and walks (or runs) to its next destination whenever it feels like it. 

Giveaway: Sue Whiting's Good Question and The Book of Chance Prize Pack

's

Sue Whiting is a children’s and young adult author and editor who has written numerous books in a variety of genres: fiction and nonfiction, picture books through to YA. The Book of Chance - an exploration of family - is her 68th published book, and her third novel for upper primary / lower secondary readers.

Good Question is a whimsical tale from the award-winning creators of Beware the Deep Dark Forest, perfect for humour and adventure-loving readers aged 3 to 6 and beyond and is her second picture book with illustrator, Annie White.

Thanks to the ever brilliant people of Walker Books Australia we have a double whammy prize pack including both of Sue's new releases, Good Question and The Book of Chance.

Good Question is a journey through many familiar fairy tales. To enter, tell us, in 25 words or less what is your favourite fairy tale to read aloud, and why?

Junior Review: The Land of Forgotten Girls

Sisters Sol and Ming have each other, and not much else. 

After their mother and sister die, their father remarries and they leave the Philippines for a new life in America. But soon he deserts them as well. 

Left with evil stepmother Vea, their life is hardly a fairy tale, but fairy tales are exactly what these girls need.

With a knack for storytelling inherited from her mother, Sol weaves a world of make-believe for little sister Ming. It’s the only way she can help make their hopeless existence a little more bearable. 

Sol’s tales of dragons, magical quests and mythical Auntie Jove work well, maybe a little too well, when Ming becomes convinced their imaginary aunt is really coming to save them.