Gods and Warriors Review

Gods and Warriors is one of the best historical fiction books I have read this year because of the clearly researched themes and contrasting characters. The book is about a goat herder named Hylas living in ancient Greece. Hylas is forced out of his home by an evil force and meets several new characters, each from a different background. This means that he is able to learn more about the world that he resides in. Mainly written in the historical fiction genre, Gods and Warriors could be classed as an adventure book and possibly fantasy, though most of the ideas are very believable. It is written for older children right up to teens though it does have some adult themes like betrayal, honour and some death.

The reader’s attention is caught from the first line and from then on the book is spellbinding; a magical storyline from the author of the critically acclaimed Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. It is about how people from different backgrounds can become friends despite any superficial differences that they have.

I particularly liked the level of historical accuracy that the book contains and the detailed characterisation that is used to help the reader empathise with the situations Hylas faces. The reader can clearly understand what is happening and the book is very easy to understand, this makes for a much better reading experience.

I would recommend this book to others because it will give you a greater knowledge of ancient Greece whilst being thoroughly enjoyable. In my opinion this is one of the best books on Greek history around because it remains believable throughout. If you have read the Percy Jackson series then I recommend that you try this book to extend your understanding of life at that time.

Oscar KLF

Here’s a great video of Michelle Paver introducing the characters of Gods and Warriors:

Perfect Picture Books

Picture books are utterly marvellous things – story and illustration together on the page – a perfect combination of two creative arts. And at the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature in just a couple of weeks, there will be heaps of utterly marvellous picture books – story and illustration together on the stage.

I have always loved picture books – I don’t think I’ve ever ‘grown out’ of them, Sure, as I grew up, I started to read books with fewer pictures, until, eventually, I was reading books with no pictures in them at all. (The novel I’m reading now hasn’t got a drawing in sight – not so much as a doodle. Such a shame.) But that doesn’t mean I can’t still enjoy picture books. The stories are just as delightful and the artwork just as inspiring no matter what age you are.

Of course, being an illustrator myself, I am particularly interested in the pictures. And apart from how gorgeous they are and my admiration for how they are done what really interests me is how different they are. Every artist has their own way of using line or colour or tone – their own style. Some are very realistic, others are very cartoony; some are wildly colourful, others are more subtle and quiet; some are bold and some are fine and delicate. There are big complicated pictures full movement and detail and there are pictures that are simple and still. There is no right or wrong method, mode or fashion – they are all amazing. And you can compare those amazingly varied styles for yourself soon in Bath.

One of the things I am definitely looking forward to at this years’ festival is the chance to see some of the artists I most admire drawing live on stage. So I won’t just be seeing them, I’ll be seeing how they work too – seeing their styles in action. It’s a fabulous opportunity to discover how Graham Baker-Smith’s beautifully intricate paintings are done or see how Korky Paul controls his extraordinarily exuberant pen. I will be at Axel Scheffler and Polly Dunbar’s events, taking notes. And I’ll be studying Anthony Browne’s every move. (Simon James, Debi Gliori, David Melling and about twenty others are on my list too)

However, one I’m positively certain not to miss is Tony Ross’s show in the morning of the second Saturday. I have always loved his style – its sense of humour, its freshness and spontaneity. His artwork is fun and alive and simply brilliant A dash of pen and a touch of colour and the drawing doesn’t merely illustrate the picture book page – it leaps off.

And I don’t know about you, but I want to find out how he does it.

Martin Brown

Back to School

Back to school. A phrase that says so much. It says no more sleeping in, it says homework, it says the last days of summer, it says school dinners, uniforms, buses, English, Maths and Science. And it always makes me a little bit sad. To me it feels like the end of something. Something you can’t get back.

Summer holidays have always had a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s because I’m from Australia where the summers tend to be… well, summery. We also had the double whammy of Christmas followed by the summer six weeks off. You’d finish the school year – exams over, books in a box – then Christmas would arrive with all the trimmings and long daylight days to enjoy all your new stuff. Then you’d have weeks and weeks of… whatever – beach, family trips, hangin’ out with friends or playing in the back-yard. The sun wasn’t always shining, but it didn’t matter because you knew it would be along at some point. There seemed to be more than enough of it to go around.

Then you had to go back to school. This meant unavoidable shopping trips with Mum, fitting brown, summer-worn feet into rock-hard, new leather shoes before, finally, clothing ourselves in baggy new uniforms and traipsing off up the street to the local primary or down the road to the high school. All at the beginning of February, which was often the hottest part of the Melbourne year. I liked school – but I liked the summer holidays more.

But the new term is not all doom and gloom. Here, the summer’s nearly over anyway. You’ve probably watched as much telly as your brain can take. You’re bound to be sick of your big sister/little brother/parents. Never-ending holidays would be boring. And there are definitely some great things about going back to school. Emma, here at Bath Kids Lit Fest Headquarters, loved all the cool new stationery you had to get. For me it was what was new in the playground – marbles, yo-yos and cheering the local-hero dog that was always three yards ahead of the council dog-catcher.

But don’t just take it from me – I stopped going back to school several eons ago. Here are a couple of thoughts from people who are going back to school now…

Emily 15…

      Going back to school is always fun. Well… for the first few days, then it goes back to mountains of homework and anticipating the weekends. That said, I do have the best group of friends in the world, and when it comes to the intense revising for GCSEs in June, I know we’ll try to make it as fun as possible (if making revising fun is possible). Overall I’ve got mixed feelings about going back to school. I’m not looking forward to the stress of GCSEs but ,after six weeks holiday, I’m am looking forward to catching up with my friends.

Bella 13…

Hello I’m Bella, I’m starting a new school In September so as any normal 13 year old starting a new school, I’m a tad nervous…! Although nervous and slightly worried, I am also really excited. The reasons why: well, new experiences, not all that boring stuff! No, I’m more excited about just generally having a load of fun and meeting new friends along the way!!!

So, there you are, advice from the experts. Even though it might be sad to see the summer slip away there is something to be said about school that makes the end of the holidays seem not so bad.

 Martin Brown

Animals, Animals

So I’m trying to get going on my new book. And it’s a bit stop, go. There were the Olympic games to watch, chores to do, shopping to be done and all sorts of summer school holiday days to be spent holidaying. But, eventually, with concentration and a bit of bad weather, I got started – again.

It’s a book about animals – not the usual ones you see in books – the lions, tigers and elephants etc etc – but the ones you don’t see – the long tailed dunnart (right), the yellow-footed rock wallaby and the dagger-toothed flower bat etc etc. All real, wonderful creatures, just sadly never seen.

Which is strange, because there are so many animals in children’s books. So many in fact that after a quick glance at the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature brochure I’m thinking the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature should be called the Bath Festival of Children’s Beasty Books. If you love books you’ll be there (won’t you!) but if you love animals there’s even more reason to go.

If you’re interested in the big cats there’s an event for you (Steve Bloom) or dolphins, one for you (Gill Lewis); horses (Lauren St John); foxes (Julia Green); hamsters (Dave Lowe); bears (David Melling); wolves (Debi Gliori) or time-travelling cows (Steve Cole).

And that’s not the half of it! There’s Peppa Pig, Peter Rabbit, Maisy Mouse, a Very Hungry Caterpillar and a Superworm. And if you still need more animals there are dogs, crocodiles, two wildlife adventures, two zoos, three jungles and a little bird in a nest on the roof of a car.

Clearly, animals are where it’s at. Are you going to be at where the animals are?

As for me, it’s back to the aye-aye, the dik-dik and the tuco-tuco.

Martin Brown

Kitty’s Top Festival Pick

While reading Andy Stanton’s brilliantly hilarious book (and admiring the wonderful illustrations by David Tazzyman) Mr Gum in ‘The Hound of Lamonic Bibber’, the tenth Mr Gum book he has written, I found it almost impossible to wipe the smile off my face , as not only does he provide the reader with four pages worth of Mr Gum stickers, but also 231 pages of utterly random yet brilliant humour, as Friday O’Leary tells the tale of how he and Polly solved the mystery of The Hound of Lamonic Bibber to ‘little Alan Taylor, the gingerbread headmaster who was no taller than a common pencil’.

To give you an idea of Stanton’s writing style in the Mr Gum books I will tell you that Friday, Polly and Alan are sitting in Friday’s study surrounded by ‘talking flowers…a tiny pony who lived in a milk bottle [and] a book written by a flea’. Unfortunately Mrs Lovely, Friday’s wife was unable to make an appearance as ‘she was off in the Himalayas, gathering rare herbs to make sweets and fighting off the yaks’.

Welcome to a world where plum ruffians are made from ‘one poor, small, innocent orange’ and ‘100,000,000,000,000g exaggeraisins’, where the greatest glory is to be awarded ‘the legendary invisible facial hair’, a moustache worn, and passed on by, Friday O’Leary himself, and where the unsuspicious nature of a pebble drives detective O’Leary to dub it a suspicious pebble (you will find out about this in the highly entertaining, but also insightful – of course – extracts from Friday O’Leary’s notebook).

Bath Festival of Children’s literature have entitled him ‘the funniest author in the whole universe’ and anyone, of any age, should look forward to the laughathon that I don’t doubt will be taking place in the Forum on Saturday 29^th September, I know I am.

Kitty from the Bath Kids LitFest team x

 

Michael Rosen: A Timeless Imagination

To this day, one of the most prominent memories I have of my childhood (that isn’t trying to feed snails to our cat) is of reading and re – reading Michael Rosen’s classic stories for children. That was nearly two decades ago, Rosen’s books are still a ‘must have’ item in a house with young children. But why? Is there someone behind every parent forcing them to indulge their children in the world of all things Rosen? Probably not. 

The fact is simply that Rosen’s books, though written for children, are timeless in the minds of adults and youngsters alike. For younger readers, the stories unfold effortlessly before their eyes through the addictive rhymes that those of us in our late teens can probably still recite! We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it….

(If you just added in the last line of that sequence yourself, thank you for helping me to prove my point.)

On the other hand, adults find pleasure in reading Rosen’s stories because of the use of an incredible and genuine imagination that could only come from a children’s literary genius. This and the fact that, as my Mother put it, ‘reading kept you from screaming down the house for a few minutes’ show the books to be important to all members of a family. I suspect, however, the bit about appreciating literary genius to be more important than the fact that my Mum wanted to have a bubble bath in peace.

When it comes down to it, Michael Rosen’s books provide authentic moments of joy for any child reading them as well as bringing families together to enjoy the stories as one.

Rosen’s talks at this year’s Bath Festival of Children’s Literature promise to be a much better use of your time than putting plasters on to cover up scratches you got from your cat or indeed feeding him snails!       

Izzy from the KLF Team

The Force Is With This Event!

We’ve got a very special guest author all the way from the USA visiting the Festival on Saturday 6^th October. Tom Angleberger, who writes the Origami Yoda series, will be in Bath to talk about The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee.

The book comes out here just in time for his festival appearance but it was published in the States earlier this month. He marked the occasion with a trio of events in the New York City area, before heading out on tour. “I couldn’t believe how many kids showed up at the first event,” said Angleberger. “When I first started out, I had to explain who Origami Yoda was. Now kids know Origami Yoda and Darth Paper, and they’re primed to hear about Chewbacca – it’s just fantastic.” Another bonus about having the new book feature the (famously incomprehensible) wookiee from the Star Wars films: “I get to ask kids to do their Chewbacca impressions.”

 

The Origami Yoda books are narrated by a group of Star Wars–loving middle-school students, who seek the wisdom of origami finger puppets in their daily lives. Those lives have gotten more complicated as the series has developed: Dwight, the eccentric and none-too-popular kid who got the ball rolling with his Yoda finger puppet in The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, is in exile at a reform school in Fortune Wookiee, following the events of Darth Paper Strikes Back. The end of the new book points to a bigger battle still to come, one that appears likely to involve such timely school topics as standardized testing and reduced funding for the arts!

Of course, having Star Wars as a central component of the books doesn’t hurt from a sales standpoint. As the author puts it, “Almost everybody knows Star Wars.” Angleberger says that kids often tell him they watch the films with their parents, and the Star Wars empire has grown mightily since the original films were released, including such recent spinoffs as Lego Star Wars and the Clone Wars TV series. Still, he says, “It’s not like I sat down and thought, ‘What’s a license I could get and write about?’ It’s a very real thing because of my love of Star Wars and my love of origami.” Angleberger had been creating origami Star Wars characters for his own enjoyment before he had the idea to turn them into books (the Star Wars references in the series have been authorized by George Lucas’s Lucasfilm)..

We look forward to seeing you in Bath, Tom!

 The Kids LitFest Team x