BooksOfTheMoon

Mystery at Movie Manor

By Stuart McPherson

Rating: 4 stars

Three kids are filming a movie at an old manor house in the Highlands of Scotland when strange and nefarious events start to happen. Teaming up with some local kids, the gang take it upon themselves to figure out what’s going on.

This felt to me like an old fashioned children’s book, in the vein of Enid Blyton (albeit with 100% less “swarthy foreigners”). The kids are all likeable and they get up to good old fashioned shenanigans. As is typical in these sorts of books, adult authority is mostly just not present, and is ineffectual when it is, leaving the kids to just get on with things (in between filming). At times the fact that it’s a debut novel shows, but it’s mostly a rip-roaring tale that trundles along at a good pace and is a lot of fun.

Note: I know the author and got an ARC of this book, but this hasn’t influenced my review.

Book details

ISBN: 9781805146285

The Game

By Diana Wynne Jones

Rating: 3 stars

This little novella centres on Hayley Foss, who lives with her grandparents and is home-schooled with no friends. When she commits one infraction too many, her grandmother packs her off to her family in Ireland where she discovers many cousins, and also, the game. Unlike The Game, this involves traversing a multiverse of stories known as the Mythosphere. But the feared Uncle Jolyon is coming, and he has it in for Hayley.

This was an enjoyable little story, but I feel that it would benefit from a classical education. There are so many references that I feel I missed. I’m still not entirely sure I know who Fiddle and Flute were and other elements didn’t entirely make sense (why did Martya come and work for Hayley’s grandmother, for example?). But it kept moving at a good pace so you don’t think too hard about these things as you’re reading. I’m not sure it’ll linger long in the mind though.

Book details

ISBN: 9780142407189
Publisher: Firebird

Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter

By W.E. Johns

Rating: 3 stars

This was an enjoyable enough collection of short stories featuring Captain James “Biggles” Bigglesworth, a fighter pilot in the First World War. The stories are all short, plainly told and exciting. There are dogfights, rookies, spies, and even a love interest. It’s all very gung-ho, although there’s a lot of respect for the fighters of the opposition, but still feels too close to propaganda for my tastes.

I read it mostly because I’ve never read any, and because my brother-in-law has been enthusing about them recently, so I borrowed this one to have a go. It was a fun, and quick read, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to read any more.

Book details

ISBN: 9780603034053
Publisher: Dean & Son
Year of publication: 1977

Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom

By Sangu Mandanna

Rating: 4 stars

Having read, and adored, Mandanna’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, I went looking for more works by her and found this children’s novel available in my local library. It’s very different in style and tone to Witches, fitting much more into standard portal fantasy territory, albeit with the added twist that the girl who goes through the portal, the eponymous Kiki Kallira, has fairly crippling anxiety.

At the start of the book, Kiki is out with her friend Emily and Emily’s sister and friends to the fair. A chance remark makes her realise that she can’t remember if she locked her front door on the way out, which leads her immediately to a worst case scenario (burglars have broken in and killed her mum) and she can’t stop until she leaves her friend and goes home to check. This is a strong opening, showing us just how baked in Kiki’s anxiety is, and that it’s not your everyday worrying, but something deeper. Later, Kiki finds a world that she’d drawn in her notebook coming to life and she has to go in to stop the demon who she created to terrorise it, helped only by a group of rebel kids.

Kiki has to deal with all the traditional problems that a portal fantasy protagonist has, and with her anxiety on top of that, for extra fun. There was a twist towards that end that I should probably have seen coming, but I was having too much fun with the plot to be self-aware enough of what was going on.

I don’t read much children’s fiction, but I found this very readable, with extra points for an Indian protagonist and Hindu mythology folded into the plot as well. It doesn’t talk down to the audience, and even as a middle aged man, I found Kiki well-realised and easy to relate to. I’ll be looking out for the sequel.

Book details

ISBN: 9781444963441
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Year of publication: 2021

Mary Poppins

By P.L. Travers

Rating: 3 stars

I’ve wanted to read this for a while now, and after finding that the version that the library had was an abridged version decided to just buy a copy. It’s an odd book, the nanny of the book is a very different Mary Poppins to the one portrayed by Julie Andrews. She’s crabid, cross and vain, always stopping to admire her reflection in shop windows. She doesn’t come across as someone that her charges could love at all. I honestly don’t know what a child of today would make of Mary.

As well as the stories familiar from the Disney film, we also see Mary take the children to a creepy sweet shop; they encounter a reverse zoo, where the animals admire the humans in cages; and they encounter a star who comes down from the sky to go Christmas shopping for her sisters.

I can see why Travers might not have liked the Disney film, given how different the character of Mary is to her own creation, and it’s been interesting to read the original. It might have stuck with me if I’d read it at a more formative age, but coming to it as an adult, it’s just an interesting historical footnote.

Book details

ISBN: 9780006753971
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year of publication: 1998

Fantastic Mr. Fox

By Roald Dahl

Rating: 4 stars

After watching the film Isle of Dogs recently, a friend recommended that I watch Fantastic Mr Fox, also by Wes Anderson. I did so, having not read the book since I was a kid. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, so I went back to the source material.

The book is very slight (I read it in half an hour, over lunch) but as much fun as I remember. Mr Fox feeds his family by stealing from the villainous farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. They eventually have enough of this and try to dig him out and this is the story of how he and his family cleverly fight back. The farmers are delightfully awful, and Mr Fox is, indeed, fantastic. Not classic Dahl, but enjoyable fun nonetheless.

Book details

ISBN: 9780140326710
Publisher: Puffin
Year of publication: 1988

Redwall (Redwall, #1)

By Brian Jacques

Rating: 3 stars

This is one that I remember being very fond of when I was young, but had no real memories of the story beyond that. Revisiting it, it took a while to warm up to it, but once the evil Cluny and his horde turns up, it starts getting exciting fast. A couple of points that caught my attention, reading it with a 21st century adult eye. Firstly, I had completely forgotten how violent it is! There’s lots of battles, and people (animals) die by swords and arrows, but then you also get cauldrons of boiling water poured on some, death by snakebite and plummeting from the top of the Abbey tower for others. Secondly, the love interest is literally handed to the warrior at the end as a reward. And I was slightly uncomfortable with the “savage” Sparra (sparrow) tribe’s speech being made out like TV “Red Indians” from the 1930s or 40s.

The Guosim (Guerilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower) are an odd bunch too. The author seems to be using them to mock the left (in the “People’s Front of Judea” sort of way that Monty Python’s Life of Brian did), and at one point, the hero loses his temper at them and their democracy and asserts that if they’re not with him, they’re against him. Er…

But it’s also a tale of bravery, friendship and loyalty. Of banding together for a greater cause. And of pouring boiling water down tunnels full of rats.

Book details

ISBN: 9780099512004
Publisher: Red Fox
Year of publication: 1987

The Secret Garden

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

Rating: 4 stars

This was a firm favourite as a child and whatever fondness I have for nature, I think I can, to some degree, thank it for. I feared that returning to it as an adult, it might not stand up, but, despite the flaws that I see now, it retains all the charm that I remember, and I finished it with a smile on my face.

The flaws definitely need discussed: its attitude to colonised peoples is patronising at best; it’s a good thing I’ve got a fairly strong product-of-its-time filter, trained in my youth on Golden Age science fiction stories. It has a remote, rose-tinted view of “virtuous” poverty, with Mrs Sowerby and her dozen children painted as healthy and happy, despite always being hungry and crammed into a tiny cottage while a hundred-room mansion lies mostly empty. And there’s a lot more child neglect than I remember, with the early chapters showing how both her parents had no interest in Mary, leaving her upbringing to the servants. That’s also mirrored in Colin, the “young rajah” of Misselthwaite and the relationship between those two children is the heart of the book.

There’s also, as I mentioned, a true love of nature here, and especially the Yorkshire countryside. The turning of the seasons, the joy of planting and tending and growing are all major themes, the growing plants of spring mirroring the growing children who begin to unfurl and grow healthily in when planted in the outdoors of England.

Despite flaws seen through 21st century adult eyes, this remains a delight to read, making me wish I could just roam the moors for days on end, with Dickon as my guide.

Book details

ISBN: 9781855345041
Publisher: Geddes & Grosset Ltd
Year of publication: 1990

Hilda and the Mountain King (Hilda, #6)

By Luke Pearson

Rating: 5 stars

After having escaped from the troll mountain at the end of the last book, Hilda wakes up back inside the mountain, to find herself in the body of a troll, with the troll baby having replaced her. Despite her wish to be free, she really does love her mum and wants to go back home, so when a large troll trapped in a cave behind a wall of bells says he can help her, she agrees without stopping to think who trapped him there or why? Meanwhile, her mother is searching for her lost daughter non-stop, and when Hilda and her mother both put their minds to the same thing, the world had better watch out!

This was a lot of fun. It was another story of mother-daughter love and what a mother will do for her child, whether that’s Hilda’s mum, the troll mum or, er, the other mum, with a side dose of mutual respect for others as well. It’s packed with adventure, (mild) peril and the humour that the Hilda books are known for. Not where you should start with the Hilda books, but very definitely a great place to end the series.

Book details

ISBN: 9781838740528

Hilda and the Stone Forest

By Luke Pearson

Rating: 4 stars

The penultimate Hilda graphic novel kicks off with a chase after a walking piece of turf with an elf home on its back, followed by a montage showing the young adventurer enjoying all that Trolberg’s weird and wonderful magic scene has to offer. And then it all comes crashing down as she takes one too many risks and gets grounded. Now a book about Hilda cooped up in her room would be quite dull, so it’s not long before Hilda, and her mum, get pulled through a magic portal and end up somewhere unknown but surrounded by trolls. What follows is a story of adventure, trust and running away from trolls. Lots of running away from trolls.

Like the other graphic novels, this focusses pretty much exclusively on Hilda and her family, with the other characters from the TV show (primarily David and Frida) getting very little to do, except in the montage, where we see them getting up to Shenanigans. This makes the world a little narrower, but allows us to focus on the title character, which is always fun.

Having Hilda’s mother around makes for a different dynamic too, as the two end up worrying about each other and trying to keep each other safe. And, in the end, strengthening their relationship. It’s a great story, even if it does end on a cliffhanger! The art remains adorable and suits the story perfectly. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Book details

ISBN: 9781911171713

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