Pugs of the Frozen North by Reeve and McIntyre

Winter came in the night, like a white sheet laid over the world. It came so cold and so fast that the waves of the ocean froze as they rolled. The good ship Lucky Star froze with them, trapped tight in the suddenly solid sea.

Published by Oxford University Press in September 2015

Pages - 211

Summary

The Race to the Top of the World! It comes around once in a lifetime, and the prize? Your heart's desire. Shen and Sika can't resist the chance to win, but competition is fierce. The path to victory is littered with snow trolls, sea monsters, and a gang of particularly hungry yetis. But Shen and Sika have something the other contestants don't have. Actually, they have 66 other things; pugs to be exact. That's a 264 paw-powered sled. Let the race begin! 

*****

This book is delightfully bizarre! I'm completely convinced that sixty-four pugs could pull a sled in a race to meet the Snowfather. In fact, I would argue with anyone that doubted it.

From the moment the sea freezes over, I was wrapped up in this story. All the characters are quirky and unique. How could you not love Mitzi Von Primm with her newly grown Yeti fur or Helga Hammerfest and her beard?

The story is mind blowingly original. The Yeti Noodle Bar was the zaniest part of the book and yet so utterly believable. 

Sensitive situations were made extremely child friendly and I imagine children getting comfort from the way the story climaxes. 

I honestly don't know what I loved best - the illustrations or the words. They both work so beautifully together. I think someone should capture the imagination of Reeve and McIntyre and bottle it. It would sell for a thousands on Ebay. When I'm plotting in the future, I shall ponder over the question - what would Reeve and McIntyre do in this situation?  

I can see why these books are such a hit with the kids. They take situations further than extreme and make them down right hilarious. I would say it would suit the more confident reader but it would also be a brilliant book for parents and children to share together. 

What a super talented team.

The A to Z of Railhead Blog Tour: V is for Villains.

I'm so pleased to be hosting today's spot on the A to Z of Railhead blog tour with Philip Reeve.

V is for Villains

All good stories need a villain. Or do they? Personally, I hope they don’t, because I keep forgetting to put villains in mine. The stories which inspired me when I was young all have thoroughly evil villains whom it’s a pleasure to boo and hiss until they get their inevitable come-uppance, and anyone who has done any acting will know that the villain is the best part to play. But my own stories don’t seem to work that way. 

Railhead is a good example. It definitely has some dodgy characters among its cast-list. There’s the sinister Raven, with his shadowy past and mysterious schemes, tempting my young hero into trouble. And then there’s Kobi Chen-Tulsi, who seems a simpler sort of villain; a spoiled, idle, none-too-bright bully. The trouble is that once you start writing about people, you start to see things from their point of view, and find out that they have reasons for the things they do. This may not turn into heroes - their excuses my be bad ones, or their dark deeds too wicked ever to excuse - but they stop being villains, at least in that boo-able, hiss-able sense. And at the same time, a similar process starts to happen to the good guys. They can’t be completely good - that would be dull, and make them seem like plaster saints, not real people. So maybe they do bad things sometimes, or do good things for selfish motives. So do they become villains? Well, not really - it’s more that everyone ends up just as a person; some are better than others, but none of them is perfect. They are all pursuing their own aims, and sometimes that brings them into conflict. 

The downside to this approach is that I don’t get to have anyone swirling their long black cape and going, ‘Mwah-ha-ha-ha!’ (That really is a downside, because a villain who swirls a long, black cape and goes, “Mwah-ha-ha-ha!’ can be a lot of fun.) On the upside, I think it’s more interesting if we’re not always sure who the good guys and the bad guys are. And even we have a pretty good idea, we retain at least a soupçon of sympathy for the Devil.

Railhead is published by Oxford University Press. 

Summary

Come with me, Zen Starling, she had said. The girl in the red coat. But how did she know his name? 

The Great Network is a place of drones and androids, maintenance spiders and Station Angels. The place of the thousand gates, where sentient trains criss-cross the galaxy in a heartbeat. 

Zen Starling is a petty thief, a street urchin from Thunder City. 

So when mysterious stranger Raven sends Zen and his new friend Nova on a mission to infiltrate the Emperor's train, he jumps at the chance to traverse the Great Network, to cross the galaxy in a heartbeat, to meet interesting people - and to steal their stuff. 

But the Great Network is a dangerous place, and Zen has no idea where his journey will take him.

To find out more about Philip Reeve: 

Website / Twitter / Facebook

Not your standard round up by K. M. Lockwood

When I see a long column of words, my heart sinks. I don’t want to read a boring list and I suspect neither do you. So instead of a Books I have read in 2014, I’m doing something else.

Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.

Good advice. The only purpose of reflecting on the past is seeing how far you’ve gone - and using this to plan ahead. In short, looking for patterns.

You could say I am cheating by looking at the reviews I’ve done since March 2012 - or you could be kind and say it gives better data. Either way, in an entirely anecdotal and unscientific manner, I’m going to extrapolate some trends I think are happening in fiction for young people. I’m sticking to the ones I like because I can - and there’s enough gloom out there thank you very much.

Doh a deer, a female deer… Where to start? My first review - Mister Creecher. This contains two themes I enjoy: metafiction and Victoriana. Just so I’m making myself clear, my definition of metafiction is literature that consciously refers to previous writing. So Chris Priestley using Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s creature from Frankenstein is precisely what I mean.  It doesn’t have to be serious - the joyful Goth Girl books play merrily with clever references to all sorts of writing. But it works best of all when the allusions add depth to the story - such as in Whitstable and The Last of the Spirits.  This trend rewards readers who have a good track record.

Victoriana is definitely a thing. I love it. It’s so wide - from ‘steampunk’ fun like Etiquette & Espionage to eerie mysteries such as Frost Hollow Hall and The Visitors. Strictly speaking, the Penny Dreadful series by Christopher Edge are set in the Edwardian era - but that kind of world-building is the draw. You can get lost in it.

Which brings me to my next theme - fabulously different worlds. Such a range - Yangsze Choo’s Ghost Bride, Candy Gourlay’s Shine and Jepp who defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh - use actual times and places in new and unusual ways. Sometimes the quality of writing is part of that world too - often challenging to read and a bit ‘marmite’ - but frequently worth it. Try Railsea, the Skyscraper Throne Trilogy, or anything by Frances Hardinge and Catherynne M. Valente if you’re feeling adventurous. 

One trend I am sure many different kinds of reader will enjoy is the return of illustration. Oh, the fun of Oliver and the Seawigs or Fortunately the Milk is not merely doubled but squared by the design work. I want to cheer every time I see good production values: they can be for older readers too. Hoorah for graphic novels like Clockwork Angel, or sheer uncategorisable loveliness like The Sleeper and the Spindle.

Finally, the controversial theme - the dark and uncompromising stories. I accept these are not to everyone’s taste, but I defend their right to be written. The point of the best ones - like Tinder, The Killing Woods, Amity and Sorrow or Bone Jack, is that they do not patronise the young reader. The world has many dark places and to pretend it’s all like Disneyland, especially to teens, is ridiculous. 

Robert Schumann: "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

So I wonder if publishing in 2015 will carry on with these trends. Will there be more metafiction, wonderful artwork, Victoriana, diversity and darkness? Will something utterly new take over? As they say, read on to find out…

An Interview with Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre

To celebrate the publication of Oliver and the Seawigs, I’m so pleased to welcome the book’s author, Philip Reeve and illustrator, Sarah McIntyre onto  the blog.

How did the working partnership between you both come about?

PR: We met at the Edinburgh Festival in 2010. Sarah was doing a drawing a day on her blog at that time, and I thought that sounded like a good idea, since I'd rather let my drawing lapse since I became a full-time writer. So I came home to Devon and started drawing landscapes, and we talked a lot online about drawing and stories, and became the best of friends. 

SM: The most interesting bit was when winter set in, and he kept going out on the moor and drawing. And I thought, if he’s braving the cold of Dartmoor to draw, I can at least manage to get to Greenwich Park. So I nearly froze my fingers off more than a few times, trying to keep up with him.

PR: At first I never imagined we'd work together, because our styles and outlooks are so different, but it was such fun inventing stories and throwing mad ideas to-and-fro that it just became inevitable.

 What came first - the storyline or some of the pictures?

PR: We came up with the idea together, and Sarah did some drawings of the main characters, which I referred to while I was writing.  But lots of the ideas in the story are Sarah's, and sometimes when I got stuck I'd just ask her what she wanted to draw!

SM: The Sea Monkeys came about because of an advert I’d seen in comics as a child, offering a family of sea monkeys if you’d send them a dollar. There was a little drawing of a happy underwater family - strangely humanoid - and I knew the sea monkeys couldn’t possibly be actual little people for only a dollar. So they started in our book with that advertising image, became part of our text, then I drew them as something slightly different.

I understand there are plans for further books in the series,  can you tell us anything about that yet?

PR: We've signed a contract for four books, and I hope there will be many more! They won't be a series in the usual sense, though: each one will be a new story, with new characters. The second is a space adventure, set aboard an enormous spaceship where everyone is asleep in suspended animation except for one girl who wakes up, and has to deal with various problems that arise, including cheeky aliens and... well, it's called Cakes In Space.

SM: We didn’t want to to tie ourselves down to one set of characters; we’re looking forward to playing around with entirely new ideas each time. And we like cakes, and space.

Your working partnership has been compared to Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake’s - how does that make you feel?

PR: McIntyre is a lot taller than Quentin Blake...

SM: Reeve isn’t quite as grumpy as Roald Dahl.

What projects are you working on individually at the moment?

SM: I’ve just finished a picture book with Scholastic that I’ve written myself, called There’s a Shark in the Bath and I’m working on another picture book with David O’Connell at the moment. I’m also the artist for next year’s Summer Reading Challenge, so I have a few posters and stickers and things to prepare for that. I’m trying to keep the downloadable activity sheets on my website up to date with each book and suddenly I’m getting requests from some of our foreign Seawigs publishers (Dutch, Turkish) to hand-letter the sheets in different languages

PR: I'm just finishing the third novel in my Goblins series, which will be published by Scholastic.

 

Oliver and the Seawigs is published by Oxford University Press. Check out K.M. Lockwood’s review here.

To find out more about Philip Reeve:

Website / Tumblr / Twitter / Facebook

To find out more about Sarah McIntyre:

Website / Twitter

Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve & Sarah McIntyre

Oliver Crisp was only ten years old, but they had been a busy and exciting ten years, because Oliver’s mother and father were explorers.

They had met on the top of Mount Everest.

(I wish you could see the goat saying ‘Meh!’as the mountaineers fall in love)

They had been married at the Lost Temple of Amon Hotep, and had spent their honeymoon searching for the elephants’ graveyard.

Published by Oxford University Press in September 2013

203 pages in hardback

Coloured cover with grey scale illustrations throughout.

Summary from http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk

Oliver grew up in a family of explorers - but his biggest adventure is about to begin! Along with his new friends, a grumpy old albatross, a short-sighted mermaid and a friendly island called Cliff, Oliver goes off in search of his missing parents. But before he can put his rescue plan into action there's the evil Stacey de Lacey and an army of greasy, green sea monkeys to contend with ...

*****

Reviewed by K. M. Lockwood

This illustrated book for children is frankly bonkers. It is stuffed full of enchantingly mad pictures by Sarah McIntyre and equally potty characters by Philip Reeve. Who could fail to love Mr Culpeper the grumpy albatross, Iris, a plump and resourceful mermaid and Cliff, the jolly wading island?

The story follows our brave ten year old hero Oliver searching for his missing explorer parents - and encountering some very strange places and problems along the way. It’s deeply daft - in a good way - and actually has a plot, not just a sequence of funny events. The overall story could suit a very able young reader -whilst there is peril, our hero and his friends overcome it with cleverness and courage. 

The illustrations, like the language, are a source of joy. Both are lively, unpatronising and imaginative. Dare I say it, but I believe some children might enjoy colouring in Sarah’s line-drawings?

I particularly enjoyed the places where the text and the images play with each other; for example, where a scene in darkness is written white on black or the pictures invade the page. Great fun.

There’s plenty for more experienced readers to enjoy and detailed artwork begging to looked at carefully. It would work very well as a book to read aloud and share: I wonder if OUP might consider a ‘Big Book’ for schools?

All-in-all, a splendidly funny book for good readers of seven and over. I would add that it is a good read for girls as Iris is a strong and central character. I do hope Oliver and his friends go onto have further adventures.