reviews 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued Ed’s Choice


Migrations: Open Hearts Open Borders


HHHHH


Various, edited by the International Centre for the Picture Book in Society, Otter-Barry Books, 200pp, 978-1-91095-980-0, £9.99 hbk


To migrate – to move from one place to another in response to adverse or seasonal conditions; animals and birds migrate in rhythm with their environment and across history human beings have migrated from once place to another in search of a better life. Migration does not necessarily mean permanence. Just as swallows return to Africa then come back to the Northern Hemisphere, many human migrants will look to return to their roots. Surely such movement of peoples enriches histories and localities? All of us will have benefitted from a migration at some time in the past. However, to leave one’s home is as Shaun Tan expresses it “an act of imagination, a flight of imagination”. Today, unprecedented


numbers


are embarking on the “flight of Imagination” – a desperate step into an unknown fuelled by a spark of hope that there will be a welcome and something better at the end. In Migrations: Open Hearts Open


Borders we find fifty postcards each with a image contributed by an illustrator from around the world often with a message sent as a gesture of support focussing on issues of inclusivity and cultural diversity. Each illustrator


was


asked to imagine a bird, picking up the notion of flight and of freedom, and these have then been arranged to illustrate the journey – Departure, Journey, Arrival and


Runaway Robot HHHHH


Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Macmillan, 272pp, 9781509851775, £12.99 hbk


This is a story with everything – humour, excitement,


and an


intriguing plot that also raises highly relevant questions about where we are all heading. Ian McEwan does something of the same thing in his latest adult novel Machines Like Me. But Frank Cottrell-Boyce is also on the case here writing for a much younger audience. Do we treat


robots as


people or machines? Is it possible to have a genuine relationship with one? Can they ever turn on us? In this story young Alfie, who has a


prosthetic hand after a road accident, teams


up with Eric, a massive


walking robot who enquires ‘Shall I be mother?’ before pouring tea made within his own chest. But he also has a dismaying habit of taking everything


Hope for the Future. Setting the tone is Jackie Morris’ Peregrine Falcon who flies off the endpapers to the accompaniment of Robert Macfarlane’s words. There


The whole plot by now has spun cheerfully out of control, but this does not matter with an author of such wit and ease of writing. He tells readers in an afterword how there was once a real robot called Eric exhibited at an exhibition in London in 1928. But he could only answer fifty questions, unlike one of today’s proof-reading robots which might well have noticed that on page 91 a crucial detail in one of Steven Lenton’s consistently up- beat accompanying illustrations has got just slightly ahead of what was happening in the actual plot. NT


Lily and the Rockets HHHH are


then treasures to explore, to inspire reflection and discussion. The styles are diverse, arresting, challenging – the cover design makes this clear where the title Open Hearts Open Borders is juxtaposed with a flight of hostile arrows. The messages from each artist are equally inspiring and thoughtful. This is not just a pretty little publication to accompany an exhibition. This is a subtle, powerful tool that can be used in many ways – to open eyes to the riches of diverse visual languages, to encourage reflection on a wide range of questions, issues, assumptions and beliefs. It is a book that can be used in many different settings – quietly for private thought, with children encouraging young minds to think about big questions, with groups of adults unlocking stories, memories, hopes and fears, creating empathy and sympathy. Here there is no requirement


to be able to read;


the images provide the inspiration. That the production values are so high and the format unthreatening adds to the value. This is not a book to be pigeonholed; it also needs to migrate – to take that flight of imagination – and find a home not just on every shelf but in every hand and mind. FH


said to him at face value. Asked to take a chair, this is what he will do, even if said chair was hitherto screwed onto the floor. He and Alfie live in an only slightly futuristic world where front doors welcome you home with a reading of your current heartbeat rate and kitchen cupboards offer serving suggestions based on what there is inside. In the streets self-driving buses


quiz potential passengers


before letting them on and at home DustUrchins keep things tidy while telling occupants the latest news. Alfie has issues with his mechanical


hand, and there is more heart-ache to come when he finally remembers how exactly his accident


occurred. But


by this time he has a gang of other children also with added-on limbs working on his side as Eric changes from being Your Obedient Servant into something far less tractable. A role is finally found for him making safe unexploded mines in Bosnia.


Rebecca Stevens, Chicken House, 292pp., 9781912626120, £6.99, pbk.


It was not until I heard Kate Adie talk at the Appledore Book Festival, that I realised that women only started to play football competitively during the First World War. Women started to undertake many so-called men’s jobs during that time, and this particular activity did stop for a considerable time after the war, but with the Women’s World Cup about to start, this is a timely reminder of their forebears. Lily, heroine of this story, is very


tall and lives with her widowed father who was once a very good footballer. A love of football is something they share, and he has trained her to be a goalie like him. On leaving school Lily goes to work in the munitions factory at the Woolwich Arsenal where she finds that to her delight women play football in their breaks. She quickly becomes their goalie, and when her father joins as their coach they begin to play competitively. A letter she puts into a box of shells finds its way to Jack on the front line but things go awry as Lily thinks she is not pretty or feminine enough to appeal to him when they meet. However they do meet up after the war but then Lily is in disguise and maybe their romance is not to be. The atmosphere of the Great War is beautifully Stevens,


author of Valentine


created by Rebecca Joe,


showing her sure hand at recreating the past. The details of working in the munitions factory with its attendant danger come through strongly, as does the camaraderie of the women who did this work.


Lily’s friendship


with Amy May, tested by her fledgling relationship


with Jack, is deftly


portrayed, as is her loving relationship with her father. The story’s plausibility is tested when Lily becomes the goalie for Spurs, a men’s team, but she has always known this was not to be for long. Her love for the beautiful game comes through even more strongly at the end. JF


The Garden of Lost Secrets HHHH


A. M. Howell, Usborne, 294pp., 9781474959551, £6.99, pbk


I am not sure how many children going round a National Trust garden would stop to look at the greenhouses where


fruit such as pineapples were grown in the past? In this


accomplished first novel by A.M. Howell, Clara is sent to live with her father’s sister who is housekeeper on a big estate, where her husband is the Head Gardener. But Clara is forbidden to go into the greenhouses where the pineapples are grown, and her aunt is not the warm and friendly lady she remembered. In Clara’s pocket is her secret, an unread telegram which arrived just as her


parents were


sending her away for a few weeks. The moment to give it to her mother had passed and now Clara is unable to bring herself to open it. She shares this secret with the boy she glimpses in the moonlight by the greenhouses, and then together they determine to find out who is stealing the Earl’s precious pineapples. Set against the background of the


Great War in 1916, the story recreates perfectly the life of a big estate where life has continued much as before, except for the need to supply the local hospital with fruit and vegetables for those soldiers convalescing and the presence of Robert, unable to serve because of the loss of his eye.


But


below the surface there is tragedy and poverty and another secret held to herself by Clara’s aunt. All this is told in a measured prose which has the


secrets. are


underlying mystery of untold Clara and her friend Will


rounded characters, and the


presence of Clara’s uncle, the shy man who would have liked to be able to offer her more warmth, counteracts the unexplained coldness of the aunt. There is enough mystery and drama


to satisfy readers and yet impart the background of the Great War and life on a big estate, to make this a satisfying read for girls 10+.


It is a


pity however, given that the pineapple is the fruit of the story that it does not feature on the front cover! JF


The Last Spell Breather HHH


Julie Pike, OUP, 300pp, 978 019 277160 5, £6.99, pbk


Rayne, last in a line of spell-breathers, is apprenticed to her mother Maleri, whose job it is to keep their village safe from a plague that turns people into monsters and counteract everyday problems and illness by breathing spells. But Rayne has no interest in magic and would much prefer to be at school with her friends Tom and Jenna. Tom does not believe in magic and much to Rayne’s surprise tells them he has already visited the outside, without protection. He has been digging a tunnel every day after school. When in quick succession the


protective barrier is breached by a mysterious stranger and Maleri leaves the village on a quest to visit the Great Library, Rayne begin to realise there is a lot her mother has not told her. Frustrated at her perceived lack of magical skill, Rayne accidentally drops the family spell book in the fire and the words of the spells start to fall from the pages. One by one the villagers begin to turn into monsters before her eyes.


Books for Keeps No.237 July 2019 27


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