BfK 5–8 Infant/Junior


April Underhill, Tooth Fairy HHHHH


Bob Graham, Walker, 32pp, 978 1 4063 2155 5, £11.99 hbk


Once again maestro Bob Graham not only tells but also shows his story. He shows readers too, the possibilities within stories – they don’t just take place on the pages after the title page, and when the book is read they can extend ‘far out to the horizon’. In this new picture book April and Esme Underhill, two tiny sisters, embark on their first job as official tooth fairies. Dad and Mum warn them that children must never see them when they leave a shining coin in exchange for a tooth. Clutching a string bag to put the tooth in, they set off through the night air to Daniel Danger field’s house. When Daniel does stir, they close his eyes again and whisper that he dreamed seeing them. This advice is relayed by text from Mum, who, a modern mother, is reassured that her daughters can keep in touch via their mobile phone. The merging of the traditional with the modern world will reassure children that the really essential things of life don’t change – they only conform to current circumstances. The Underhills have been in business as tooth fairies since 1691 and it is apparent they intend to continue their vital work, even if lorries going north on the M42 now thunder past their home in a tree stump. As usual Graham’s attention to design and detail seem effortless, and readers who pause to examine the minutiae in his illustrations as they read April Underhill from cover to cover will have a rich experience. VC


contentment, curiosity, concern, terror and courage of the felines as well as wordlessly recounting the real wreck and rescue of the sinking ship’s passengers in paintings which are at once closely obser ved and darkly dramatic.


JB Ella Moves House HHH


Angela Hassall, ill. Caroline Ewen, Tamarind, 32pp, 978 1 848 53006 5, £5.99 pbk


Ella and her mum have a flat that suits them per fectly, but when mum’s special friend Joe moves in, they are squashed. This is not good from Ella’s point of view, and she shows her dislike of Joe in no uncertain terms. Joe tries very hard – perhaps too hard – but his juggling doughnuts, his games with her, even his cooking bring for th nothing but negative responses. When mum announces they are to move to a house to give them more room. Ella is adamant that she doesn’t want to go, and her stubbornness continues throughout the packing process. It is only at the new house, when Ella’s beloved doll gets taken away by a large dog and Joe rescues it that Ella begins to accept Joe in her life. If the outcome is a tad easy, Ella’s response to the new stepfather is all too realistic and one that many stepfamilies will recognise. Jolly, cartoon style illustrations with lots of humour add to a story which will have particular appeal to children in a stepfamily. Published on the Tamarind list of ‘books for a multi- cultural world’.


ES The Day the Rains Fell HHH


Gracie the Lighthouse Cat HHHH


Ruth Brown, Andersen, 32pp, 978 1 84270 971 9, £10.99 hbk


Using as a backdrop the story of Grace Darling’s rescue of nine people from the Longstone Lighthouse rocks, Ruth Brown tells an imagined story of her own, that of Gracie the lighthouse cat and how she loses and rescues her kitten from the raging storm. Ruth Brown loves to paint cats and is very good at doing so. In this Victorian period piece she captures the


Anne Faundez, ill. Karin Littlewood, Tamarind, 32pp, 978 1 848 53015 7, £5.99 pbk


This creation tale about how waterholes came to exist is told in a carefully structured language. Lindiwe, the creator, takes her daughter Thandi to visit Ear th to check that the planet and all its creatures are happy. At first all seems well. We see Lindiwe and Thandi soaring with eagles, dancing with polar bears, swimming with fish and running with deer. In each instance they seem completely in tune with the movements of each animal, effectively captured by the illustrations. But as Lindiwe watches the sun rise over the


22 Books for Keeps No.184 September 2010


plain, she sees before her a dry, dusty land with wilting trees and sad animals. And so she summons the rain. In order to collect it in the ground, she makes many different sized pots of clay and strides across the land, sinking them into the earth, ready to be filled whenever the rains come. Her daughter meanwhile has rolled small balls of clay into beads which the animals, grateful for the waterholes they have been given, colour for her to wear as a brightly patterned beaded necklace. Two end pages on clay pots and beads provide extra background information with a view to inspiring some project work, seemingly. The rich warm colours of the watercolour illustrations evoke the African landscape that is the backdrop for the story. A lovely book. UC


and photography. Their photographs are vibrant, rich in content and quality. Their choices of which aspects of Ethiopia to show give us a meaningful snapshot of their cultural heritage and current context. The text is well- written, accessible and clearly linked to the photographs. It sometimes gives us words in Amharic:


‘Ff is for Fidel – the alphabet. We have our own numbers, a special calendar and own Amharic alphabet. It has 216 characters with different shapes and sounds…’


The text of S is for South Africa, penned as it is by Beverley Naidoo, reads very differently. It is both poetic and powerful. The vibrancy here is in both text and photographs, capturing the richness and diversity of the land and its people, its past and present:


‘Ff is for Faces, ancestors from many places with stories to share of one human race. Let all our children be laughing and peaceful, and under- stand the wisest saying of our rainbow nation: “People are people through other people!”’


The text sings out from this particular title in this worthy series.


Thomas the Tank Engine – 65th anniversary edition


E is for Ethiopia HHHH


Ashenafi Gudeta, photographs by Betelhem Abate, Atakiti Mulu and Dama Boru, translated by Sara Ibrahim, 978 1 84507 825 6


S is for South Africa HHHHH


Beverley Naidoo, photographs by Prodeepta Das, 978 1 84780 018 3


Frances Lincoln, 32pp, £11.99 each hbk


Here are two new titles in a well- produced series of alphabet books with photographic representations of particular countries.


In each case, an author’s note at the beginning gives a brief description of the country with two simple maps, one showing the country’s position on the continent of Africa and another its bordering countries. There is a pleasant consistency to the look and layout of the series (with some variation in the design of page borders) with lots of white space around the letters of the alphabet, their accompanying text and photographs. The latter are varied in size and number – some pages have just the one photograph, others have two and occasionally there is a montage of a number of pictures, so the books are visually very appealing.


E is for Ethiopia is notable also for the fact that its authors are four young Ethiopians who have been sponsored to give this photographic account; two of them have hopes for careers in film


HHH


The Rev. W Awdry, ill. C Reginald Dalby [after Reginald Payne], Egmont, 80pp including endpapers, 978 1 4052 5268 3, £14.99 cased


Thomas the Bank Engine loved driving down the High Street to where the Fat Director kept his money. He liked to pull lots of trucks, especially if they were loaded down with bags of golden sovereigns, and Mr Egmont, the Fat Director’s own director, liked to think up new wheezes to keep the trucks well loaded. In this instance he has thought up a pretty way to celebrate Thomas’s 65th bir thday by reproducing the four stories about him that first came out in 1946 (they can’t do maths on that railway), printing them in a larger format than is customar y, slapping them into a handsome binding, and tucking the lot into a smart, colourful slip-case. The edition is said to be ‘limited’, but we are not told to how many copies.


The Fat Director probably won’t want to hear his customers murmur the word ‘pretentious’ (if he knows what it means) , but, along with the mathematics, the thinking behind this enterprise is slipshod to a degree unfitting for a seriously celebratory volume. A meagre nine pages, begir t with questionably ‘rare artwork’, go nowhere in telling the intriguing story of the making of the book. Material appears to have been taken from Brian Sibley’s exhaustive study, The Thomas the Tank Engine Man (1995), which is nowhere acknowledged. And, as we learn from that book, the edition of Thomas published 64 years ago was illustrated by one Reginald Payne,


UC


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