To keep them quiet after Christmas

Press, 18 December 1976, Page 17

To keep them quiet after Christmas

A picture book with special appeal to boys of four to six is HERE ARE THE BRICK STREET BOYS by Allan Ahlberg, published by Collins at $4.50. The text is monosyllabic: “Here is the ball. Fred kicks the ball.” It’s the pictures that hold interest. These, by Janet Ahlberg, are drawn with careful attention to detail and some character and humour. Their setting, in a Brick Street school playground, will not be familiar to New Zealand children, but

the characters will. Occasional effective use is made of comic-strip techniques. The boys are occupied here in playing football, and football league results are the basis for their school sums. Puffin easy readers (five and six-year-olds) include a very colourful version of TEN GREEN BOTTLES, amusingly illustrated by Susanna Gretz ($1.45) and John Denton’s THE COLOUR FACTORY with very colourful illustrations by Peter Edwards ($1.50). BANDICOOT AND HIS FRIENDS by Violet Philpott is another young Puffin retailing at $l.lO. It is intended for readers of five to seven and the five stories in the book have been adapted by the author from her puppet plays about the characters which have proved quite popular with young audiences. Set in Happy Valley and dealing with an odd assortment of sentimentalised animals the stories are slow moving and rather confusing for young readers. The pleasant sketches' by Lyndie Wright suggest that when told through the actions of animated puppets the tales might be more appealing.

FAMOUS LEGENDS. Books 1 and 2, published by Ladybird Books, contain a surprising amount of detail in a short space. They have been written by J. D. M. Preshous for children to read to themselves. Confident readers of six to nine enjoy doing this, and are interested in the Greek names and pronounciations, while finding the stories themselves absorbing. Endpapers contain picture maps of Greece, mazes, pictures and biographies of the gods. At 60c each these are good value.

Puffin paperbacks will fit readily into the Christmas stocking, the household budget and the good graces of literate eight to 11-year-olas. Those reviewed here may also be read aloud to younger children without the reader’s eye becoming glazed.

Marooned on an island full of strange ticking machines, Rupert, Barry and Baba decide it may be the site for an H-bomb test. How to get away without a boat?' It is oncedespised Rupert w'ho turns up trumps in Nicholas Fisk’s HIGH WAY HOME ($1.10), a credible adventure story with the sort of sharp social commentary one might expect of the author of “Trillions.”

Helen Cresswell wrote books for adults when a child. Now an adult she writes rather better for children. THE NIGHT WATCHMAN ($1.10) will strongly appeal to those who enjoy a

touch of fantasy in everyday surroundings. The frustrations of a boy with cerebral palsy are sympathetically explored in Ivan Southall’s LET THE BALLOON GO ($1.50), the winner of last year’s Australian children’s book of the year award and now an Australian film. John Sumner’s parents restrict his life unnecessarily because of his disability, but by going out, literally, on a limb, he wins freedom from parental fussiness.

Leon Garfield’s amoral ADVENTURES OF THE BOY AND THE MONKEY ($1.25) recreates the squalor of eighteenth century London, Newgate, transportation to Virginia and life on a plantation.

William Mayne’s name as a children’s author continues to gather lustre. He writes mainly for the older age group of 11 and over and continually stretches the reader’s imagination and comprehension. THE JERSEY SHORE, his latest in Puffin Books ($1.25) tells of a far-off summer spent by a young American boy listening to his grandfather’s reminiscences of his youth in a

Norfolk village. It is a strange, evocative and gently humorous book set in a dreamlike landscape of sand, sea and sky.

Clive King, whose book “Stig of the Dump” has achieved something near the status of a classic among children’s books, has a new novel, ME AND MY MILLION, published by Kestrel Books at $8.15. The story is racy, readable and unusual. Ringo, the boy who tells it, is a younger brother roped fairly easily into elder brother Elvis’s minor law-breaking schemes. It’s an enjoyable story for readers over 10 who appreciate the dangers of the chase and happy coincidence. The author’s social theme makes the book a little more than simple adventure.

Four new books for readers over 11 published in paperback by Penguin Books make a small study in the contrasts available to borrowers from the shelves labelled “Young People

Only.” (Older people need not be intimidated by this label. In terms of quality, this is often the most rewarding section of a library). THE DOLPHIN CROSSING, by Jill Paton Walsh, a Puffin Book, is a slim novel, set like her “Goldengrove” in the years of the Second World War in England. The realism of these recent books about the war as experienced by teenagers seems gentler, more pervasive and less sentimental than that of writers who dealt with it as contemporaries. In “The Dolphin Crossing” the hero suffers the loss of a hard-won friend as well as the physical dangers and emotional stresses of helping with the relief of Dunkirk.

Leon Garfield, whose story THE GHOST DOWNSTAIRS is now a Puffin Book, has the presentation of a different sort of truth as his aim. A book with this title, and with a rather whimsical cover of a bowler-hatted gentleman and a golden-haired waif (the illustrations by Antony Maitland, are well in tune with the mood of the text) will not lead many readers astray with regard to its contents. It’s a short book, shorter for instance than Leon Garfield’s popular “Black Jack,” and in inspiration is akin to a short story of the nineteenth century. The author is a writer steeped in the nineteenth century London of Dickens. THE CRYSTAL GRYPHON by Andre Norton, appears as a Peacock Book, at heart it is an old-fashioned romance. Joisan’s story is interwoven with Kerovan’s; they each, in the first person, tell of their lives chapter and chapter about, -until, married by proxy as children, their fates being them together. The story is a science-fiction kind of fantasy, perhaps taking place in the distant future of the earth after some unknown disaster which has left some evidence of engineering feats in the past.

The issue of THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper in Puffin Books at $1.85 gives everyone the opportunity of buying and keeping the most engrossing account of mankind’s greatest struggle, that of holding at bay the morality of darkness. Susan Cooper is not inferiors to anyone; she is distinct, accomplished, human, moving and above all readable. Don’t be put off by the fantastic horned Twelfth Night rider on the cover of “The Dark Is Rising”; the first chapter, with its ordinary family talk of presents and the weather, will lead a reader gently in, if he lets it, until he is absorbed. Not only is the writing

better than good, the setting in the wintry countryside of the Thames valley is authentic, the family relationships are recognisable, and its individual members are distinct.