My Friend’s a Gris-Kwok by Malorie Blackman – A Review

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Barrington Stoke, dyslexia friendly books, Little Gems, malorie blackman, My Friend's A Gris-Kwok

The second book by dyslexia friendly publisher, Barrington Stoke that I picked up at my local library was another Little Gem reader called; My Friend’s A Gris-Kwok by Malorie Blackman.

Malorie Blackman was Children’s Laureate for two years and campaigned tirelessly for more diversity in children’s books. She is also an exceptionally gifted and highly lauded author, best known for her work for older readers. Pig Heart Boy is a book I’ve reviewed here on Making Them Readers, and is often used in Key Stage Two primary schools as a group reader. It works particularly well as a reader for Year Six children who teachers may want to talk to about things like bullying and respecting people’s privacy, as well as seeing other people’s point of view. Her Noughts and Crosses series is often taught in high school and is equally powerful.

My Friend’s a Gris-Kwok shows a different side to Blackman, and gives younger readers a chance to be introduced to her talents. Barrington Stoke recommend it for readers aged six and up, and give it an interest range from five to eight years. I would recommend it for younger readers as a great bed time story. It’s funny, silly and perfect for sharing.

Mike goes round to his friend Alex’s house to see if he’s ready to come out to play. Alex can’t come because he’s at home baby sitting his younger sister Polly while his mum is out. Polly is proving a handful in more ways than one, and Mike is roped into keeping Polly in check, only it is a little trickier than he anticipated, due to the fact that Polly and Alex are Gris-Kwoks.

A Gris-Kwok, it transpires, is someone who can change into whatever animal they want until someone else touches them. Alex and Polly can only change three times a day because although their mum is a full Gris-Kwok, their dad is just a human. Three times is more than enough for Mike who is dragged into a harum scarum adventure all over the house.

The illustrations by Andy Rowland are bold, black and white sketches that give a real sense of fun and urgency to the predicaments that Alex and Mike find themselves in. The work is full of energy and humming with life that transmits from the words to the art and back again. I particularly loved the rendition of Polly as an elephant, which perfectly captures her mischievous side. You can’t help smiling at it.

The book is beautifully laid out, as you would expect from Barrington Stoke. Short, pithy chapters which give children manageable goals if they’re reading it themselves; clear font with good spacing and layout making it easy to read, and dyslexia friendly cream pages. There are spot the difference, and joke pages on the inside front and back covers. The front and back flaps of the book make excellent bookmarks which help a child keep their place and don’t fall out and get lost, which is a bigger problem than you might think, particularly with a class of children.  The end papers have rather splendid fly illustrations on. I would quite like it as wallpaper.

The book works equally well for girls and boys. Although the two protagonists are boys, Polly is a brilliant character who is full of mischief and really fun to read about.

You can sample the first chapter of the book here.

Snug by Michael Morpurgo – A Review

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Barrington Stoke, Faye Hanson, Little Gems, Michael Morpurgo, Snug

I was very sad that I had reached the end of another parcel of reviewing joy from my favourite, dyslexia friendly publisher Barrington Stoke. You can imagine my delight then, when on our last family trip to the local library, I discovered they had stocked the shelves with some Little Gems. Not only that, but quite a few of them were new to me. I scooped them up and bore them home.

The first one of the library haul that I’m reviewing is called Snug by Michael Morpurgo.

I have two confessions to make. Firstly I am not a huge fan of Michael Morpurgo. It is not that he can’t write beautifully, because he absolutely can, and does. I think Private Peaceful is one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. My first confession is linked to my second confession, which is that I am not particularly delighted by books about animals, and Morpurgo writes a lot about animals.  I realise that, just as I am not excited much by Julia Donaldson or Jacqueline Wilson, this puts me in a minority, so I will tell you what I think, and try to temper it with positive criticism based on what I know everyone else will think.

Snug is about a cat called Snug who lives with a family who live in the country. Snug was rescued when he was just a kitten by the father of the family, who discovers him mewling about one of the farm buildings after a cat shoot in which Snug’s mother was obviously a casualty.

Snug attaches himself to Lisa, the baby of the family, and Snug and Lisa grow up together. The story, by the way, is narrated by Lisa’s older brother. Each chapter tells us about another milestone in Snug and Lisa’s relationship, until one day, Snug gets involved in a cat fight, and runs away from home.

Lisa’s father finds what he thinks is Snug’s body, and Lisa has to deal with the harsh reality of life with animals, and the fact that animals die, often sooner than their owners.

My problem with the book is that I found it too upsetting despite the fact that I will throw you a bone here and say that it does have a reasonably happy ending. I was a sensitive child, despite growing up next door to a farm myself, in a rural community and seeing animals being born and dying on a reasonably regular basis. It did not harden me to the rich cycle of life. It just used to make me sad when animals died, sometimes distraught. I was banned from reading Black Beauty, banned from watching Lassie and banned from seeing Watership Down. I once cried myself sick watching an illicit Lassie film. You can see why I would have a problem with Snug.

I appreciate that children need to know about the circle of life (breaks into Elton John style crooning), but there are ways and ways. I’m more comfortable with something like Goodbye Mog by Judith Kerr, than this, more prosaic and much less gentle tale which is much too pragmatic for me. I realise that other people, and I include plenty of children here, absolutely rave about books to do with animals and love nothing more than a heart rending tale of redemption and bravery and near tragedy, enacted by furry creatures. I suspect that this book will be hugely popular with almost everyone who isn’t me.

I particularly struggled with the idea of a cat shoot. I still do.  As I say, I grew up in the country, and I never, ever came across a cat shoot, and indeed this is the first time the term has ever crossed my path. I really wish Snug had been discovered in other, slightly less distressing circumstances. I would hate to read this to small children and have to talk about it with them, and it is exactly this kind of morbid thing that small children like to dwell on in my experience.

The writing is top quality, as you would expect from Morpurgo. He is very good at writing realistically for children and this book is no exception. The illustration by Faye Hanson are really beautiful, and help to soften the harshness of the story for me. The rest of the book is top notch, as you would expect from Barrington Stoke. The production quality is high, with a cat quiz on the inside cover and a maze to do on the back. The illustrated end papers are lovely too.

The chapters are short, succinct and manageable for children so that they can easily achieve reading milestones, and build a sense of achievement as they read.  The font is sans serif, of a good size for newly independent readers to grasp without merging words, and well spaced so they don’t mix up lines they might already have read. The vocabulary is well chosen for the reading age of six plus that Barrington Stoke recommend. Their interest age range recommends it for five to eight year olds. Given the subject matter, unless you’re very sure of your audience reaction, I’d stick to the slightly higher age range. There will inevitably be discussion provoked by what happens in the book, and it would be easier to talk these things through with older children in my opinion. You wouldn’t catch me going near a group of five year olds with it frankly.

On a positive note, if you’re much less sentimental than me, and you love animals, this is a book that will work for you in all sorts of rewarding ways.

You can read the first chapter as a sample, here.

You can see more of the gorgeous illustrations by Faye Hanson on her blog, here.

Shoe Dog by Megan McDonald – A Book Review

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book review, Katherine Tillotson, Megan McDonald, Shoe Dog

Shoe Dog by Megan McDonald is a standard format picture book that my son and I picked out on our last library visit because we both fell for the illustration of Shoe Dog on the front cover.

The illustrations are by Katherine Tillotson, and they really make this book, which would otherwise be a fairly run of the mill story about a newly adopted puppy who gets on his owners nerves because he has a passion for eating her shoes.

I have to say that the owner was much more patient than I would be with Shoe Dog after he had worked his way through about a dozen pairs of shoes. The shoes Tillotson draws are almost as appealing as the dog who eats them, and I’d be hard pushed to choose between them. Luckily, the owner makes the right choice, as does the repentant Shoe Dog and all is happily resolved in the end.

Things to love are; firstly the illustrations, which as mentioned above, are epic. The pencil lines of Shoe Dog, always on the move, multiple tails wagging, sum him up beautifully and we loved the mixed media approach with collage and drawing on every page.

Secondly, the story, although not particularly innovative, is beautifully written and very poetic. We particularly loved the repetition of the lines:

‘He raced up the stairs,

ba-doom, ba-doom’

and the way the owner is always ‘she’. It did remind me rather of Rumpole of The Bailey, and ‘she who must be obeyed.’

Thirdly, we loved the last page where Shoe Dog is finally accepted into the family and you get to see his owner’s face at last, because obviously he will stay with her. It was a really sweet and clever touch.

A lovely, simple story and a great picture book to share and read out loud with children. It would be great to read to a class of children, or equally effective as a cosy bed time story to share with your child.

Ted Rules The World by Frank Cottrell Boyce – A Book Review

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Barrington Stoke, book review, Cate James, Chris Riddell, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Ted Rules The World

Ted Rules the World by Frank Cottrell Boyce is the last book in my latest parcel from dyslexia friendly publisher, Barrington Stoke. I decided to save it until last because I knew it would be my favourite of all the books they had sent me, and I just finished reading The Astounding Broccoli Boy and this was by way of consoling myself that I was not quite yet up to date with what Cottrell Boyce has written. Sadly, having finished this, I am now.

I mean no disrespect to the other books I have reviewed, they were all great and I was given some world class authors to review, but I cannot tell a lie about how I, and my children, feel about a new book from Frank, and there’s no point trying to hide our outrageous bias towards all things Cottrell Boyce.

We were not disappointed.

I confess that I read the book myself first. Then I read it to my two youngest children at breakfast the following day who were moaning because I’d already read it without them. Then I went to fetch it to review and found that my sixteen year old had snuck off upstairs with it and was chortling away to herself. She particularly liked the fact that the government try to keep Ted’s silence with a threat of living with ‘no TV and only goats for company.’ She’s a huge fan of goats.

I’ve only just got the book back.

Ted is a young boy afflicted with red hair and a family commitment to supporting Stockport County football club.  This has, up to now, made life somewhat tricky and a little disappointing.  The story begins on Ted’s birthday when he wakes early thinking his mum and dad are downstairs planning the most amazing birthday surprise ever.

Instead they are asleep on the sofa, having stayed up all night to watch the election of the country’s new Prime Minister.

Ted’s birthday doesn’t start well, and being bullied on the bus on the way to school doesn’t improve matters.  On the way home he stops at the new ‘Neighbourhood’ supermarket to buy himself some consolatory birthday Hula Hoops. The lady at the till seems very friendly and extremely interested in Ted.

This interest doesn’t really register with him until he begins to realise that the things he is telling the lady on the tills at Neighbourhood are being featured on the news, as laws enacted by the new Prime Minister.

Ted is, as his friend Benedict says: ‘the Leader.’

It is quite a responsibility.

The book is sharply funny and a thoughtful, clever look at what power does, albeit from an unusual and unorthodox point of view.  I love the way that Cottrell Boyce gives the most unlikely characters authority in his books, and how he uses it to comment on society at large. There are times when I glimpse a hint of Pratchettian satire gleaming through his stories, and I rejoice.

The satire will probably be overlooked by the majority of child readers, but it is one of the things that makes Cottrell Boyce’s books so readable both for adults and children, and makes them works you can come back to time and again, whether it be short stories like this, and Desirable, or full length novels like Millions.

The cover art by Chris Riddell is a real treat. I thought I might be underwhelmed by the main illustrations by Cate James, given the illustrious company she’s keeping, but she more than holds her own here. The images are crisp, funny and well suited to the material.

The inside covers feature a test to see how you’d measure up as a Prime Minister yourself, and a chance to illustrate your own funny news segment for television. The usual cover flaps help people like me who are forever losing bookmarks, and the clear font, short chapter lengths, and cream pages give the usual Barrington Stoke polish to the book, making it much easier for anyone struggling with reading disabilities, and elderly ladies like myself with poor eyesight.

As well as being excellent for me, and my family, Barrington Stoke recommends this book to children aged eight and up. It has an interest age ranging from five to eight. I’d say if you love Cottrell Boyce’s novels, which are aimed at an older readership, do not be put off by this. This and Desirable, are of just as high a standard as his novels and have many of the same themes.

You can sample the first chapter by clicking the link, here.

There is a Q&A session with Frank Cottrell Boyce about Ted Rules the World, here.

Other Goose: Re-Nurseried and Re-Rhymed Children’s Classics by J. Otto Seibold – A Book Review

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book reviews, J Otto Seibold, Other Goose Re-Nurseried and Re-Rhymed Children's Classics

My children and I are very fond of both traditional fairy stories, and more contemporary reworking of them. We love everything from The Stinky Cheese Man to Ella Enchanted. We love humorous re-tellings like The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, and Little Red especially, and we are always looking for new additions to the genre to share.

Other Goose: Re-Nurseried and Re-Rhymed Children’s Classics by J. Otto Seibold looked right up our street when we discovered it in the library and we rushed it home immediately.  Surreal, brightly coloured illustrations and bonkers nursery rhymes seemed perfect.

How wrong we were.

Never have we been so united in our dislike of a book.

Half way through, my twelve year old daughter said: ‘These are the sort of rhymes I would write, and I would know they were terrible.’

My son said at the end: ‘I just don’t understand them.’

My eldest daughter didn’t stop to finish the book and applauded us for getting to the end.

It may be that this is so obviously written for an American audience that we are not in a position to understand some of the allusions in the text. I find this hard to believe, as we have read plenty of American books before with no problem. I think I’m just clutching at straws trying to find something at least half way positive to say about it if I’m honest.

The rhymes are pretty incomprehensible and we did not find them funny.  I realise that nursery rhymes are for the large part, utter nonsense, but this was nonsense we did not like at all. Maybe the nonsense of the traditional rhymes works for us because they are traditional, and are kind of acceptable because of our memories of them, and because this is what we know. For whatever reason, and we discussed it for a while, we really got upset about the fact that these new versions of the rhymes didn’t make any sense. That in itself might not make sense, but I can only report our reading experience to you.

After an initial enthusiasm for the psychedelic style illustrations we got pretty sick of them. Again, we had a lot of trouble understanding them. We didn’t really understand how they related to the text. It felt sometimes like they had just been bolted on as a kind of afterthought.

Maybe the book was just trying too hard. It was a huge format book with massive illustrations and ridiculously overblown rhymes.  Everything was a bit too garish, a bit too in your face, a little bit too wacky. The only thing that wasn’t loud and proud were the rhymes, which were not very long at all for the most part. We just really didn’t like the book, and although I usually find something positive to say about every book I review, I’m pretty stuck here.

Goldilocks and The Three Bears by Lauren Child – A Book Review

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book review, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Lauren Child

As you know, we, here on Making Them Readers, love a traditional fairy tale. We particularly love them when they get a contemporary update. We also love Lauren Child. Imagine how delighted we were to find that Child had done her own version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Did it work for us?

Well, firstly, the text is fairly traditional. There is none of the usual Lauren Child swirly fonts and childlike language. It is much more staid, and sticks pretty closely to the original tale in both style and content. The redeeming feature was the odd meta comment on the text, where Child, points out gleefully what readers down the years have all been thinking about the odious nature of Goldilocks, and her wilful blindness to her own behaviour. There is just the odd line here and there, but it’s enough to prick some of the pomposity and ridiculousness of the original story.

Secondly the illustrations are not what we have come to expect from Child either. There is none of the collaged and hand drawn charm of her Clarice Bean and Charlie and Lola work.  Here, she has collaborated with photographer Polly Borland, and set creator Emily Jenkins to come up with something rather disturbing.

The illustrations are photographs of an incredibly creepy faced Goldilocks doll in faux woodland settings that look like shrunk down film sets, and give the whole thing an oddly Gothic, macabre quality, enhanced by the fierceness of Daddy Bear with his gigantic fangs, and denim Hells Angel style waistcoat.

It took us a while to settle into the rhythm of this book, mainly because the pictures are really eerie, but after a while we agreed that we rather liked them, and there is some wonderful humour in the pictures, particularly the ones towards the end of the book when the bears come home to find out what Goldilocks has done.

This is rather a long re-telling of the story, and is very wordy. If you add that to the surreal illustrations it is a book I would definitely recommend for older readers, aged six to eight, although if you’re anything like as creepy as I was when I was a child you’ll probably love this AND it will give you nightmares. I really enjoyed the fact that it harks back to an older, fiercer type of traditional story telling in which it was alright to be scary, because sometimes life is scary, and things get a bit anarchic. That works as long as it all works out fine in the end, and of course, it does.

Squishy McFluff The Invisible Cat meets Mad Nana Dot by Pip Jones – A book review

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book review, Ella Okstad, Pip Jones, Squishy McFluff, Squishy McFluff The Invisible Cat Meets Mad Nana Dot

Squishy McFluff The Invisible Cat Meets Mad Nana Dot is one of a series of books about Squishy McFluff, published by Faber & Faber.

Oscar and I picked it because its format is reminiscent of the Barrington Stoke, Little Gem books we love so much. We like smaller sized picture books a child can manage on their own without wrestling with them like a businessman struggling to read the Financial Times on a crowded tube train.  We also liked the illustrations by Ella Okstad which have kind of a Scandinavian meets Eloise vibe going on, in a fabulous palette of greens and reds that really makes the book stand out.

Squishy McFluff, is as the title suggests, Ava’s invisible cat. He is also a rather naughty, mischief prone, invisible cat.  He and Ava spend a lot of time doing things like filling the garden shed with water from the garden hose, just to pass the time.

Ava is sent to stay with her Nana Dot, so called because her entire house is polka dot, when her mum has to go to hospital to have a new baby.  Ava’s dad warns Ava and Squishy to behave themselves for Nana, but as you might expect, this proves almost impossible and Nana is dragged from one bonkers situation to another until it is time for Ava to go home and meet her new sister.

The main problem we had with this book is that it rhymes, and the constraints of the story means that it does that terrible sort of rhyming where the author has to force sentences to end in certain words so that other sentences can rhyme, and this jars terribly on the ear, because nobody really speaks like that, and the reader ends up sounding a bit medieval, but in a bad way.

For large parts of the text this is not a problem and I was pretty impressed with the dexterity of the author in making the rhyme scheme as unobtrusive as possible, but there are times, terrible times when it all goes wrong.

Times like this:

‘Nan said: ‘Good kitty,

‘have you worked up a hunger?

‘We’ll make a quick stop

at my local fishmonger.’

This drove me slightly insane.

There is also really poor continuity in the story. Like the Little Gem books, this one is broken into chapter style segments. These seem rather arbitrary, it has to be said and the narrative breaks are all over the place and bear no relation to the chapter markings.

The fishmonger episode, for example, comes directly after Squishy’s encounter with a postman. On the previous page, Squishy is supposedly clambering on the postman when Nana Dot hits the postman with her walking stick.  This state of affairs is left hanging as we go off to the fishmongers, and is never referred to again.  There are a few times like this, when one narrative thread ends rather unsatisfactorily and we, the readers, are left dangling. This was also infuriating.

All in all, a bit of a poor relation in both style and quality if you’re used to the Little Gem series.

We quite liked the story. We loved the illustrations, but neither of us are passionate about reading the books we have missed to be honest. The book was quite amusing but the mischief quota never really got high enough for us, and the cuteness was a bit overpowering at times.

A transitional/chapter book suitable for children aged 6-8. We thought it would appeal mostly to girls, although the more mischievous elements might appeal to boys if you can get them past the cuteness of the illustrations and cover.

Creature Teacher Goes Wild by Sam Watkins – A Book Review

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book review, Creature Teacher Goes Wild, David O'Connell, Sam Watkins

Creature Teacher Goes Wild by Sam Watkins is the second in a series of books about Creature Teacher, the first of which is simply titled Creature Teacher, and which I have yet to read. This second book was sent to me by Amazon Vine in exchange for my unbiased review.  That’s what follows:

Firstly, you do not have to have read Creature Teacher to make sense of this second book. The premise is simple. Jake Jones and his friends have the best teacher in the world, Mr. Hyde.  He is fun, interesting and protects them from the horrible head teacher Mrs. Blunt, who is only really interested in herself and erecting giant statues of herself. Anything that doesn’t fit in with Mrs. Blunt’s plans is punishable by work on the school rockery. School can be more like prison, except for those who are lucky enough to be in Jake’s class.

The only problem with Mr. Hyde is that he can turn into a creature when he gets over excited, or frightened. The creature that he turns into emits noxious farts and delights in creating absolute mayhem wherever he goes. Jake and his friends work together to try and contain some of Creature’s worst excesses, and hide the problem from Mrs. Blunt, who is just looking for an excuse to sack Mr. Hyde.

In this second book, the whole school are off to Wilf’s Wild Adventure Theme Park for the day. They have been invited there by the reclusive billionaire, Wilf, to test the park out. Mrs. Blunt’s aims are twofold, to find an excuse to get rid of Mr. Hyde and to persuade the elusive Wilf that he would like to donate to her statue scheme. The children have other ideas.

Unfortunately it doesn’t take too long at the park before Mr. Hyde turns into Creature, and the children dash from adventure to adventure in the different zones of the park trying to keep him under control and turn him back into Mr. Hyde again before Mrs. Blunt finds out.

The story is very funny, and the idea of setting it in the different zones of the theme park gives the author huge scope to get lots of different mini adventures going within the one narrative, which I thought was very clever, and will appeal to readers who love fast paced, ever evolving narratives.

The illustrations by David O’Connell are great. Black and white cartoon style drawings work well with the feel of the book, and I enjoyed the double page spread illustrations particularly. There were certain elements that reminded me of Nick Sharratt’s work, in a positive way. I loved the humour and energy of the artwork.

This is a great transitional book, lots of illustrations, lots of humour and short chapters make it perfect for readers aged 7-11. Jake’s gang are made up of a good mix of boy and girl characters, all of whom get their moment in the limelight, so it would work well for both boy and girl readers. It would also make a great, fun book to read to younger children either in class or as a bed time story over a few weeks.

My son will love this book, when he’s worked through his own massive to read pile, and I predict that we will be scouting out the first book in the series when he’s finished this. There is a third book already trailed in the end papers of this book, so it looks set to be an ongoing series if you find yourself hooked by the adventures of Creature.

The Astounding Broccoli Boy by Frank Cottrell Boyce – A Review

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book reviews, Frank Cottrell Boyce, The Astounding Broccoli Boy

The Astounding Broccoli Boy is the latest novel by Frank Cottrell Boyce, and as long term readers will know, the children and I are slightly obsessed by Frank Cottrell Boyce, so it will come as no surprise that we have just finished reading it.

I had pre-ordered it from Amazon, and it arrived on the first day of publication. If I had been left to my own devices I would have read it in a day all by myself, but I was not allowed to indulge in such a luxury, and the children and I have been sharing it as a bed time story every night for weeks now.

Rory Rooney is a puny child whose life is made hell by the huge, kick boxing bully he calls Grim Komissky. Grim steals Rory’s lunch every day and pushes him off the school bus every afternoon.  Rory is sick of it, and tries to find various ways to deal with Grim. His mother is not much use, being obsessed by the Killer Kittens virus sweeping the nation, and trying to future proof her family and keep them safe from a much bigger threat than a school bully.  Rory’s dad is not a lot better, advising his son to take action in various ways recommended by his extensive knowledge of super heroes and the way they fight crime.

Rory tries everything he can, including just giving Grim his lunch.  One day Grim goes into anaphylactic shock when Rory accidentally feeds him a biscuit that contains nuts, and Rory is branded a potential murderer and number one trouble maker in the school. This undeserved reputation is further cemented when Rory turns bright green on a school trip and has to be carted off to the isolation unit of a famous hospital where Dr. Brightside tries to find out what has caused Rory’s greenness.

Things are not going well for Rory, and they continue to get worse when he realises that the one other person who is also in the isolation unit is his arch enemy, Grim Komissky.

How will Rory get over his greenness, defeat his enemy and figure out his super powers, for how can he not be super given that he is green?

Cottrell Boyce excels at writing from the point of view of a child. He uses it to great comic, and sometimes tragic effect. Rory’s story is a kind of coming of age novel, but written with a real tenderness and thought for what a child would actually make of the sometimes tricky problems that life throws at them.

There are some standout passages in the book. We particularly loved the episode at the zoo, and with the dustbin lorry, although there are many more laugh out loud moments. We also absolutely adored the penguins. I won’t give anything else away, because one of the joys of the story is the fact that it is fresh, and is full of episodes and ideas that will surprise and delight you.

As you can guess, we all loved it, and were so gripped by it at the end that I sat up reading the last fifty pages to the children last night until I was hoarse and their eyes were drooping, but we were determined to find out what happened. There are some excellent moments of tension in the last quarter of the book that kept us on the edge of our seats, and we just had to know how it all turned out.

We recommend this book as a brilliant book to share at bed time with boys and girls aged six and up. We recommend it for independent readers aged 7-12. Although the two main characters are boys, there are some great girl characters and the humour and the clever writing mean that this is a book that will appeal to everyone, even parents.

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett – A Review

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book review, Discworld, Sourcery, Terry Pratchett

Sourcery is the fifth book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and Oscar polished it off yesterday afternoon. Sorcery was never one of my favourites, so I am more excited about the fact that his next book is going to be Wyrd Sisters, which is one of my beloved Granny Weatherwax novels, but Oscar really enjoyed Sourcery. He was delighted that this is another of the novels that features Rincewind, the useless wizard of the first two books. Oscar adores Rincewind and finds him utterly hilarious. I remember that when I started reading the Discworld books myself, I also loved him, and would get very sad when there was a novel in the series that he didn’t feature in. As I grew up he was in fewer and fewer of the novels and I learned to live without him. I hope Oscar can.

In this book, a sorcerer stalks the land and it looks like the Disc won’t survive it. Despite the fact that he is only a boy, Coin is the most powerful wizard the Disc has ever known. Much of his power derives from his staff, possessed by his revenge hungry father, determined to put a wizard in charge of the Disc and show everyone that it is never a good idea to mess with magical forces.

Rincewind meanwhile, the least powerful wizard on the Disc, notices that something is wrong, when his mattress scuttles by him through the gates of Unseen University, followed by even the gargoyles from the roof. Unable to warn his fellow wizards of the coming apocalypse, he takes to drinking to forget, only to be taken in hand by a latent barbarian who really wants to be a hair dresser, and being spirited off to the deserts of Klatch in the process.

There are really dark elements in this book, and a few times, when it looked like things were not going to turn out well, Oscar stopped reading and we had to discuss events at length until he was reassured enough to go on. The fact that he cared about the characters, and had figured out what might happen to them was testament to his growing ability and his affection for the stories. As it happens, everything turns out very nicely, and with the promise of more adventures to come for Rincewind.

The darkness is always balanced by funny episodes, some of which Oscar understood and enjoyed, like the episode in which three of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have their horses stolen and rather than walking to the end of the world, decide to stay in the nearest pub and get so drunk they can’t even remember what they came out for.  Then there are the episodes with Creosote, ruler of Al Khali and his fatal weakness for poetry and having the ladies of his seraglio read him stories, which I found funny, but Oscar didn’t really get at all. It didn’t spoil the story for him, and it is nice to see him picking up more and more of the jokes as we go through the series.

The last fifty pages of the book are particularly engrossing, and Oscar whizzed through them as the battle for the supremacy of the Disc, and whether it would be destroyed or not, and whether Rincewind would survive or not were played out at dizzying speed. Pratchett uses a lot of jump cut effects, moving from scene to scene, person to person to give a kind of 360 view of what is happening. I wondered whether Oscar would cope with the rather dizzying changes in narrative, but he did well with it, only getting lost a few times, and really enjoyed the effect, and the book overall.

Again, I would recommend this for teen/YA readers. It is complex, dense text and there are elements which are really not suitable for younger readers, mild swearing, plenty of words for brothels, and lots of innuendo. It gives the book a certain spice, but you might want to vet it before offering it to younger readers, no matter how competent.