Book Review

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This book by the Dutch author, Tonke Dragt, was originally published in 1967; it is a very well written adventure story for children (suitable for reading to children from 8+ and equally enjoyable for adults). It is set in a fantasy world where the schoolteacher hero (Frans), who tells his pupils stories to capture their interest, finds himself in a real adventure involving treasure, magical tricks, an intelligent cat, coded messages, a mysterious House of Stairs and the Secret of the Seven Ways. The plot whizzes along as our hero, with help from an interesting cast of characters, solves clues and helps to save Geert Jan from the machinations of his evil uncle.

It is a very good introduction to Tonke Draght’s other books for older readers: The Letter for the King and The Secrets of the Wild Wood, which are suitable for readers from 12+ to all ages. One can only wonder why these excellent children’s books were not available in English before now, but, three cheers for Pushkin Children’s Books which has published these and other gems of children’s literature from different countries and different cultures.

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Sometimes books fall into your hands at the right time, and just last week was one of those occasions. Whilst digesting the news about the apparent extent of sexual harassment in Westminster, I read these two essays by Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and herself a victim of very public, very abusive social media trolling.

The first essay, written in 2014, ‘ The Public Voice of Women’, illustrates how in the Western world men have been exerting and abusing their power over women, preventing them from fulfilling public roles and therefore of having a public voice, since the early days of Ancient Greece and Rome. Her argument is that this moulding of the female role into that of silent passivity was hard-wired into our patriarchal society, and only after millennia of gradual progress towards equal rights do we find this behaviour less acceptable but still prevalent today.

The second essay ‘Women In Power’ (2017) discusses how our cultural mind set of the image of power is still essentially masculine, and that women wanting to challenge this stereotype, all too often have to mould themselves into that image to be successful. Women in positions of power are still often seen as having achieved something they are not really entitled to, and they still often have a greater challenge to get there. Mary Beard suggests we may not be able to rid ourselves of these outdated attitudes, until we change our concept of what it means to be a woman with power.

Progress towards a more equal society, in which more women are appointed to positions of power, and to job roles previously dominated by men, is generally viewed as a healthy indicator. However to others this progressive equalisation can be threatening and they choose to give vent to their frustration, often through the anonymity of social media, in an explosion of vicious verbal abuse. The aim of such behaviour is an attempt to ‘silence’ these women, to inhibit them from articulating their power in the public domain, even if that is their role. The perpetrators feel more comfortable with the stereotypes of history, rather than a progressive society which can respect individual achievement regardless of gender.

These two short essays present an excellent analysis of ‘why we are where we are’ looking back into history and at current behaviours. It is an enlightening read, and whilst Mary Beard is describing our cultural legacy in its wider historical context, her analysis also helps to explain why we are still discovering so many instances of the abuse of power in our workplaces, which are only now being brought into the critical light of public awareness and wider scrutiny.

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From the first days of learning to read we acquire some basic rules: read left to right, top to bottom, exactly what’s on the page. We leave creativity and inventiveness to the illustrator. Agreed?

B J Novak’s The Book With No Pictures pokes gentle fun at the idea that reading just reciting the printed word, by taking the pictures out completely. Instead it gives room for the reader and audience to play with that assumption. After establishing the “rules” of reading a book, the reader is then stuck calling himself a monkey, speaking in silly robot voices, and repeating nonsense words, to the great delight of the listeners.

It’s super fun for all ages, and can prompt some thought-provoking discussions about what reading a book is all about. Teachers – and especially those interviewing for teaching posts – have been snapping it up for building literacy lessons around it, but you can just have a good laugh with this one, no matter how many times you read it.

(For a glance at the magic in action, you can catch videos of the author reading to audiences’ great delight on YouTube.)

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Within three pages of picking up this first novel, I knew I was in the hands of a clever, witty writer with complete control of the uneven field she’d taken on. Placing the narrator of a book in the throes of dementia creates a number of challenges. But as the story of the 82 year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer unfolds, we understand her story, and get drawn into the real mystery behind the misunderstanding. As long-ago memories surface amongst her broken grasp on the present, Maud begins to confuse the absence of her best friend, Elizabeth, with the disappearance of her sister, seventy years before. Is something sinister going on now – and has she finally found the clues to resolve the past?

Emma Healey studied at the UEA, and we’re not surprised that this hugely readable, engaging, thought-provoking novel has just been long-listed for this year’s Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction.

April 2015

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In June I received a proof copy of Kick. It arrived in a bright yellow package, tied with a black football boot lace.

The publisher Usborne are a major international player, so only a truly exceptional book would have brought them to treat it so specially. And Kick is an exceptional book: for a start it’s a kids’ book completely about football that appeals to girls and has the endorsement of Amnesty International UK.

As the story progresses we see Budi, a 12 year old Indonesian boy who works in a sweatshop sewing football boots. He isn’t that different to 12 year old boys here in Wymondham: he looks forward to his birthday, he watches Premier League matches, and he imagines he’s scoring a winning goal when he’s playing football in the street.

Then the differences become clear, not least when a stray football goes through the window of dangerous criminals, who then force Budi to make difficult decisions that put his job and his family in danger.

The book is well-written with likable characters, but its appeal is partly that it authentically recognises that in these conditions, there are no easy answers, and life is just tough. Because Budi is quite naive, a younger reader probably won’t pick up on some of the harrowing aspects of life in Jakarta, which adult readers would find more disturbing. However there is plenty to talk to children about without destroying their innocence, as Johnson makes very open discussion of advertising and capitalism.

Despite the realities it covers, Budi and the book itself are full of hope. Johnson says that he hopes that both adults and children will leave the book reassured that they must never give up their dreams of achieving a better life.

I am not the target market for this book: I am an adult female and have daughters, but as my eldest said, “It’s more about the people.” And it’s true, Kick is a story about how the world we live in affects us all. So it’s not only a great selection for sharing with the young people in your life, it’s a great story to get us all to stop and think.