CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Emily Bearn
Forget dragons and fairies. Female empowerment is the hot topic for children’s fiction this spring, with the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage inspiring a flood of feminist books. Three Cheers for Women! (Walker, 48pp, £12.99, Oldie price £8.78 inc p&p) by Marcia Williams and Fantastically Great Women who Made History (Bloomsbury, 32pp, £6.99, Oldie price £4.66 inc p&p) by Kate Pankhurst stand out among an abundance of new anthologies about inspirational female leaders. With examples ranging from Cleopatra to the twenty-year-old Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, these are both lavishly illustrated volumes, dense but with skilfully digestible facts. As Williams reminds us: ‘Boys do amazing things too!’ But there is little mention of their feats here. Little Leaders: Bold Women in
Black History (Puffin, 96pp, £12.99, Oldie price £8.10 inc p&p) by Vashti Harrison is Amazon’s bestseller in the somewhat gloomy sounding ‘Prejudice and Racism’ category. But this is another engaging and humorous title, whose heroines range from the author and abolitionist Mary Prince to (‘something of an outsider’) Diane Abbott. And no primary school hack should be without Politics for
Beginners (Usborne, £9.99, 128pp, Oldie price £6.72 inc p&p). Using dialogue and comic strip illustrations, this is an intelligent and deceptively simple introduction to the murky world of political ideas by Louie Stowell, Alex Frith, Rosie Hore and Kellan Stover (illustrator).
In picture books for nursery-aged readers, courage is also the dominant theme. Almost Anything (Puffin, 32pp, £11.99, Oldie price £9.20 inc p&p) by Sophy Henn is a beautifully illustrated story about a rabbit that doesn’t think it can do anything (‘I can’t dance … I can’t paint’), but learns self-belief from a kindly Bear.
Baby Bird by Andrew Gibbs (Frances Lincoln, 40pp, £11.99, Oldie price £7.99 inc p&p) is another quietly motivational tale, this time about a bird grounded by a twisted wing. ‘All birds are born to fly,’ Baby Bird thinks dejectedly – until he overcomes his physical adversities to discover an alternative mode of flight. The Story
of Tantrum O’furrily (Hodder, 32pp, £12.99, Oldie price £11.56 inc p&p) is the eagerly awaited new picture book by Cressida Cowell. Set on a ‘wild and windy night’, and with darkly atmospheric illustrations by Mark Nicholas, this is the uplifting story of a stray cat who soothes her kittens’ hunger by teaching them the value of courage.
In books for readers of eight to early teens, female heroines also abound. ‘You have to make more noise than anybody else!’ declared Emmeline Pankhurst in her legendary speech of November 1913. Make
More Noise (Nosy Crow, 320pp, £7.99, Oldie price £5.80 inc p&p) is published in her memory, and comprises a feast of short stories by popular children’s authors such as Katherine Woodfine and Sally Nicholls – all of which celebrate female bravery. And the intrepid schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are back in A Spoonful of
Murder (Puffin, 368pp, £6.99, Oldie price £5.90 inc p&p), the sixth instalment in Robin Stevens’s ever pleasing Murder Most Unladylike series. This time, the action takes place in Hong Kong, where Hazel’s maid is found murdered in a lift shaft, with a hairpin stabbed in her throat.
Younger readers might blanche. But Stevens’s skill, like Agatha Christie’s, is to turn murder into a comfort read. Natasha Farrant’s new novel The
Children of Castle Rock (Faber, 320pp, £6.99) features another young sleuth, Alice Mistlethwaite, who absconds from her eccentric boarding school in Scotland and embarks on a quest across the Highlands to find her missing father. This is a brilliantly suspenseful novel, in which Farrant raises schoolgirl high-jinx to the pitch of a John Buchan.
The Ice Garden (Chicken House, 224pp £6.99, Oldie price £5.19 inc p&p) by the first-time novelist Guy Jones is the touching and lyrically written story of Jess, a child who is allergic to sunlight. Stealing out one night, she stumbles on a magical garden of ice, where she discovers the power of courage and friendship. In translation, The Ice Sea Pirates (Gecko Press, 359pp, £12.99, Oldie price £11.81 inc p&p) by the Swedish author Frida Nilsson tells the story of a ten-year-old girl from an Arctic island, who sets out to rescue a sister abducted by an infamous pirate: ‘There’s a man who treats children as if they’re animals. And inside that man, in the place where other people have a soul, there’s a space as empty and cold as an ice cave.’ Nilsson is a natural storyteller, who keeps her readers permanently on edge.
The New Year has also seen a burgeoning market in children’s self-help books. In Dear Katie (Orion, 288pp, £7.99), the television presenter Katie Thistleton offers advice ranging from ‘What to do when you are having a panic attack’, to coping with school uniform restrictions. Don’t be put off by the frivolous cover: Thistleton admits in the introduction that she has struggled with her own mental health, and offers a trove of sensible, sympathetic advice. 50 Ways to be
Happy (QED Publishing, 64pp, £9.99, Oldie price £8.89 inc p&p) by the ‘positive psychologist’ Vanessa King is compiled on the premise that ‘When we do kind things for others … we feel happier too.’ Each of the fifty ‘happiness-inspiring’ activities in the book is prescribed according to this golden rule. Brooding teens might take some persuading to make a cut out and keep ‘gratitude tree’. But it’s worth a try.
‘Hazel’s maid is found murdered in a lift shaft, with a hairpin stabbed in her throat’