Author: Guest

YoYo Go Maze & YoYo Go Spy, by Jeanette Rowe

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball

YoYo is a popular Maisy-Mouse styled dog who has become almost as famous as Maisy herself. He has been designed specifically to appeal to the very young, with simple naïve drawings, very bright colours, and simple, easy to follow adventures involving his animal friends, his little toy horse, and his family. The two new YoYo books are full of interactive fun and problem solving which will keep youngsters amused for long periods. YoYo Go Maze has seven different mazes, each with a different theme. There is a park, a pirate scene, fishing, an animal’s underground world, a farm, a jungle, and a zoo. In each two page scene, children have to find their way through the simple maze to an end path, but along the way they also have to find a variety of different animals or objects. Even the youngest children (from age one or so) can find the items along the way and older children (to age five or so) can follow the maze and build their knowledge of the things in the scene and their confidence.

In YoYo Go Spy, there are also seven scenes, one where YoYo is flying to the moon, a pirate captain looking for Treasure Island, a knight, at the circus, diving on the reef, in the jungle, and by the pond. The scenes are wonderfully detailed, and there are specific items to look for and find. It’s a kind of very simplified Where’s Wally for the youngest members of your family. Children will love these books, and for younger siblings of children who already enjoy mazes, this is a chance for them to join in. The scenes are fairly true in terms of the animals they contain, and so children can really learn about the different habitats and the types of creatures and items they contain. If they are already familiar with YoYo, they will enjoy pointing out his hidden friends and family, who also join in the make-believe. There’s plenty of fun for children, and lots of opportunity for adult interaction.

YoYo Go Maze ISBN 0733313361
YoYo Go Spy ISBN 073331337X
By Jeannette Rowe
ABC Books, Softcover, AU$9.95, 2004, 16pages each

This review first appeared at PreschoolEntertainment. It is reprinted here with permission.

Kangaroo Clues, by Margot Finke

Reviewed by Molly Martin

Children’s EBook Review: Kangaroo Clues, by Margot Finke
Reviewed by Molly Martin

Entertaining new ebook title.

 

It must have been Dreamtime spirit-man who sewed the pouch in kangaroo. Near a shady billabong Old Man Kanga and his friends, Marsupial mouse, Emu, Goanna, Platypus, Kookaburra, frill neck lizard, Cockatoo and Echidna all heard the dogs coming. With leaps and bound Old Man Kanga made it to the water just in time. The dingoes were right behind. Into the water went Platypus and Old Man Kanga while Kookaburra laughed and Goanna hid. Galas screamed while Koalas encouraged Kanga on.

Kangaroo Clues is a marvellous book told in rhyme, created by talented writer Margo Finke and filled with delightful illustrations from Mustafa Delioglu. For readers living outside of Australia the tale introduces children to animals and words not heard in every day conversation. For children living in Australia the words may not be new, but the story will offer as much appeal. Delioglu’s drawings are vivid, well executed and large enough for children to understand.

Full page art work sets off the narrative to perfection. Kangaroo Clues covers 31 pages of cheery rhyme and exciting illustrations sure to please the target audience of beginning readers. Vocabulary is a bit advanced for the youngest readers, however even very young children will be held captivated by the tale as they navigate the buttons turning the pages while Mum or Dad, or older sibling read the words to them.

A read-to book for the 3-5 set, read-with some help for the 6 and 7s, and read mostly alone for the 8 and 9s. Wonderful book for the home or classroom library. Teachers will find the work a good addition to the ‘multi culture’ unit. Kangaroo Clues is a book sure to be reached for often for both pleasure time reading and for class work.

Enjoyed the read. Kangaroo Clues is a book I would use in my own Kindergarten-First grade classroom.

Happy to recommend.

Kangaroo Clues, by Margot Finke, illustrated by Mustafa Delioglu
Writers Exchange Epublishing, 2004

Molly Martin is a classroom teacher of over 20 years’ experience.

Cry the Night, by Glenn Miller

Reviewed by Molly Martin

A little boy punished by being put into a sack and suspended from a beam in a cellar at the hands of an unbalanced mother is later a youngster made to stand in a darkened cellar for hours on end.

The body of ten-year-old girl, an extended, fruitless search, and a missing six-year-old set in motion a twenty-year odyssey. The town of Traviston, Australia is forever changed in 1981 with the murder of Sarah Nielson and the disappearance of her little sister Rebecca. The only thing left behind were Rebecca’s panties and her dress. Residents who once trusted their neighbours now became suspicious of those living nearby. Children were kept safe at home behind closed doors, or in some cases the family packed and moved to get away from the horror.

On a pleasant day many years after the brutal murder; teenager Sally Smith is happy to accept a ride from an elderly man who has known her family for years. For Sally her ride with a trusted old friend turns into a nightmare from which escape seems impossible. When sixteen-year-old Kirsty and her five-year-old friend Sam set out for a walk on the cattle property where Kirsty is spending her school holiday with the family of her mother’s close friend she knows nothing of the hidden dangers lurking not so far away. A secret place, youngsters filled with a sense of adventure, and a cave filled with bodies all are part of this tale of child abuse, horror and alarm.

Cry the Night is a psychological thriller, set in the austere Australian wilderness, where young bushwalkers are pitted at night against the relentless unadulterated evil stalking them across remarkably arduous terrain.

Twenty years of secrets buried in the hidden backcountry wilds of Australia lie shielded by a lunatic. At an inaccessible creek on the brim of the wilderness where the body of a murdered ten-year-old girl is discovered, the narrative begins. The recital next moves to the present, with four young men and one teenage girl determining they will investigate the craggy valleys, ridges and caverns near where they are staying on a large cattle property. The bushwalkers unintentionally intrude upon the perilous mystery kept secret for more than two decades when they enter the region which a psychopath believes to be his. A demented serial killed living in a world filled with sexual darkness and hallucination will confront the young people who find their day walk becoming a fight for survival during which they will confront their worst fears. The evil stalking them will bring the youngsters faced to face with a terror beyond their wildest imagination.

Well fleshed, potent characters each have their own particular disposition. Twists and turns keep the reading guessing in this tale of a monster created by the derangement of a parent. Specific details of the murderer’s life are set down in fantasy, dreams, memories and loathsome actions by an almost sixty year old man who might be any one of the several fellows fitting that description who live in the area.

Not for the faint of heart, nor for a dark and stormy night when you are home alone.

Cry the Night, by Glenn Miller
Sunny Side Up Publishing, available in ebook or paperback formats.

This review contributed by Molly Martin.

The Hunter, by Julia Leigh

Reviewed by Alex Marshall

The Hunter is an extremely interesting first novel from one of Australia’s up and coming novelists. I found this book a gripping and intriguing read from the first page to the last, despite the fact that the novel focuses upon the inner life of one character who does not have a strong attachment to the outside world. The plot is very simple. A mercenary is sent to search for the fabled Tasmanian Marsupial Tiger, or Thylacine in the heart of the Tasmanian wilderness. If he finds this animal he will become very rich.

Like many great Australian novels,The Hunter focuses upon the individual’s relationship to the wilderness which he both depends upon to survive and which he also resents, hates and fears. He knows that he is a stranger to this place. As the silence of the wilderness grows around him the more the central character – who the reader only knows as ‘M’ – journeys into his memories that still haunt him.

In many ways M. is the classic Aussie male; silent, taciturn, inarticulate, single mindedly focused upon his work, unconscious of the outside world. But unlike the stereotype, ‘M’ is an individualist, he is not interested in reliance upon mates, nor does he believe in sharing with others, such as scientists or environmentalists his discovery of a thylacine. For him this is just a job, and what happens after the dog has been sold is not his concern.

Julia Leigh, who is probably more recognised outside of Australia than within, has created a novel that deceptively unravels the place of the Australian male psyche in a globalised world.

The Hunter, by Julia Leigh
Penguin, 1999

Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings

Reviewed by Alex Marshall

This is a novel that sneaks up on you. The narrator is a freelance journalist who takes up a position as a speechwriter for a large banking organisation in order to afford the medical costs for her ill husband.

She hates her job, she hates the people she works for, believing that they are all parasites, and that nothing that she writes as a speechwriter has the least significance whatsoever. She has no life outside of of work, spending all of her free time caring for her husband, dying slowly from alzheimers disease. In short, she is in hell.

So what is the moral hazard of the novel’s title? It is the fear that pervades this book that the heroine of the story will become somehow complicit in this world that she hates, that she will somehow become a creature of this world, and lose her dignity as a human being.

She herself is not a particularly likable character. She has a kind of small ‘l’ liberal complaint against capitalism, while at the same time she is fixated by its apparent power, that appears in this novel almost omnipotent. She claims to be a radical, to have a knowledge of Marxism, yet she has been ground down by life, by her duty as a wife and as a citizen. Her closest friend, a colleague at work, she considers to be a terrible hypocrite, railing against the system while at the same time becoming very rich from its spoils.

It is this bitterness that gives the novel its authentic voice. It also gives the heroine’s character a taste of defeat for a life that in many other ways is full of strength and resilience.

Moral Hazard, by Kate Jennings
Picador Australia, 2003

Alex Marshall is a freelance writer and reviewer. You can visit his webpage here.

The True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

Reviewed by Alex Marshall

The novel is a tour de force. Peter Carey tackles one of the great myths of Australia, the figure of Ned Kelly, by recreating the unlettered Irish Australian voice of the angry young man that was Ned Kelly.

Peter Carey’s Ned Kelly is a decent young man, idealistic and naive, who is pushed into rebellion by the bullying of the corrupt and incompetent local police force. He is hard working, clean living, optimistic, strong willed and free spirited. The style of writing appears odd at first but as you read you become used to his style. It is catchy.

Peter Carey does not downplay Ned Kelly’s criminal background, rather he puts this to the foreground. Much of the novel is taken up with his apprenticeship with a bushranger. He puts this behind him, however, until his family is persecuted by the local forces of property owners and police.

Sometimes the style of the writing seems too Australian, as if this book was written with an eye to a foreign readership. It is as if it has to be proved that Ned Kelly is an Australian character and not a second hand Jesse James. As the Nobel prize winning writer Wole Soyinke once pointed out a tiger does not need to proclaim its tigerness.

At other times it seems as if the Kelly gang is being Americanised. For example when members of the gang ride in white dresses a link is made with Irish vigilante gangs, but also there is an unspoken comparison with the American Ku-Klux-Klan.

Overall this is a powerful novel that puts a new spin on a great Australian folk legend.

The True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey
UQP, 2000

Alex Marshall is a freelance writer and reviewer. You can visit his webpage here.

A Handicap for the Devil? by Allen Lyne

Reviewed by Molly Martin

Jonathan Goodfellow, accountant nearing retirement lives a humdrum life, and works at a humdrum job. Landlady O’Reilly tells him what to do. Overweight Miss Bloomingdale, company receptionist is a real pain in the neck. His fellow workers, Jones P senior THE boss, and Jones P junior the head of the accounting department all are vexatious and perhaps even more. Jones P. – the P stands for Percival – is a devilish member of an occult Black Circle Club whose members practice trances, and all become lawyers. The world’s attorneys, led by the obese Jones P. senior, have formed a strange alliance with Satan. In exchange for particular compensations he will give them the world. Hell has been transformed into a golf course where the Devil wants to be left alone to play golf and hopefully break 100. The dwarf, Earnest Jamieson, Marijuana, an odd assortment of roomers, Cowley, Sampson, The Crone, a handgun and a five iron all figure in Goodfellow’s strange move toward death and return to earth to act as a Messiah. Jonathan wakes up in heaven facing a hippie god, who is moved to give humankind one more chance. God charges Johnathan, who has to be the mildest man on earth, to serve as his Messiah to bring back the directive that we mortals are to revise our behaviour. If we falter, God vows that he will disregard his plan to end the world when it becomes due. Jonathan and the astonishing bedlam he creates while on his mission from God is a most extraordinary jaunt and a most startling aftermath. Talking bunnies, a star over his boarding house – life is getting strange.

Writer Lyne has composed a whimsical, jocose work heavy in perceptive understanding about the human animal. A Handicap for the Devil? is an animated exploit filled with an extravagance of energy that strings together smoothly and grasps the fascination of the reader from the opening lines. Professional playwright Lyne’s inaugural novel, draws on his many years of stage experience to produce a premium and exceedingly engaging work.

Lyne’s plentiful list of intriguing characters, including even Jonathan’s talking bunnies are vivid and creditable. The band of often obsessed disciples, are as richly drawn as the at times preoccupied, psychedelic hippie god, both Jones’ P. Senior and Junior, the toughs, the dwarf and the balance of the often motley but always entertaining coterie gracing A Handicap for the Devil?

On the pages of A Handicap for the Devil? writer Lyne presents his tenets with respect to many of today’s social ills including the growing disparity between haves and have-nots, inhumanity, war, and famine. His notions are sure to agree with those held by with many readers.

Not for everyone: some graphic language included, and for the super religious some notions presented are sure to cause consternation.

A good tongue in cheek type work for reading on a rainy afternoon. Happy to recommend for those who enjoy the genre.

 

A Handicap for the Devil? , by Allen Lyne
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.

Mind's Eye , by Wendy Laing

Reviewed by Molly Martin

This is a delightful little work of twenty-two stimulating odes written for and about everything from the writer’s pets to what might have been ‘IF.’

Within the lines of “That’s Life” is presented: ‘The future will happen, despite what we ask. The present is precious, a time to enjoy all life’s moments, pain, hope and joy.’ Laing introduces Kaspar in “My Best Mate”, along with “Unspoken Love” portraying the unspoken devotion of a dog. I especially enjoyed odes “Cats” and “Break of Day” which are both directed toward my favourite critter: cats.

The question of what might have been is asked in the ode: “If”. ‘Have you ever wondered what might have been, if you’d been born of a different being?’ “Games that we Played” and “Summer Daze” ‘Just ponder about this lovely vision of two young girls, having loads of fun, in the long days and the hot summer sun’ forward the idea of childhood happiness. “Day Dream” time ruminations during a walk in nature, “I am What I Am” lauding an acceptance of self while “The Cross”, written about soldiers, along with “Magical Mist” (‘Our home town framed by this special treat. The magical mist spell was now complete!’) are guileless fine reading.

“Twilight Years” (‘Some of these folk, at the sunset of life are unable to talk, but manage in spite of all odds, to smile from inside.’) and “A Tranquil Walk” offer plain feel-good odes, while “Tinderbox” and “One Careless Match” are written about a scourge here in the US as well as in Australia. Wild fire is a terrifying experience when viewed close up or from afar.

“Forget-Me-Not” with ‘A Cottage and garden called Forget-Me-Not’, “The Trek” and “Seduction” each hold a surprise for the reader to enjoy. “Grains of Time” is Laing at her poignant best.
“The Light of Hope” and “An Ode to the Phantom Light” are written following Laing’s visit to a lighthouse. Writer Laing again proves her marvelous talent as author, children’s writer, poet. “Mind’s Eye”, filled with twenty-two very enjoyable works is a treat. The vast array of subject matter has proven no undue challenge for author Laing. Each ode is marvelously wrought.

The book is a perfect companion to a warm sunny afternoon sipping lemonade in the hammock on the porch, or curled up with a cup of hot chocolate in a huge chair in front of the fire in the midst of a January snow storm.

Mind’s Eye, by Wendy Laing
Crystal Dreams, 2002

Captain Angus, the Lighthouse Ghost , by Wendy Laing

Reviewed by Molly Martin

Writer Wendy Laing has taken an actual lighthouse where she has been a guest at the lighthouse keeper’s cottage – The Cape Otway in Victoria, Australia – as the starting point for her nicely wrought tale, and she has woven an entertaining book of eight chapters for early readers. Through the magic of a time tunnel, children Aaron and Gracie Brandon are taken to a long ago time where they meet a marvelous old Scottish sea captain’s ghost. The pair had been less than enthralled while vacationing with their parents to discover the old lighthouse where they are staying has no video games or anything else interesting for them to do. And, then they meet Captain Angus! When they do everything changes. Cap’n Angus takes the pair on virtual reality trips sailing on masted ships, with opportunity for meeting one of their ancestors along with watching a sea rescue and other adventures.

Wendy Laing has done it again! This talented writer continues to produce excellently written, well researched materials sure to be used in the classroom and for home reading alike. Captain Angus, the Lighthouse Ghost is an inviting venture for children sure to keep youngsters entertained as they travel through the interactive links allowing them to make a voyage through the internet. Writer Laing really understands how to make history come alive for young readers. Children will make stops at sites where they can tour old ships, discover lighthouses and learn a little about them in the process. Young readers are sure to enjoy following the links and learning a little of history without their realizing they are doing so.Captain Angus, the Light House Ghost is a delightful guide children are sure to like. The Links to sites will pique their curiosity.

Chapter titles include: Cap’n Angus, Spirits and Ghosts, Land Ahoy!, Rescue!, The Tower, Ship Ahoy!, Aurora’s Spirit, A Light in the Future and The Beacon of Hope. Captain Angus, the Light House Ghost is a read-to book for the younger set. As such, it provides a marvelous opportunity for quality parent-child time as they sit together at the computer reading and travelling the links to various sites. Older children will enjoy reading and manipulating the work themselves.

The only thing I find lacking from a teacher standpoint, and in no way detracts from the delightful tale itself: I like to see a target audience noted and the word/vocabulary list at the end of the books I use in the classroom when possible. These just make it easier for teachers, and parent home teachers too to quickly decide if this book will fit into our particular teaching need at the moment.

Captain Angus, The Lighthouse Ghost, by Wendy Laing
Writer’s Exchange Epublishing, 2003

Jack's First Fish, by Lou Tognola

Reviewed by Molly Martin

Jack is visiting his grandparents. He has never been fishing before but Granddad and he go out to dig some worms while Nanny fixes them a lunch to take with them. Jack, Nanny and Granddad go to a good fishing spot where they catch enough fish for supper. Jack has a lot to tell his parents when they telephone to see how he is enjoying his holiday.

Writer Tognola is Australian, a teacher, grandparent and a fisherman. These are all talents he puts to good use in his little book Jack’s First Fish. Tognola, together with illustrator Roberta Hubbard, has produced an enchanting publication sure to please youngsters and adults alike.

While the vocabulary is a tad difficult for the 5 – 8 set, Jack’s First Fish will lend itself well to ‘please read to me’ time. Children ages 9-11 should have little difficulty with vocabulary. A glossary of words and phrases in the back of the book will aid with some words kids may find difficult.

Two things I found particularly endearing when reading Jack’s First Fish were, first, a new word: YUM LICIOUS to describe how Jack’s fish tasted. The other is the fact that American, and perhaps other, children worldwide are introduced to a new concept or two while they are also shown that folks living in other countries often live very much as do we here in the U.S. Jam in the book comes in a tin, while in the U.S. it comes in glass and plastic jars or squeeze bottles. Hubbard’s drawings are a delight: grandfather’s truck is different than the ones most kids here in the U.S. know, however Grandpa’s cat, his fishing gear, Nanny’s kitchen and sofa and chair all resemble those kids outside Australia country know.

Each page of Jack’s First Fish contains both Italian and English verbiage. I like this from an educational standpoint. Whether parent or teacher speaks Italian or not children are introduced to another language and may well have their appetite for more of other cultures whetted from this introduction.
Good book for multi culture unit in middle grades, the home library and pleasure reading. Happy to recommend Jack’s First Fish.

Jack’s First Fish, by Lou Tognola
Writer’s Exchange Epublishing, 2003