The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz

The First Book of Calamity Leek is sad, sweet and funny at the same time.

The story is of Calamity Leek and her sisters Maria Liphook, Sandra Saffron Walden, Dorothy Macclesfield, Annie St Albans, Truly Polperro, Nancy Nunhead, Mary Bootle, Eliza Aberdeen, Evita Thrupp, Millie Gatwick, Odette Pontefract, Pontefract, Fantine Welshpool, Cinderella Galashiels, Adelaide Worthing, Toddler Thurrock, Toddler Pease Pottage, Toddler Gordano, Toddler Gretna Green, Toddler Watford Gap, Toddler South Mimm’s, Baby Sainsbury’s, who all live at St Emily’s Orphanage.

Except the Orphanage is a front. Really the girls are kept inside their “grey stone, red and yellow brick-topped Wall, jewel-toothed and twinkling, belting them into perfect safety,” where they are trained to kill off males, or demonmales as they know them, when they become of age, and where the truth is instilled into them from the Appendix, “for all the answers we need in life”, and of which Calamity Leek has the best knowledge.

An example entry from the Appendix – “Injuns: red-skinned, feather-skirted, whooping demonmale warriors, set to prowl Outside the Wall and tear wandering females into pieces with machetes or arrows.”

You see Mother “was sent down to raise an army, only how was she ever going to raise an army on Earth, when her only beloved daughter got killed off by a demonmale? Well, the best answer she came up with was to rescue other daughters already part-grown Outside and to grow them as her own.”

So that is the sad bit of the story what with the girls being kidnapped and brainwashed, but the little world the sisters inhabit is idyllic in some ways – “I was going to wake up safe in the dorm with the communicator bing-bonging and Aunty singing, ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ with Evita’s porridge pot set on the table, and our milk bowls around it’ – as they spend life in their walled in country garden in North Wales. 

And it is sweet how all the girls have a great togetherness - “such solidarity in the sisterhood.” But it all comes to an end and Calamity’s world as she knew it is blown apart, which she finds difficult to accept. And with this being “The First Book of Calamity Leek” it throws it open to a sequel.

I enjoyed this book for the world it created and the lead character's voice.

Publication date: 7th Feb 2013

Amazon UK link: The First Book of Calamity Leek

Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers by John Dougherty

Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face live on the peaceful little island of Great Kerfuffle. One day Stinkbomb notices that a tenner has gone missing from his piggy bank. "The badgers have taken your tenner. What are we going to do about it?"

And so the tale begins as brother and sister Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face try to find the badgers and bring them to justice, along the way meeting the King ("I'll just have to send someone on a mission to drive all badgers from the kingdom. You'll do") and several other characters, including a talking shopping trolley that they rescued from a stream.

The book is being pitched as for fans of the Mr Gum books, and I'd go along with that. It has the same silly, surreal nature, plus it also makes use of repetition, recognition humour. My 7-year-old daughter said it was really funny and deserving of a 5-star rating.

Her favourite character was Malcolm the cat who would always change his mind then change it back before changing it again to his original line of thought before changing it back again etc. She also liked the bit where one chapter ended in the middle of a sentence because "a chapter can finish wherever they like."

Of course a review can't do

Publication Date: 2 Jan 2014

Amazon UK Link: Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers

Colour me in! An activity book

I asked my 7-year-old daughter whether she liked this book or not. She said yes, I asked why, she said because it has lots of activities, and it has over 100 puzzles and games in it (although she read that last bit off of the back cover). She said there are dot-to-dots and lots more games that are fun.

One of the first games she did was draw animal halves and join them together. She made a ramster, a cross between a rabbit and a hamster, a dfrog, a cross between a dog and a frog and some others.

Another game had her drawing the poos of a mole, which she was laughing at.

The pages are all in red and blue. This is where the title is clever "Colour me in!" It suggests another activity to do on top of the ones suggested in the inside.

Another thing in the book is a little flip book at one of the bottom corners, whilst in the other corner it encourages you to create your own. 

There is plenty to do in here so you can't really complain, although she skips some parts in preference to others.

Publication date: 5 August 2013

Thames and Hudson link: Colour me in! An activity book

Amazon UK link: Colour me in! An activity book

Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant

"Sketcher" is about a family growing up in a one-room shack in the swamps just outside New O'lins during the 1980s. That family is made up of four boys, a mum from the Caribbean and a white dad who likes to get drunk. Later the dad walks out.

The narrator is the youngest of the boys, Skid. Straight from the opening sentence you get into his voice, his accent and his talkative nature coming out - "Well to begin with lemme tell you my pops is the reason we grew up in that swamp." His brothers are Tony, Doug and Frico. Frico is the sketcher with brilliant drawing skills that win a lot of praise.

Skid he can see all isn't well in the family with its troubles growing up in that swamp. So "I got to thinkin' that the way to get things back in shape in my family, and make them have some respect for people other than Frico Beaumont, was for me to get the city that had been sleeping for years to start movin' into the swamps again."

Now the way he is going to do that is to make use of the Sketcher's skills. "That boy was more than artistic. He had somethin' in his left hand, a strange power to fix things with a pencil." Like "when Frico was four, he sketched a picture of a cat that had a broken leg. And the cat got better and walked away."

But is this just Skid's imagination or is it real? His mother's former life as a hoodoo user until "it was time to stop all that mojo-conjuring" adds kudos to his thoughts as do other incidents. "Skid, your old lady is a witch and your brother is a wizard."

Anyway as Skid and the family grow older he tries to persuade Frico to put his left hand to good use to bring in the city, but Frico is reluctant. That is until Skid hears about a State of Louisiana State Fair Competition, where the first prize is $5,000, with a theme of "New Orleans 2020. A vision of tomorrow."

He convinces Frico to enter and Frico does, although not winning, but "Frico's art entry was really a conjuration." And so Skid just waits. "This place was so low it could only get better, and any day now would be the new beginning."

However things don't go to plan as Skid realises at the end because the Sketcher had other ideas. "The guy's a genius. You can't beat a genius."

The way of speaking, the swamps setting and the hoodoo reminded me of the Disney film The Princess and the Frog, although this is more than a cartoon. Good book with a cast of characters that you grow up with all told in a good voice.

Publication Date: 23 May 2013

Amazon UK link: Sketcher

The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp

“I is Pig. This is my diary.” And so the book begins.

Pig tells the story of his life on the farm. He says “Rolling in mud is fun, fun, fun! Give it a try if you likes.” My nearly-7-year-old said she’d rather stomp in it with her wellies instead.

Pig talks of Farmer who “likes me big. I is going to make myself as big as I can. That way Farmer will love me more.” But Duck shows Pig the error of his ways and Pig has no choice but to run away. Coincidentally the Evil Chickens are building a space rocket. So Pig is in a dilemma. “What would you do if you was me? I don’t want to be eaten by Farmer. I don’t want to shoot off into space and explode in a massive fireball.”

He has no choice and he goes on his space adventure before getting his revenge on Farmer and the Evil Chickens.

A book for children with the story in simple hand-written text (well a pig did write it) and little pictures along the way. It has inspired my daughter now to create a diary of her own, a top secret diary of a cow.

Publication Date: 30 October 2013

Amazon Link: The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig

Happy Graffiti: Street Art with Heart by Jenny Foulds

This book was born from a website of the same name. The website is a photo blog of “happy graffiti” the author of this book has photographed, or someone else has submitted. This book has some of the best artworks from there.

The foreword talks about how “Happy Graffiti” is the kind of graffiti that grumpy commuters might see from the train station and be cheered up by, and how some of the phrases used are like poetry.

The introduction then talks about how graffiti has a bad name and how positive graffiti can bring a smile to people as they go around their daily lives, and how the book is intended to do the same for the reader.

Then it is the photos, plus some artist profiles, although not well known artists such as Banksy. And some of the bits of graffiti do make you smile, which is exactly what the author wanted.

Mission accomplished.

Publication Date: 7 October 2013

Website: Happy Graffiti

Link to Amazon: Happy Graffiti: Street Art With Heart

American Spirit by Dan Kennedy

There are some vile bits in this book. If you don’t like vile bits don’t read this book or the rest of this review.

The book follows 45-year-old Matthew Harris who is “long, lanky, slightly underweight, now hung-over, semi-moneyed, tall, and medium slim, with no evident interest in shaving.”

He is going through a nervous breakdown thanks to his marriage to “unfaithful, unwieldy, retired fashion model wife” falling apart, and also because he was fired from the job he held for eleven years. The book follows him through this time where he “is in the midst of an endless and rudderless journey on rising seas of anxiety and receding tides of currency.” 

(Vile bit) The beginning sees him basically living out of his car, spitting all over it, him going over the incident that made him lose his job where “suddenly taking a leak all over your office is a crime” plus he has a kidney stone which makes blood come out instead of the normal.

The book is written through Matthew’s over-thinking, active and self-destructive mind. This makes him not a nice person. For example, in addition to the above vile things, he goes to a meditation class and thinks, “The instructor has been brought here today to teach me how to relax and not let fear govern my life. I have been brought here today to teach the instructor how to be tense and afraid again.” And his depression makes him “ponder the very real and very urgent shadow of death that seems to come to mind when there’s too much silence.”

He refuses help. “This is what Matthew’s head does every time help comes along… it looks for holes in the argument.” But eventually he comes to realise that he can’t run away from the pain forever and it is time to get his life in order, deal with his kidney stone etc. “Let’s get rid of some of the crutches; let’s ask for help when it is needed; learn to have a little faith that there’s still time, no matter how much was wasted.”

So overall not a book for me, as a happy-go-lucky person, but maybe for others.

Publication date: 28th May 2013

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.)

The Great Unexpected by Sharon Creech

This book starts off in a surreal manner. First there is a story in the prologue about a man pulling things out of a talking donkey's ear such as a loaf of bread and a sack of gold, then there is the opening chapter with a strange boy falling out of a tree on top of the main character of the book, Naomi Deane, the boy barely speaking except to say once in a while strange things such as "Don't take the gold" and "There isn't any gold".

Because of the imaginative off-the-wall beginning the story really grabs the attention, and I thought it was ideal to read to my nearly 7-year-old daughter.

The story tries to keep the same intriguing style throughout with lots of random bits with you left to try and decipher the bits in-between, but in my opinion the story gets confusing because of this, although by the end all the connections are revealed. However the beginning is still the best part and because of that I expected more of the rest of the book.

The basic story revolves around two girls, Naomi and Lizzie, and the mysterious Finn boy who fell out the tree, based in their small town of Blackbird Tree with its strange cast of characters such as Witch Wiggins, Crazy Cora and one-armed Farley.

Then there are occasional chapters "across the ocean" in Ireland following Sybil and Pilpenny who love the odd murder. The people that live in the two places are related, but the connections only come about at the end of the book. Knowing what I know now I think a 2nd reading of the book would be good so that I can understand the story fully.

Having said all that there are intriguing things in the book like a crooked bridge which has many turns as it crosses a river rather than just following a straight line, and the strange characters, but with all the disconnects the book is a bit weird and confusing.

Publication date: 1 November 2012

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.)