Mighty Small by Timothy Knapman and Rosie Reeve

Book review: This is a nice colourful, fun book about Max Small, a mouse who wants to be a superhero Mighty Small. Trouble is he has no super powers so he gives up. However that doesn't stop him from finding his superpower when the town needs his help as he overcomes his adversity and becomes a superhero after all, complete with his own catchphrase "Baddie Pants, Beware!"

My 4-year-old enjoyed this. I think the hero being small helps, as does all the bright colours and the simple story.

Publication date: 1 Jan 2015

Amazon link (from £6.44 at time of writing): Mighty Small

Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza by John Dougherty and David Tazzyman

This is the third Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and is as silly and funny as the others. My 8-year-old and me really enjoyed it.

The book starts with the character introductions, which includes the beloved characters that featured in the previous two books such as the badgers and the shopping trolley, so you can get up to speed straight away. In fact no knowledge of the previous two books is required to read this one.

The story sees Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face become honorary secret agents in the Great Kerfuffle Secret Service. Their job is to find out what is happening to the Great Kerfuffle library which seems to be tipping over and "if the library tips over, the whole island will capsize and we shall all be drowned in the sea."

Of course the badgers are responsible, what with their having discovered the legendary abandoned pizza mines of Great Kerfuffle, but there is yet more badger naughtiness than normal this time as new badgers appear from the International Gang of Badgery Naughtiness. 

Luckily Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face rescue the day of course, with an adventure full of action, fun and surreal-ness.

Publication date: 1 Jan 2015

Amazon UK (from £4.55 at time of writing): Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza

Q&A and giveaway with Ian Probert, author of Johnny Nothing

Today I am hosting a quick Q&A with Ian Probert, author of "Johnny Nothing." He is also generously giving away free copies of his book so straight to the giveaway:

To celebrate the paperback launch of Johnny Nothing we are offering a free Kindle copy of the book to the first 100 people who Tweet the following message:

@truth42 I'm reading Johnny Nothing by Ian Probert. http://geni.us/3oR8 #YA #Kindle #kidsbooks

The first ten readers who answer the following question will also receive a signed print of one of the book's illustrations.

Q: What is the tattoo on Ben's arm?

Send your answers to truth42@icloud.com

Clue: Use the look inside feature at Amazon here: http://geni.us/3oR8

A quick blurb: 

"Great new kids book alert! My two are in hysterics reading Johnny Nothing by Ian Probert (and I am too)." Jane Bruton, Editor of Grazia  

"Oh, Wow! Dark, sordid, grotesque and hilarious are only a few words I can conjure up to describe this hilarious book." Lizzie Baldwin, mylittlebookblog 

Critics are comparing Ian Probert to Roald Dahl. And Johnny Nothing we have a modern successor to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. 

Johnny Nothing is best-selling author Ian Probert's first ever children's book - although adults are enjoying it too. The story of the poorest boy in the world and the nastiest mother in the universe, the book is earning rave reviews. Children and grown-ups are all laughing at this incredibly funny kids book.

Take a look for yourself:
http://geni.us/3oR8

And onto the Q&A:

Q: I read your book "Johnny Nothing" last year with my daughter who was seven at the time. (CLICK HERE for my original review). We both enjoyed the humour and the story which she still remembers much of. Please can you tell us about the book.

It’s the story of a poor abused boy whose uncle bequeaths £1 million to. Problem is, he's got the worst parents of all time. His mother steals the money and goes on a massive spending spree. The book is about how he manages to get the money back. I’m hoping that people of all ages will find it funny. But you never know. Humour is so subjective.




Q: Were you a little Johnny Nothing when you were a boy?




Well I probably was. I was born in Burnley, Lancashire. We were actually pretty poor. I can remember not getting much for Christmas and I can also remember my parents sometimes turning off the lights and the TV when what I assume to be a debt collector was knocking on the door. But it’s all relative isn’t it? What we consider to be poor is actually very wealthy indeed compared to other people in the world.




Q: The pictures from the book are full colour works of art that could be hung in a gallery. They really are quite something. What is the story behind those?












I ended up doing the pictures myself after my daughter declined. One of my former ambitions was to be an artist. I hope I can still draw a little. For whatever reason I decided that I would try to create the whole book on an iPad. The images, therefore, are completely digital, done on a third-generation iPad. To create then I used a Jot Touch pressure sensitive pen and a variety of apps, including Procreate, Art Rage and and various grunging software. It was all done in a tremendous rush. A labour of fear, you might say.




Q: Do you have any tips for aspiring young or old writers out there who want to follow in your footsteps in writing a great story and getting it out there?




Well I wouldn’t dream of trying to advise anyone. I still need all the advice that I can get! However, when I was a magazine editor I would always tell writers to keep it simple. Simple is probably my life ethic. I like to quote Picasso’s about painting with his stomach. That’s what I do. I write with my stomach. One of the best disciplines I had to do recently was to trim a 3,000 word article I had written for The Guardian into only 1,000 words. Doing this really makes you get rid of all the rubbish. The article was improved 1,000,000 per cent in doing so. So keep it simple. If a reader is aware that they are reading something you’re already failed as far as I’m concerned. 







So thank you Mr Ian Probert and check out his book and links below:

Amazon http://geni.us/3oR8

iBooks https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/johnny-nothing/id908777441?mt=11

Book promo http://youtu.be/xaWO4tR4oj0?list=UUzLRcpNMLRKKtJhes1s1C7w

Wordpress http://ianprobertbooks.wordpress.com

Website http://ianprobert.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/716683635030173/

Twitter @truth42

120 Ways to Annoy Your Mother (and Influence People) by Ana Benaroya

I was looking for a book for our daughter, and what better than one that annoys the mother, in 120 ways?

Styled as "part journal, part sketchbook and field guide" this is a fun book not to be taken too seriously. Yes, it is titled 120 ways to annoy your mother and so may be seen as a little controversial with it's little tongue-in-cheek tips to help 11-14 year-olds "transform into a fish" or "turn your life into a soap opera" but I didn't have any problems with it, because it is all a bit of fun, and clearly so.

This is like an ideas book. Each of the 120 ways have 4 tips, some drawing and a little page (most of the time) to add some of your own funny ideas to the pot. It makes for a creative package for the target age group. And bits are funny, although humour is subjective of course.

So overall a fun package.

Available on Amazon (from £9.10 at time of writing): 120 Ways to Annoy Mother  

Publication date: 1 Sep 2014

Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art by Ossian Ward

This book is meant to "transform a potentially intimidating encounter with cutting-edge art into a dramatic, sensually rewarding and thought-provoking experience." Well, does it?

If nothing else that sentence makes a good blurb. I must say I haven't felt intimidated by art before, although I haven't experienced many performance pieces (some of which are mentioned in the book) with artworks of that type in-particular having the potential to be excruciating I guess. 

What this book does do is provide a tool to approach contemporary art pieces (contemporary being 2000 onwards) "as if it were your first experience with that format," so as to get the most from it - the TABULA tool. This is introduced at the book beginning, tabula rasa being Latin for fresh slate and TABULA standing for Time, Association, Background, Understanding, Look again, and Assess. The author then goes on to show how to use this approach in the following chapters where contemporary art is grouped in categories: entertainment, confrontation, event, message, joke, spectacle and meditation.

In truth these chapters could have been grouped by anything really, and there is also crossover between them, but they act as a classification to help you bring pieces of art such as big playground slides, an estate agent tour, and some copper boxes that get FedExed from gallery to gallery alive.

The tool is simple to remember and use, even for a more-than-casual art observer as myself, and would work with non-contemporary pieces too. The author is impressive when he delves into pieces through the book (see for example the spotlight features at the end of each chapter), although some art he brings up is glossed over quickly. Also not all the art mentioned has a visual image within the glossy full-colour pages of the book. Similarly video pieces, performance pieces and other "scheduled or timed" pieces are difficult to decipher from a still image so having an internet device handy when reading this book to reference these would be desirable. Even then you may still need to do what the author recommends which is to go and see the artwork in person to get the most out of it (I haven't done that though).

There may be a London bias given the author's past as chief art critic at Time Out London, but the artwork featured still covers the world, even including an out-of-the-way rural Thai province. Anyway you would expect London to feature prominently in such a book anyway so this is not a criticism.

Overall then this book introduces a useful tool that,  if used, should help to bring out a finer appreciation of contemporary art (and non-contemporary too) even without being well-versed in any art history knowledge.

Publication date: 1 Sep 2014

Amazon UK link (£7.99 at time of writing): Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art

Wendy Quill is Full Up of Wrong by Wendy Meddour and Mina May

This book is in a way inspirational. When we got it my 8-year-old daughter said about the 12-year-old illustrator of this book that  "she's only 12 but some of her drawings are really very good." A couple of days later she wrote me a little book with illustrations about me saving the city from aliens (as is my life) for my birthday. I felt it was somewhat inspired by being able to relate to a girl illustrator around her age.

Anyway this book is made up of three short stories and also has a few pages of extra bits at the end, similar to the other Wendy Quill books that precede it (this being the third in the series). In all the stories Wendy Quill is at least a little bit full up of wrong, although all three cure her of this and have happy endings and a moral to the story too.

The first story sees Wendy Quill "feeling full of wrong" for "slightly-squashing-someone" with her "brand-new, second-hand red bike." 

The second story (incidentally called Act 2 like in previous books, but also lesson 2 as it again teaches a lesson) sees Wendy full up of wrong because she tells a "slightly dreadful lie." 

The third story or lesson sees Wendy Quill all full up of wrong for sneaking a glance inside her older sister Tawny's "TOTALLY private diary."

The stories are school based with the characters having first-name surname names throughout, which got a little irritating when it was over-and-over-again, and that is not how my daughter calls her friends, with her only referring to their first-names. But the book is nicely presented because of the layout with pictures, lists, interesting facts and so on breaking up the text (I wonder who of the mother daughter team suggested the picture subtitle "mums are always so wise"). And the stories all teach lessons, for example some nice road safety tips. There is maybe a Charlie and Lola influence in the way Wendy Quill narrates so it's not totally original stuff but it is fun, and, as previously mentioned maybe just a little bit inspirational for young girls.

Publication date: 3 Jul 2014

Available from Amazon UK (£5.99 at the time of writing): Wendy Quill is Full Up of Wrong