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Shark in the Park - Nick Sharratt
by Vixi15
Thumbs up from our little family! This book is by far our favourite bedtime story. We ordered it because we own a couple of other Nick Sharatt books; including 'Caveman Dave' and 'Zoopermarket'. We really enjoyed these books; and wanted to expand our collection.
The moment our son saw it he was immersed in the wonderful, exciting ... storyline, the brightly coloured illustrations and the interactive element of peering through the telescope.
The story promotes early reading and writing strategies including respective language, predicting and recalling the mistaken shark, and rhyming patterns. Therefore this book covers an audience of children aged from one to around five.
This book also encourages positional and directional language such as left, right, up and down.
I like the size of the book (A4), as it is big enough for our son to hold and look through himself; but not too big it cannot be transported around such as when we're in the car etc.
We have even taken it to a Wedding where it kept our son entertained during the Wedding photos!
The surprise element at the endis great - and really encourages discussion into howrhe ducks must be feeling; and does Timothy ever find out!
IWeb would highly recommend this book to anyone with young children, andhopethey enjoy it as much as we do.
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Beauty - Robin McKinley
by Tangled07
Robin Mckinley made her writing debut in 1978 with her book Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Publishers weekly said the book was "a splendid story".
Excerpt:
(From Barnes and noble website: http:// www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ beauty-r​obin-mckinley /1102343594? ean=97800 ... 602414​90&itm=1&usr i=robin+mckinley)
"The only comfort I had in being my sisters' sister was that I was "the clever one." To a certain extent this was damning me with faint praise, in the same category as accepting my given name as an epithet accurately reflecting my limited worth -- it was the best that could be said of me. Our governesses had always remarked on my cleverness in a pitying tone of voice. But at least it was true. My intellectual abilities gave me a release, and an excuse. I shunned company because I preferred books; and the dreams I confided to my father were of becoming a scholar in good earnest, and going to University. It was unheard-of that a woman should do anything of the sort-as several shocked governesses were only too quick to tell me, when I spoke a little too boldly -- but my father nodded and smiled and said, "We'll see." Since I believed my father could do anything -- except of course make me pretty -- Iworked and studied with passionate dedication, lived in hope, and avoided society and mirrors.
Our father was a merchant, one of the wealthiest in the city. He was the son of a shipwright, and had gone to sea as a cabin boy when he was not yet ten years old; but by the time he was forty, he and his ships were known in most of the major ports of the world. When he was forty, too, he married our mother, the Lady Marguerite, who was just seventeen. She came of a fine old family that had nothing but its bloodlines left to live on, and her parents were more than happy to accept my father's suit, with its generous bridal settlements. But it had been a happy marriage, old friends told us girls"
The story:
Beauty whose real name is Honor is a young girl who loves to read books and learn new things, explore new subjects. She does not think herself very pretty and feels inferior next to her beautiful sisters Hope and Grace. After her father, a wealthy merchant, suffers tremendous financial losses when his ships get lost at sea, Beauty, her sisters and her father must make drastic changes to their lifestyle. Along with her fathers ships, Beauty's sister Grace also loses her fiance Robert Tucker who was a captain on one of the ships.
Beauty and her family decide to sell everything and move to the country side with Hope's fiance, a blacksmith named Ger. There the family set up a decent life for themselves and Beauty most of all learns to be happy with their simple life. One day however Beauty's father goes into the city to handle some business. Upon his return he tells a tale of how he got lost in a snowstorm coming back and stumbled upon a castle in which he took shelter. He told of the castle being enchanted with doors opening by themselves and food appearing out of nowhere as if put there by magic invisible hands. In the morning however when he stopped by the garden outside to pluck a rose for Beauty a dreadfully hideous Beast appeared and told the frightened man that he would spare his life only if he came back to the castle in a months time and brought one of his daughters, who would have to live at the castle with the Beast, though she would not be harmed.
Upon hearing this story, Beauty volunteers and convinces her family to let her go. When her father tries to talk her out of it Beauty says "Can a Beast not be tamed?"...and so her extraordinary journey begins.
What I thought:
I found Beauty to be a wonderfully charming story from beginning to end. The authors words flowed smoothly without any breaks or unnecessary distractions. The characters were engaging, lovable and relatable.
I feel that the reader can relate to Beauty's misgivings about herself (we all have them), and to her sisters occasional longing for the life of luxury they used to lead. They all went through a lot and it's not hard to relate to them, we all go through financial hardships and we all have to make changes to our lives accordingly.
One can even relate to the Beast, a character filled with remorse and regret, weighed down by lessons he wished he had learnt earlier. Honestly, I liked the Beast in this movie more than in the orginial story. This Beast had much more depth as a character, the human he once was shines through and it makes the whole story that much better.
This story was also one of those rare stories which you can see being played out in front of you, the authors words come to life in your mind. I would love it if they made a movie on this book!
There were no parts in the story where I found myself getting bored or felt that the scene was being dragged out. I have read the book many times over and still enjoy it just as much every single time. It's a good book to read when you just want to relax since there are no particularly serious parts like the original story.
Many authors who write their own versions of Disney classics either change it too much or not enough but this story was perfectly balanced. In my opinion Robin Mckinley put a lovely twist on a story that was already great.
(This review is also on Ciao under the same name)
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Desert Angel - Charlie Price
by linzeelou
About the book
Desert Angel is a stand-alone YA novel by Charlie Price. It was published on 2nd February by Corgi Children's and the book is 240 pages long. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy for review.
Plot
Fourteen-year-old Angel wakes up one morning at her desert trailer home to discover her ... mother has been murdered by a lowlife named Scotty, who has vanished. Angel has no water, no weapon, but she knows that Scotty, an expert tracker and hunter, will surface soon in order to eliminate her as a witness. She has to run, to disappear, if she is to survive and tell the world what happened. Her flight takes her through a harsh landscape to places she never expected to be, forcing her to trust others for the first time and strengthening her in ways she doesn't even anticipate . . . until it's time to take a stand.
What I thought
When I read the synopsis for this book, I was quite excited. Although not the kind of thing I would normally read, Desert Angel sounded like a very intense thriller and it all seemed extremely exciting. However, that is not the story I actually got.
As you can see from the synopsis, protagonist Angel's mother has been murdered by her scummy boyfriend, leaving Angel to fend for herself. This is where I thought the story was going to be really exciting. As their home is a trailer in the desert, I figured that Angel would be left here to survive and to hide from Scotty. Instead, the time spent in the desert is very little and soon, Angel finds herself on the run, trying to get as far away as possible. I was quite shocked that this part of the story ended so suddenly. As Scotty is an expert tracker and hunter, I was thinking this would be a real cat and mouse kind of chase with not many places for Angel to hide. Taking this away from the story was a real let down and pretty much ruined the rest of the book for me.
While on the run, Angel actually finds herself surrounded by people willing or trying to help her. This is not the adventure I was expecting. As soon as Angel finds these people and begins to let them in a little bit, the story got quite boring and tame. Scotty is still lurking around in the shadows at this point but there is never a real sense of danger or that Angel could be in serious trouble. The fact that she ends up with somewhere pretty safe to stay and being surrounded by people took away a lot of the mystery and intensity that this book should have had. The characters introduced to help Angel though were great and it was nice to see that people were willing to help a complete strange who was in so much trouble and this made me remember again that Angel was only fourteen. The way that Angel acts and talks made me forget about her age a lot of the time and I think this was mainly due to her harsh upbringing and having to deal with a lot. Still, I would have liked to have seen her vulnerable side a bit more and for her to show her age.
Scotty was quite possibly the best character in Desert Angel although he wasn't used nearly enough. There is very little interaction with Scotty and this was disappointing. He is creepy as hell and I think, insane to go with it. The first scenes where we get to see Scotty in action, chasing Angel were disturbing and scary and I wished there had been more of this. Throughout the book, we know that Scotty is still hunting Angel but mostly from her point of view, not his. We barely see or hear from him apart from knowing that he is actually there. His absence took away most of the mystery and again, danger. I didn't feel that Angel was actually in danger for the most part and this was such a big aspect of the story.
The ending to Desert Angel was also disappointing. After the struggles that Angel had been through in this book, everything ended quite abruptly and there were a lot of unanswered questions. The ending was far too short and could have been drawn out much more for added impact. Angel had been through quite a lot, both physically and emotionally but this was never concentrated on. As a reader, I wanted to know how Angel was dealing with all of the craziness that had been happening around her for so long but I got none of this. All I got was a conclusion of the story without anything really being explained.
I had quite high hopes for this book but it wasn't for me at all and I struggled to even finish it.
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