The Mum, the flat white and the unknown gem.

I have a very bad habit of heading to the nearest public library on a regular basis and borrowing far more books than I can get through in a two week window. Four weeks back (yes I had to renew them and pay my late fees like a good girl) I took out several books that caught my eye among the hundred's that adorned the shelves of the city's main library.

There were a couple I'd picked because the titles had been recommended. A couple more I picked because I knew them as being parts of a book series. Then there were one or two I selected because they really had caught my eye.

One of them was this one.

The cover was lovely and different, the title was an easy lure as I have an affection for reading about the macabre. A story about a coffin maker seemed a very unique idea in children's fiction. It lay at the bottom of my book pile for ages, then I had to take it to the library today. Something about it made me hang on to it, take it with me on my shopping rounds and open it when I sat down to my usual 'coffee treat' at a local supermarket.

It was like a pandora's box that once opened could not be closed. An hour and a half had passed before I realised that my coffee had long since been finished. It tells the story of Alberto; a furniture maker who turns to making coffins after the tragic deaths of his wife and children from plague. One day many years later, he has to make a coffin for a woman who - despite living in his tiny Italian seaside village for over a year - is a complete unknown.

After her very quiet funeral (attended only by the coffin maker, pair of local gossips and the priest) strange things start to happen as secrets about her life begin to come to light. In it all the coffin maker befriends her son and they form a bond that goes a long way to both of their healing.


In a world where there are a plethora of children's books about kids who lose their parents, it was a brave choice to start this book with a man who loses his wife and children. Loss is loss, no doubt about it. I can not even begin to imagine what that pain is like. This book made me feel that in the first 5 pages and I'm not ashamed to say that I had to wipe my eyes in that bleeding cafe several times.

This book was so full of bitter sweet moments that I felt my heart tug at each and every one. There were sentences that just stood out through their sheer beauty, like this one:
"It (the train) took five days and four nights to chug through the wild mountains that split the country in two."

Or this one:
"The dead cannot hurt us;only the living can do that."

I found myself sighing more times than I can count, such was the overwhelming charm of it.

Book 17 of my 52 book list and a book with an appealing cover (and a heartwarming story) this is a beautiful book that everyone should try to read at some point.

Book Title: The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker 
Author: Matilda Woods
Illustrator: Anuska Allepuz
Published: 2017
Pages: 185
Suitable for: children aged 7 and up (so long as parents feel they can handle the idea of their children reading about plague and death) 
Interesting words: tumultuous, colossal, temperamental, resigned, adorn, intoned 

A Quick One in the Chaos

This past 2 weeks has been mental. Not a little bit rushed or slightly busy but break neck, racing, nutty craziness!
There's been job changes, family celebrations, in-law visits and all kinds!
So ensuring that I managed to find time to fit this in became a matter of great difficulty.
Still though, here's one I made earlier (I've always wanted to say that)!
This book features a lovely little story that was once shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's book prize. But I'll be honest, I'd never heard of it before and only really came across it by total accident.

Claude in the Country is a part of a series of books that details the adventures of main character Claude and his companion Sir Bobbysock. In this particular adventure they decide to go to the countryside for some fresh air. 

There they stumble upon a farm where Claude takes on the role of farmhand for the day, even helping the farmer (Miss Cowpat) to win the most beautiful pig contest. He did use a lot of blush though to beautify them! Hardly fair those pigs being given a complete beautician's makeover! 

Suddenly there's calamity when a raging bull (not the film version) threatens to tear apart the whole fair. Leave it to Claude (who by now is a gifted ranch hand) to save the day whilst the bull gets a stern talking to. 

I love the structure of this book, each page only has a 1 or 2 paragraphs and they are well linked to the whole page illustrations. It's underlined with a cheeky sense of humor with the word 'bottom' making a regular appearance. Just right for my sense of comedy! 

At just shy of 100 pages it's ideal for children aged 5-6 upwards depending on their reading ability. I love Claude! 

This is book with a name in the title, book 16 on my 52 book list and proof that if you manage time effectively you can always get things done! 

Title: Claude in the Country
Author and illustrator: Alex T Smith
Published: 2012
Pages: 95
Interesting words: enthusiastically, snooty, lunatic and (my personal favourite) galumphing

Just the facts Mam

It's high time there was some non-fiction on this list. I can't believe it's taken me 15 weeks to get to it!

Decent non-fiction texts are very hard to come by, mostly because they aren't very well advertised (if at all). Last month I asked for advice about decent non-fiction titles as our school library, whilst having tons of non-fiction did not really boast anything new or half decent. Shockingly some of our non-fiction titles were older than 20 years!

Anyway, after making some enquiries I was given a list of the top 100 titles (a big thanks to @playbythebook on Twitter). Sadly getting hold of one book in that list was hard going. Even the public libraries were a bit of a let down. I managed to get hold of this one in a public library though.

It's not hard to guess that I'm a lover of the bard. I happen to have a tiny miniature plastic skull named Yorick (guess the play) at home.

I won that bad boy in one of those grabbing machines at fairs when I was 13 and he's been a bit of a lucky charm ever since!

I was lucky enough last year to visit his home town of Stratford Upon Avon. It was there that I got to see his birthplace (where I learned that hitting the hay was a phrase coined in his era as mattresses were made of it) and his grave!

I don't pretend to have Shakespeare's works committed to memory, nor do I claim to be any kind of Shaksperean expert, but I do love to learn anything and everything about him and the times that he lived in. If by chance I happen to forget certain facts, then I love to learn them all over again.

The Comedy, History and Tragedy of William Shakespeare is a beautifully comprehensive take on his life, works and the times in which he lived. It provides short, easy to digest facts about where he was born, what his school life would've been like, his adult life and a break down of his works.

It displays the timeline of his life in seven simple chunks which appeal more to younger readers. It breaks down his three types of play (tragedy, comedy and history) and explains each type brilliantly. It even goes so far as to provide a couple of examples of each type of play and succinctly summarises their plots. The plot summary of King Lear is a particular stroke of genius as it says in two sentences what took me two read throughs of the play itself to understand (in short, that everyone dies pretty much).

There are new facts to be gleaned and they are all presented beautifully, the text often moulding around the lovely illustrations. The most impressive thing is the presentation of the facts. Things like 'blank verse' and 'groundlings' are explained well without any frills or fuss, making it accesible for children and adults.

It is 45 pages of cleverness and I'd easily read it repeatedly as I feel it'd be a joy and I'd learn something new every time. Did you know that he's responsible for introducing words like 'torture' into the English language? I'll remember that the next time I'm asked to go through the library to weed out old, redundant non-fiction!

Book 15 of my 52 book list and my first non-fiction review. Go give it a read!

Title: The Comedy, History and Tragedy of William Shakespeare
Author: Anna Claybourne
Illustrator: Adria Meserve
Pages: 45
Published: 2014
Interesting words: renaissance, reckoned, conjure, complex 

Opinions are like hearts, everybody's got one.

Celebrity authors have been in the spotlight this week, once again for all the wrong reasons. There was an announcement that, in celebration of 10 years of David Walliams writing children's books, there is going to be a David Walliams week.

A whole week for David Walliams!

Harry Potter gets one night a year.

William Shakespere, arguably England's greatest playwright gets one day a year (frankly that's not even given much in the way of promotion for children).

Roald Dahl, from whom Walliams draws the vast majority of his inspiration (let's not forget the sharing of brilliant illustrator Quentin Blake) gets one day a year.

The U.K's flamin patron saints get one day a year each!

So why does Walliams need an entire week?

In my opinion he doesn't but not because he's a terrible author: I happen to like a couple of his books. It is also well noted that the kids love him. His books are one of the top primary school lends up and down the country.

However, I've a firm belief that everyone deserves their moment in the sun, their fifteen minutes of fame, so it annoys me when one person loses out because another has to hog an hour and a half!

Latest statistics show that around 10, 000 children's books are published every year. Some of those works may never see the light of day, not because they're poorly written, just because they won't get any attention. Instead someone of celebrity standing (like Walliams) will have it all. Even now I'm contributing to it by giving the issue attention myself. After all, how many of you knew about this issue before I mentioned it in the blog? I know some will have known but others won't have.

Anyway, rant concluded I am going to now move on to the remainder of this week's review. I just happened by some weird coincidence to be reading books by celebrity authors this week. With me not really having read much celeb material previously, I picked up two books by people I quite like and have got a lot of time for.

The first one is this:

Neil Patrick Harris is an actor whose first major role was as fresh faced teenage, doctor Doogie Howser. For anyone born post 90's it's a show where a teenage genius was trying to cope with life and hormones whilst working in a busy hospital and practically out shining all of his more experienced peers.

After that he seemed to vanish (much like the characters in his book) before bursting back on to the showbiz scene. He is now at the helm of an excellent adaption of Lemony Snickett's 'Series of Unfortunate Events' (which is so worth the watch)!

His book 'The Magic Misfits' tells the story of an orphaned boy down on his luck after running away from his con man uncle.

Carter ( the young boy) ends up in a quiet, little, middle America town and ends up falling into a group of magicians and entertainers (all children with interesting backgrounds like his own). Together they must stop a sinister circus troope from stealing the town's every last cent.

The language is rich and the story moves along quickly and smoothly, there's a wonderfully unique element in the form of several magic tricks that you can learn as you go through the book. There's even secret messages hidden within the book in code!

The second book is this one:

Macenzie Crook is an English actor known for several roles, from the wooden eyed pirate in 'Pirates of the Caribbean' to the more recent Detectorist series on the BBC. His most notable role was in 'The Office'.

Once again we are blessed with rich language and a smooth pace although this time it's slower, subtler and altogether less garish in parts. Set in the 80's after the famous 'Fish hurricane that never was' it tells the story of one boys' discovery of sprites, real sprites that live on the moor just outside his home town.

His challenge comes when he has to prove they exist, something which the town's most notable scientist/madman failed to do 200 years prior.


I found both of these books fascinating as they seemed to be perfect echoes of the men who wrote them. Magical Misfits had all the flair and panache of a stylised American magic show. The Windvale Sprites had the soft, tender storytelling of someone quintessentially English. They also revealed their authors'  hidden talents. Neil Patrick Harris had previously been heavily involved in magic, serving as president of a magical society no less. Whilst Mackenzie Crook illustrated his own book, proving that he is quite talented as an illustrator.

In fact at points I could actually hear their voices as I read the stories. The language and styles of writing fit them that well.

I would certainly read more books by both of them, though they wouldn't be the top of my priority reads. If I was recommended something by one of my own peers or the children in my life I would definitely pick it over a book written by celebrity.

These books written by a person who is not an author and are number 14 on my 52 book list. As for a certain Mr Walliams, I will NOT be celebrating an entire week of his work. I'll give him the one day just like anyone else because ten years of writing for children is something worth a day's mention.

Book Title:  Magical Misfits / The Windvale Sprites
Author: Neil Patrick Harris / Mackenzie Crook
Published: 2017 / 2011
Pages: 253 / 203
Recommended for: children aged 6 and up

Interesting words: seethed, taut, sleight, vagabond, mandibles, cadence, condone, tapered, grotesque,                                pungent, gormless, exhumed, meticulously,                          impeding, incredulously, cumbersome.