BOOKS BOOKS

I have been reading a lot of children's books lately and I am loving them. I have finished my children's literature course but everything I have learned  is still with me, everytime I read (any kind of book). When I was a child I was a voracious reader but not really of children's books; I disliked anything overly sentimental, so Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear weren't  my favourites. I liked reality; things I could relate to but growing up in South Africa meant that we were flooded with American literature as well as television which didn't really relate to me. As I got older and could read better and better I turned away from children's books (too childish for me!, attitude) and lost myself in some dark worlds ( Virginia Andrews and Robin Cook) and didn't really think very much about children's books again, until now! And now I realise how much I missed out! The power of books especially for the young is phenomenal - who knows where I would have ended up if I had only perservered with children's books.

I work in a school and decided to run a book club to shadow the Kate Greenaway Awards. As it is an infant school I chose the picture books for young children to look at with the children but also read what would ultimately break the record by winning both the Greenaway Medal as well as the Carnegie Medal : A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. The same author who only a year ago won the Carnegie for his final instalment of the Choas Walking trilogy, Monsters of Men.  The two books couldn't be more different but Ness's magic won again. The way an author can transport you from the life you live into the life of a character within a book by mere words on a printed page, never fails to astound me. I haven't come across an author who can do this as effortlessly as Ness does. He has a real skill for emotive writing but without over doing it, for writing simply but being able to engage you with huge themes such as death and truth. There was a quote I really liked which I was looking for after I had read the book, and whilst flicking to roughly the part of the book in which I knew it was in, I started reading everyword again and felt the pull of the book on my heart and before I knew it I was crying all over again and feeling like I had lost something very special to me. I did find the quote eventually, which is:

You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

(A Monster Calls, P.202)



This is a book for everyone because it deals with something we are all going to have to face eventually, the loss of someone we love. A powerful story, told beautifully both in text and image. It is a real treasure and deserving winner, twice over!