Diane Samuels reviews Bearkeeper by Josh Lacey:
a highly enjoyable read that firmly hooks into the turn of the 17th century, triggers interest in Shakespeare's plays and makes you pause to think about cruelties humans inflict on animals, now as well as then
Amanda Craig interviews Celia Rees
Although I don't share Craig's analysis that Rees's Witch Child "began the new wave of historical fiction for young adults" - what about Karen Cushman? - I have always admired Rees's work and am looking forward to reading the new novel.
The May edition of Andrea Deakin's online newsletter
Highly Recommended as always - worth a click just for the Cumulative Featured Website listing.
Here also is the April edition , which we fear may have suffered lack of mention during ACHUKA's recent interruption of service
Recommended Imaginaria entry about the superb Italian illustrator Roberto Innocenti
The Dragonfly Pool reads like two stories in one: the tale of Delderton and the children who learn to be themselves under such teachers as Matteo, whose biology classes can take place at 4am; and the story of Bergania and unhappy Prince Karil, who finds secret solace by the pool of the title, hidden in the forest. But the parts are knitted together by their celebration of humanity NICOLETTE JONES
Just Henry reviewed in Guardin too
Part of the pleasure for the reader lies in the well-loved themes of overcoming difficulties, of making do (for instance, in a wonderful description of making a doll's cot and bedding out of an orange box) and of knowing that all the young people's dreams are going to come true and that love will triumph. ADELE GERAS
see previous entry for Amazon link
Just Henry reviewed by Amanda Craig
Despite its length (at least 200 pages should have been pruned off) this is a thrilling, richly detailed story that rips along to a hair-raising climax in which Henry and his sister are imprisoned in a cellar and about to be murdered. Several times, I found myself crying; only the greatest authors of children's fiction share this ability to touch the heart.
Paddington is 50 this year and has had many guises. His illustrators describe [to Michael Glover in The Times] how they portrayed the bear in the hat...
Well, it's been a nightmare couple of weeks.
First of all, our American hosts blocked a section of the site while they moved us to a new server.
The move apparently worked seamlessly (see the entry about Blog Disappearance) but oh, how wrong can you be!!
To cut a long story short we had to cut loose of the company who had hosted ACHUKA since the start of the millenium and find ourselves, in the middle of a holiday weekend, a new host.
ACHUKA is a big site, so the transfer took a while. Initially there were problems with the Blog. These have (just about) been resolved, thanks to fantastic Movabletype support.
ALL of our attention has had to be directed towards getting th site soundly re-established, hence we are behind with book noticing and blog posting.
Every email sent to us in the previous 10 day period was lost.
Whilst the process of moving hosts has been stressful and maintenance-intensive (sitting in front of the screen while file FTPing), it is also exciting - the start of new ACHUKA life.
Onward, with new Heart.
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