Good Books are Out There (And Other Stories) - Part II

In the first part of this two-part series, I looked at common, oft-repeated stories based on scary, freaky and downright depressing rhymes and tales from way back when. 

This follow-up intends to give you some alternatives, both local and international.

To begin with, remember that there are no fixed rules to choosing a good book for your child. 

Any book your child likes could be the right one. (I used to love to ‘yead’ birthday cake cookbooks as a toddler!) 

But books do fall into three basic levels:

1.     those the child can read alone,

2.     those the child can read with an adult, and

3.     those an adult must read to the child. 

Here are some basic things to look for as you help kids to choose ‘good books’:

Infants & Toddlers (birth to 2)

·       Books with big, colourful pictures of familiar day-to-day objects

·       Durable books made of cardboard, plastic or washable cloth

·       Books that appeal to the senses, with fabric, textures or scents

·       Stories told in short, simple sentences with pictures that explain

·       Poems and rhymes that are enjoyable for parents to read aloud

Note: This last one is a biggie for me. That’s why I love Doctor Seuss (the shorter ones, not the 80-page epics). Having said that, even a non-rhyming story can be fun to read, like Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, Monkey Puzzle or Tyrannosaurus Drip.

Pre-Schoolers (aged 3 to 5)

·       Main characters who are your child’s age or even slightly older

·       Illustrations and photos that are clear, colourful and engaging

·       Simple, fun plots that move quickly so the book can be read in one sitting

·       Lively rhymes and repetition that children can repeat/remember

·       Stories, about everyday life and events, that encourage questions

·       Stories that review basic concepts: letters, numbers, shapes, colours

·       Playful animals, real and imaginary, that hold a child’s attention

Note: Aged 3, my daughter is now returning to favourite books from when she was a ‘baby’, because she’s seeing things in them she never noticed before: details, jokes, aspects of her own life. They also seem to feel to her like old, familiar friends.

Young Readers (aged 6 to 11)

·       Clear text that is easy to read

·       Colourful, attractive illustrations and photos that bring the text to life

·       Pictures that give clues to the meaning of unfamiliar words

·       How-to, craft and recipe books with simple instructions and illustrations

·       Books by authors/illustrators who are already your child’s favourites

·       Books featuring your child's favorite characters – from movies or TV

·       Chapter books that can be read over a few days, not in only one sitting

Note: Yes, you should opt for books that appeal to your child’s interests. But an interesting tip I picked up is to choose books that aren’t obvious choices for your child. My little girl loves ballet, animals and birthday parties, but she likes reading about diggers, cranes and dinosaurs. She also enjoys ‘reading’ non-fiction, like the Guinness Book of World Records. And the Mr Price Home winter catalogue.

And, just in case you’d like specifics, below are some recommended book lists:

Award-winning SA books:

1.     Ashraf of Africa – Ingrid Mennen & Niki Daly / Nicolaas Maritz

2.     Fly, Eagle, Fly! – Christopher Gregorowski / Niki Daly

3.     Fynbos Faeries – Antjie Krog (& Gus Ferguson) / Fiona Moodie

4.     Just Sisi – Wendy Hartmann / Joan Rankin

5.     Makwelane and the Crocodile – Maria Hendriks / Piet Grobler

6.     Nina and Little Duck – Wendy Hartmann / Marjorie van Heerden

7.     Not So Fast, Songololo – Niki Daly

8.     Siyolo’s Jersey – Mari Grobler / Elizabeth Pulles

9.     The Best Meal Ever – Sindiwe Magona / Paddy Bouma

10.  The Day Gogo Went To Vote – Elinor Batezat Sisulu / Sharon Wilson

Source: http://www.gorrybowestaylor.co.za/reviews/135/award-winning-children-s-books-

Proudly local children’s books:

Source: http://www.childmag.co.za/content/proudly-south-african-childrens-books#.U1av9OaSwwQ

NY Times top sellers, April ‘14:

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/picture-books/list.html

53 of the great children’s books:

Source: http://www.smartparenting.com.ph/home-living/homebase/age-by-age-52-recommended-children-s-books Some of these are my old favourites!

What have I left out? What’s your child’s favourite book? Do you have a book you loved as a child that you’ve read to your child? I’d love to hear from you.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

[This article originally appeared on the JoziKids blog, www.zaparents.com.]

The New Girl (SL Grey)

- Local fiction, supplied by Penguin Books

I seldom slate a book.

(I'd love to do a lot more slating of crappy books but a. I seldom finish them, b. the publishers don't love that sort of thing and c. I feel bitchy when I do...) Having said that, I don't know what to say about SL Grey's The New Girl.

Other than: 'It's pretty f***ing weird.'

The back cover blurb intrigued me:

"Ryan Devlin, a predator with a past, has been forced to take a job as a handyman at an exclusive private school, Crossley College. He's losing his battle to suppress his growing fascination with a new girl, who seems to have a strange effect on the children around her. Tara Marais fills her empty days by volunteering at Crossley's library. Tara is desperate but unable to have a baby of her own, so she makes Reborns - eerily lifelike newborn dolls. She's delighted when she receives a commission from the mysterious 'Vader Batiss', but horrified when she sees the photograph of the baby she's been asked to create. Still, she agrees to Batiss's strange contract, unaware of the consequences if she fails to deliver the doll on time. Both Tara and Ryan are being drawn into a terrifying scheme - one that will have an impact on every pupil at Crossley College..."

That sounds pretty cool, right? It has a freaky deviant, a bored creator of those scary 'human-ish' dolls you see on Pinterest (and she has an evil step-son), and promises of a 'terrifying scheme'. It also has a weird 'new girl'. And it's set at a posh South African private school. Cool!

But things start to go wrong quite early on, and that's when a book that held the initial promise of The Slap meets My Step-Mother's an Alien becomes clunky, confusing and filled with people you can't like. Some because they're child molesters, others because they're soggy spineless blankets and still others because... well... they're not actually human.

There's also not much to justify the why behind "upside citizens living in blissful ignorance of the deeply weird world beneath their feet... in a subterranean pseudo-civilisation".

I finished it, but barely. It's too weird to enjoy. Not weird in a good way. But loads of people are loving it, and many are people whose literary opinions I respect. It's also been described by SFX, the global sci-fi bookclub, as "A surprisingly funny, deeply weird horror novel”. Funny? What? 

Maybe I didn't get it?

Note: 'SL Grey' is an open literary collaboration between two South African writers - Sarah Lotz from Cape Town and Louis Greenberg from Johannesburg. Their two previous books, The Mall and The Ward, are apparently brilliant. And I honestly don't know what to do with that information.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

The Top Prisoner of C-Max (Wessel Ebersohn)

I’ve said before that I’m not a wild fan of local crime fiction. But Wessel Ebersohn was the writer who converted me, so it’s highly appropriate that I’m reviewing his latest offering. (And, although The Top Prisoner of C-Max is the sequel to Ebersohn’s The October Killings, I’ve not read the latter and I still enjoyed this book thoroughly.)

To begin with, The Top Prisoner of C-Max brings back oddball Jewish psychologist, Yudel Gordon – who fascinated me in Those Who Love Night – and pairs him with talented lawyer Abigail Bukula. There’s also the improbably named Beloved Childe, an American prisons prodigy, and a cast of highly charged, overly politicised, brightly colourful and deeply scary characters in the post-1994 Dept of Correctional Services.

At Pretoria’s high-security prison, C-Max, convicts are now called ‘inmates’ and warders ‘members’, and Yudel is trying to find his professional feet in ‘the new country’. Enslin Kruger, a brutal criminal, is on his last legs and wants to exact revenge on Yudel before he dies, by establishing a prison contest to choose his successor: The first of two men to murder the beautiful Beloved takes the throne.

Twenty-five years before our story begins:

“Yudel did not see the man with the shovel move. He also did not see Masuku fall, but now he was down on his hands and knees. Exactly what had happened, how he had lost his balance, whether or not he had had been pushed or even where the man with the shovel had been standing, had not been clear to Yudel afterwards. All that he remembered with any sort of clarity was that within a moment of Masuku landing on his hands and knees, three picks had been driven into his skull, and power among the prisoners had passed into the hands of Enslin Kruger.”

Despite a contained start within the prison itself, the story is packed with chases, subtle in its violence and authentic in its dialogue. What’s also interesting is that this is the latest of six thrillers featuring Yudel Gordon, the first of which was penned in the 1980s. My, my – how times have changed for the character and his allies.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Bubbles (Rahla Xenopoulos)

It’s a flimsy premise.

A beautiful young girl grows up on the wrong side of the tracks in 1940s South Africa. She moves to big, bold Joburg where an Orange Grove bookie takes her under his wing.

Having mastered the (tawdry) tricks required to ‘beguile’ a man, she joins a circle of rich but sinister young hotshots. Utterly out of her depth and completely mis-reading how high society works, Bubbles lands in real danger.

Flimsy yes, but a) exquisitely written with fascinating first-person narration, b) based on the true local mystery of the life and death of Bubbles Schroeder, whose murder has never been solved, and c) unputdownable in its flow and rhythm.

Here’s a quick sample:

“Wouldn’t you know, for all that hard work and self-educating, I misunderstood a lot of things in my short life. But he seemed so utterly taken with me, why, I still think that if he hadn’t had his friends with him that night, we may just have stood a chance. I had played myself so carefully, always careful to be gay and never have my own opinions. They don’t like it when a woman has her own opinion, you know. Better just to smile sweetly and agree with everything they say. Oh, a man never goes for a thinking girl, opinionated girls have absolutely no appeal.”

Another lovely part of this story is the setting: Lichtenburg, Vereeniging, Orange Grove, Rissik Street, Illovo, all circa mid-1940s.

Department store John Orrs is a hugely big deal. Real people travel by tram, but a select few drive cars. Artists live in ivy-tendrilled cottages in big gardens on Dunkeld’s Bompas Road. And there’s nothing finer than high tea at Anstey’s: sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

Bubbles says,

“The casuals sat around the card table…just talking. Not about me or races and bets, it was all about the Nats who had beaten Smuts at the polls. ‘It will just be vetkoek, not fettuccini, they won’t want Italians cooking,’ said Luigi, looking sombre. ‘There’s talk of them moving the black people out of town into shtetls,’ said one. ‘I think you’ll find you’re overreacting there,’ said another.”

This is a wonderful book. And a superb piece of local fiction. Read it. Please.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

A Year in the Wild (James Hendry)

The best place to read a book set in the bush is in the bush. So you can imagine my glee when it arrived before I left for a week in Madikwe Game Reserve. And A Year in the Wild: A Riotous Novel by James Hendry continued to delight me from there.

It’s both delicious and deliciously funny. It draws easy-to-imagine pictures of madness and mayhem; hilarity and horror. And it gives the most fascinating insights into what goes on behind the posh scenes of larney lodges, in a very similar manner to Imogen Edwards-Jones’s Babylon novels, all of which I have greedily devoured.

But I don’t think the back cover blurb does this book sufficient justice, because there’s so much more to it than the rivalry between brothers – and newly appointed Sasekile Private Game Lodge staff members – Angus and Hugh MacNaughton.

It’s about strong and strange personalities, ridiculous holidaymakers, broken rules and ignored regulations. It’s about animals and birds and the human beings who live and work alongside them. And it’s about the author’s own real-life experience of the bush and the game lodge world, translated into comic (and sometimes tragic) fiction.

I typically disparage novels written in correspondence form. I don’t like them as a rule; I find them cheesy. But the device works well in A Year in the Wild, because the plot is mostly light and undemanding. The writer has also taken great care to give his two main narrators, Angus and Hugh, completely different voices, styles and tones.

Not an easy thing to achieve for an author who’s new to fiction. I’m impressed.

My only criticism, then? The novel gets more enjoyable the deeper you delve, with a strong middle and a great end. It’s neither as flawless nor as compelling in the start as it could be, and is, elsewhere. Buy it for bush or beach reading, though. It’s fun.


www.tiffanymarkman.co.za


Photo credit: Google Images