http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]the middle book of a climactic sequence in which villains from previous volumes have come tohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]the middle book of a climactic sequence in which villains from previous volumes have come together and enslaved Hiccup's village, while plotting magical domination of the known world (or at least the Viking archipelago). The is a fairly spectacular set of scenes around a geographically improbable desert, and Hiccup must deal separately with mummy and daddy issues. I did not feel the urge to seek out any more in the series to see how it ends...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1985547.html[return][return]Classic children's books, which I had first read many years ago long before I got to know anhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1985547.html[return][return]Classic children's books, which I had first read many years ago long before I got to know and love Berlin, the city in which it is set. It's a very basic but charming story of the young and smart and good getting together to defeat the old and evil, and has not lost its charm - so popular that it was the only book by Kästner to escape the book-burning of May 1933. I had forgotten the scene-setting dramatis personæ at the beginning, and also Kästner's insertion of himself into the story at the end. Great fun.[return][return]I'm sorry to say that I wasn't convinced by W. Martin's new translation, supposed to appeal to the young reader of the twenty-first century. Berlin and Germany are foreign places anyway, and the 1920s a far-off time; why bother to rebrand our hero, Emil Tischbein as "Emil Tabletoes"? It seems if anything more jarring; surely kids even in these unenlightened times can cope with the notion that people in a book set in Germany might have German-sounding names? And rather than try to translate street names, I would have preferred a map showing where they all are (the Nollendorfplatz where the story climaxes is now in Berlin's gay district; that is optional information for the younger reader).[return][return]Having said that, there is a very nice introduction to this edition by Maurice Sendak, who had read an early (and possibly better) translation at the age of 10 in 1938....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]I liked this the most of the four; to save his friend, Hiccup must retrieve a mysterious veghttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2084956.html[return][return]I liked this the most of the four; to save his friend, Hiccup must retrieve a mysterious vegetable called a potato from a vicious neighbouring tribe who have found it in a new land to the west. The is a lot of humour about how America and the potato are actually taboo topics among the Vikings who ought not to have discovered them yet, and Camicazi is a welcome foil to Hiccup....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2024418.html[return][return]A classic children's novel, and a lovely heart-warming book about a young boy evacuated fromhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2024418.html[return][return]A classic children's novel, and a lovely heart-warming book about a young boy evacuated from an abusive mother in London to the English countryside as war gets under way in 1939, and how he and the widower on whom he is billeted find love, happiness, sadness and personal growth. One more or less knows what is going to happen from the setup, but there were a few unexpected twists, and some lovely lyrical set-pieces towards the end when the main narrative starts to slow down - thinking particularly of the seaside holiday chapter, and the introduction of the new art teacher in the supposedly haunted cottage. A real page-turner as well - I found myself lost in it, without necessarily racing through it. Strongly recommended....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2326000.html[return][return]2008: our heroes fly to the newly established Belgian base in Antarctica to investigate strahttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2326000.html[return][return]2008: our heroes fly to the newly established Belgian base in Antarctica to investigate strange goings on there (the story is therefore in part advance publicity for the actual base, which opened for business in 2009). As with De Apenkermis forty years earlier, the core sf element is meteoric radiation which causes animals to acquire human intelligence and makes them conspire to take over the world; as with Het Aruba-dossier, poor aunt Sidonia is sidelined from the story from the beginning and doesn't get to travel. Indeed, Suske and Wiske themselves are almost left behind and have to smuggle themselves into Antarctica. (This gives rise to one of several metatextual moments in the book, when Suske indignantly asks whose names are on the front cover anyway; at another point it is so cold that the speech bubbles freeze as they leave the characters' mouths.) I do admit that it is a bit cleverer and actually funnier than the other volumes I read, though the entire problem could have been solved pretty quickly by Jerome working to Professor Barabas's orders, with Suske, Wiske and especially Lambik just getting in the way (when Lambik gets hit by meteoric radiation, he suffers an explicitly Hulk-like transformation and gets in the way even more)....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2354109.html[return][return]I remembered this fondly from my childhood - it may even have been the first Tintin book I ehttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2354109.html[return][return]I remembered this fondly from my childhood - it may even have been the first Tintin book I ever read - and very much hoped that it would live up to my memories. I'm glad to say that it did, and if anything it works even better for me now that I have spent several years in the meantime being closely involved with Balkan politics, and also because I now know Brussels rather better than I did when I was 9. (Apparently it was the first Tintin story to be translated into English, though that was some time before I was taking much interest in these matters.)[return][return]The story is pretty straightforward - Tintin gets recruited by a Balkan culture expert to travel to the mysterious land of Syldavia, where he crucially averts a plot to deprive the young king of his throne, engineered by an internal revolutionary movement which is a proxy for the neighbouring dictatorship of Borduria. There are lots of lovely Balkan/Slavic touches - although Syldavian spelling is closer to Polish than to the Balkans, the towns clearly have minarets and Cyrillic is used; the landscape and army/police uniforms are clearly drawn from the Balkan kingdoms between the wars. The small countries of south-eastern Europe are an easy target, but sometimes this can be done well.[return][return]But in fact the Balkans are mere protective coloration for what Herg� was really writing about. The unusually realistic depictions of the Warandepark and Avenue Louise in the early pages give it away. King Ottokar, running a small democracy in fear of annexation by its authoritarian neighbour through a front organisation, is not (as I have heard some speculate) Michael of Romania, but a slightly romanticised Leopold III of Belgium. The Bordurian plot to invade Syldavia could have been based on the Gleiwitz incident, were it not for the fact that it was published in Le Petit Vingti�me in the summer of 1939, shortly before the Gleiwitz incident actually happened. Less than a year after Tintin En Syldavie had finished its original run, Belgium was occupied not by the sinister Bordurian activist M�sstler but by a bloke with a similar name.[return][return]And considering the general perception that Herg� was not exactly vigorous in resistance to Nazi occupation, it's a bit redemptive to see this story putting down a marker before it actually happened.[return][return]Also, given Tom McCarthy's speculation about Herg�'s ancestry, it's amusing that he draws himself into two of the court scenes...[return][return]This was a good jumping-off point for my lifelong affection for Tintin, and I think I would still recommend it as a starting point today for people who for whatever reason have never yet tried it. The best of the pre-war albums is The Blue Lotus, but to really enjoy it you have to have read the inferior Cigars of the Pharaoh first. King Ottokar's Sceptre works well as a standalone adventure. (Even without Captain Haddock.)...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2324318.html[return][return]A competent retelling for today's younger audience of the story of Aill�n the Burner from thhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2324318.html[return][return]A competent retelling for today's younger audience of the story of Aill�n the Burner from the Boyhood Deeds of Finn MacCool, enlivened by McGann's own illustrations....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2240682.html[return][return]A nice little book of scientific trivia for the younger reader, similar to the slightly lesshttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2240682.html[return][return]A nice little book of scientific trivia for the younger reader, similar to the slightly less genteel Why Is Snot Green? / How Loud Can You Burp? books. No big surprises, though it's interesting to note that nobody has yet discovered why yawns are so contagious....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1988089.html[return][return]Short kids' urban fantasy novel, somewhat sub-Diana Wynne Jones with added toilet humour; thhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1988089.html[return][return]Short kids' urban fantasy novel, somewhat sub-Diana Wynne Jones with added toilet humour; the sinister factory in the neighbourhood is responsible for the horrors of modern food, and our heroes destroy it with explosive pee....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2066748.html[return][return]It is rather good. Little Matilda has learned to read at a very young age; school and librarhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2066748.html[return][return]It is rather good. Little Matilda has learned to read at a very young age; school and library provide an intellectual refuge from her comically awful dysfunctional family; it turns out that dysfunctional family relationships are at work among the school staff as well; and there is a happy ending, brought about by Matilda's brief acquisition of psychic powers (slightly reminiscent of Henry Sugar). It is interesting to read a children's book where a terrible family background is actually mere coloration for the real story, rather than being awfully earnest about it all; yes, Matilda's parents are odious and the headmistress is a psychopath, but she looks for things in her life to enjoy, and enjoys them. Quentin Blake's illustrations, as ever, multiply the effect of Dahl's prose....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2137993.html[return][return]This was a Dahl that I think I missed out on when I was younger; a very short story of a boyhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2137993.html[return][return]This was a Dahl that I think I missed out on when I was younger; a very short story of a boy and his father, published in 1975 but surely set some decades earlier, in which the two launch a symbolic assault on the local capitalist's citadel by drugging and stealing all his pheasants. It turns out that the entire of the local community - doctor, vicar, policeman, midwife - are all in on the poaching scam, so Danny appears to be involved with a community uprising against the local autocrat. [return][return]But in fact this political interpretation may not be right: Mr Hazell's big crime is not being rich per se, but trying to impress people with his wealth; the worst things said of him involve him being rude to the villagers and trying to buy respect from other rich people. Hazell's flaws are his ego and lack of sincerity; Danny's father is completely genuine. So what at first seems an adventure story of a boy and a slightly older boy (his father) having a romp in the woods, and at second glance might be a political parable, is actually a moral tale of being true to yourself....more
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