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Love Books? Have Cell Phone? Earn Hundreds Of Dollars Searching For Used Books
Love Books? Have Cell Phone? Earn Hundreds Of Dollars Searching For Used Books
(ContentDesk) August 17, 2005 -- Daniel Eaton, Jr. makes several hundred dollars a week armed with just a cell phone as he combs thrift stores, used and discount bookstores and Friends of the Library sales looking for for BookSweep.com, an international retailer of used books.He's one of more than 800 of what BookSweep.com calls Professional Book Buyers (PBBs) scattered across the nation. And the company is looking for more just like him.The Book Buyers use their cell phones to look for used books. They place a call into the company's software system and then punch in the book's price plus its International Standard Book Number (ISBN) via the phone's key pad to see if the book is of value to the company. If yes, the PBB hears a "buy" order and he or she will receive from $1.50 to $2.50 commission for each book purchased. Book Buyers then pack up the and ship them at BookSweep's eShoppingMallpense to company headquarters in Utah."Many of our full-time Book Buyers are bringing in $500 or $600 a week, said Steve Jenson, 31, of Hyrum, Utah, BookSweep.com co-owner. "Most of our Book Buyers do this part time and make $100-$200. We have families who use it, single parents, students, full timers – all demographics have found it a great and easy way to make money."Book Buyers need have no eShoppingMallperience as booksellers. But a love of and used bookstores is helpful. Book Buyers are not BookSweep.com's employees, but are independent contractors. For more information, check out the company's Web site: www.booksweep.comIman Khatibn, 25, is one of BookSweep.com' many part-time Book Buyers. The Stockton, CA, resident looks for just three to four hours a week with her two young children by her side. She purchases and ships 50-100 a week to BookSweep.com, bringing in a minimum of $75 to more than $200 a week for less than half a day's work."BookSweep.com is the easiest and most enjoyable job a person could have," she said. "You can do it anywhere in the country and you don't have to pay a babysitter while you search because you can take your kids with you. You don't even need to work that many hours to make the money you want to make."Khatibn said she plans to grow her book buying work into a full-time income.Eaton, a former clerk at Barnes and Noble, already works 40-60 hours a week as a Book Buyer. About three-quarters of his gross income comes from BookSweep.com."I decided earlier this year that I wanted to find another business opportunity," he said. "I'd sold Star Wars collectibles off and on at eBay for a few years, but I decided to focus on when I discovered BookSweep.com because their system makes its so much easier find the books."Jenson and his friend Norm Poulsen, 30, of Boise, Idaho, started BookSweep.com in July 2004. The two former Utah State University buddies had been online booksellers for about five years prior to founding BookSweep.com, selling they found on Amazon.com, eBay and other sites. They brainstormed a way to bring the power of using Book Buyers nationwide to help them grow their inventory and hired a developer
through Utah State's Innovation Campus to create their BookSweep.com software.They started storing in the garage of the woman who is now their warehouse operations manager, but outgrew that space within a month. They then moved into a 2,200-square-foot warehouse, yet needed to eShoppingMallpand the warehouse in October 2004 to its current 5,000 square feet. They now house 35,000 and their accountant has valued their eight-employee company at close to $1 million, Jenson said.Contact:Steve Jenson/Norm Poulsenwww.booksweep.come-mail protected from spam bots / e-mail protected from spam bots435-760-9600 / 360-970-5903.
Extract: Just Henry by Michelle Magorian
An excerpt from the winner of this year's Costa children's book award
Book corner with Lucy Mangan: No 12: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/7583?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Book+corner&ch=Books&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Children+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CLife+and+style&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Lucy+Mangan&c7=2009_01_03&c8=1141342&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Children+and+teenagers&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong>No 12 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)</strong></p><p>Oh, the complete and utter agony of waiting for the next instalment of Tom's Midnight Garden. My beloved Mrs Pugh was reading it to us in brief, precious bursts every day before we had to put our chairs on tables ready for hometime. I therefore spent much of 1984 wishing a short, but painful, death on fellow 10-year-olds who kept delaying us by mucking about and cutting into the 25 minutes on which my day's happiness had come to depend.</p><p>Because the story of Tom Long, who is sent away to stay with relatives while his brother is ill, is exquisite. Lonely and bored, Tom discovers that when the grandfather clock in the communal hallway - on whose casing is carved the words from Revelation: "Time no longer" - strikes 13, the magnificent garden that once belonged to the house before it was carved up into flats is restored to it - along with the equally lonely Hatty who used to play there as a child and who becomes Tom's night-time companion. Tom gradually realises that he is returning to the 19th century, but it takes a visit from his brother to show him that time in the garden is moving on and Hatty is growing up. One night, he at last becomes as invisible to her. Soon after that, the garden disappears too and it is almost time for Tom to go home. </p><p>There is one last twist, which I am not going to spoil for you, partly because I cannot bring myself to rob you of its power and pleasure by baldly summarising it, and partly because if I had to learn, through Mrs Pugh's meagre apportionments, the painful lesson of deferred gratification, I am most certainly going to force the experience on to others too, wherever I can.</p><p>At the time, however, I was so firmly locked in a battle of wills with my teacher that I restrained myself from asking my father to buy the book for me so that I could read on ahead. But as soon as Mrs Pugh had turned the final page, I dragged him down to Dillons so that I could read the whole thing for myself - in one sitting, free from the desire to stab Darren Jones in the heart with his ever-clattering pencil - a process that yielded a better sense of the finely honed shape of the book and its careful, masterly pacing and let me linger over the beauty of the prose and the wealth of possibilities offered by its suggestion that the past and the present could merge into each other if only you knew where to look.</p><p>I have re-read it countless times since then. Within three pages, I am my 10-year-old self again. Within six, I am with Tom in his 1950s world and after that we are both in the Victorian garden again with Hatty and the yew trees and hedges that preceded and will outlast them all. Time no longer.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760196010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760196010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
On being branded a health hazard by the Daily Mail
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/61387?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+On+being+branded+a+health+hazard+by+the+Daily+Mail&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Booktrust+teenage+prize+%28Books%29%2CBooks%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CCulture+section%2CDaily+Mail&c5=Press+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Patrick+Ness&c7=2008_12_30&c8=1140432&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=blog&c13=&c14=Books+blog&h2=GU%2FBooks%2Fblog%2FBooks+blog" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>How does one properly react to being <a href="ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1101971/Childrens-books-violent-need-health-warning.html">labelled a hazard to public health</a> by the Daily Mail? Bemused laughter? Fatigued outrage? Gratitude for the compliment it almost certainly is? I do get the feeling I'm joining a rather long list.</p><p>Specifically, the Mail has said that books for teenagers such as my <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/14/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview11">The Knife of Never Letting Go</a> are "so violent they need a health warning", according to Dr Rona Tutt. That Dr Tutt ? about whose name I decline to make a single joke ? never actually says this is beside the point for the Mail, which typically loads the article with suggestive language to induce the moral outrage that one imagines its readers have come to expect, nay, demand. It even provides the usual out-of-context excerpt from my book to prove their point.</p><p>There follows ? this being the golden age of electronically democratic opinion ? the readers' comments, with the usual cris de coeur that the world is riven, simply <em>riven</em> with "general depravity", that this is the latest "nu Labour mind control" poisoning the vulnerable, that the publishing world is just a cabal built solely to reject the unrecognised novelistic brilliance of the specific commenter, etc.</p><p>But would responding even do any good? Isn't it just as easy for a Daily Mail reader to dismiss the Guardian as it is for a Guardian reader to dismiss the Daily Mail? Because in listing the comments, haven't I ignored everyone who ? though I may disagree with them ? at least tried to make a thoughtful point? </p><p>How easy for a Daily Mail reader to do the same on a Guardian blog ? to only see the comments about why this particular question was already answered years ago by a sci-fi masterpiece, about how this blog entry is pretty good except for the blatant lack of cedillas, about how the publishing world is just a cabal built solely to reject the unrecognised novelistic brilliance of the specific commenter, etc.</p><p>Naturally, I have a rebuttal to being branded a public health hazard by the Mail: that teenagers have <em>always</em> sought violent fiction, that when I recently judged a contest with entries written by teenagers every single story had a body count, that this is what it <em>is</em> to be a teenager ? body chemistry in violent disarray, emotions running high on every conceivable topic, all ultimately so exhausting that the only art you can possibly respond to is the repetitively cathartic, and that, most importantly of all, <em>you grow out of it</em> ? but I think there's a more important reason to not dismiss the Mail's casual outrage. </p><p>A pernicious and well-worn meme is at work here whereby much hay and profit can be made by playing on a fear of the young. When Amanda Craig, chair of judges for this year's Booktrust Teenage Prize (which I won), wrote a sensible <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1087686/Childrens-books-drenched-violence-If-fiction-.html">commentary</a> in the Mail about the perceived violence in the books up for the prize, it was accompanied not by photos of the shortlist, but with a recreation of the time Craig's house was robbed by hoodies. I'm not making this up. </p><p>We fear teenagers because we're told they're nothing but a violent, baggy-clothed mob who'll stab us for drug money while laughing about it on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/twitter">Twitter</a>. Aided and abetted by me, apparently, and the book what I wrote. But in my line of work, I meet rather a lot of them, and guess what? They're the same bright, smart, funny, serious and interested people they've always been, and constantly presenting them as either zoo animals to be locked away or innocent blank slates with no opinions of their own is far more damaging than (what I hope) is an honest portrayal of the circumstances and consequences of violence.</p><p>So, worth a response, but which one? I couldn't give a toss about being called a health hazard ? in the way of these things, it'll undoubtedly help me sell a few copies ? but the usual dismissal of the Mail as a cup of tea for Tory grannies doesn't feel right either, because an awful lot of people do actually read it. I even know some of them. How best to engage them, I wonder, to discuss and debate with no jerky knees on either side, but with nuanced facts and open minds? Is it possible? Or will it always be us versus them?</p><p>It's enough to make you want to write another book.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booktrustteenageprize">Booktrust teenage prize</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/dailymail">Daily Mail</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760283010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760283010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
JK Rowling number one in Christmas book charts
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/8727?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+JK+Rowling+bewitches+Christmas+book+charts&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Harry+Potter+%28Books%29%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture+section%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CPublishing+%28Books%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Alison+Flood&c7=2008_12_24&c8=1139015&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Harry+Potter&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FHarry+Potter" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Christmas stockings around the country will be bulging with the latest Midas-touched words from the pen of JK Rowling after her new offering The Tales of Beedle the Bard took the coveted slot of this year's Christmas number one in the book charts.</p><p>The title topped the charts by an unassailable margin of 64,000, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, selling almost 160,000 copies in the week to December 20 compared to just over 95,000 from the second-placed title. That was Dawn French's autobiography Dear Fatty, bought for a reported £2m in 2007, which saw off strong competition from fellow memoirists Paul O'Grady and Julie Walters, in fourth and fifth place respectively, to come in second. But although O'Grady's At My Mother's Knee - which only covers his childhood, stopping short of his years in showbiz - was trumped by French in the final week, Lily Savage's alter ego has the last laugh, selling 80,000-odd copies more than French over the autumn.</p><p>The battle of the Christmas cooks, meanwhile, has been decisively won by Nigella Lawson, who shot into third place overall from 20th the previous week, helped by the sumptuous spreads she concocted as part of her BBC2 series Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, which ran last week.</p><p>The rest of <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/charts/73322-official-uk-top-50.html" title="">the top 10</a> sees Michael Parkinson, Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson and Guinness World Records jostling for position lower down, while chick lit author Sophie Kinsella makes it in at number 10 with Remember Me?, just ahead of Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father in 11th place.</p><p>The highest literary fiction title in the charts is Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, which has sold well throughout the year, while Booker winner Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger languishes in 48th.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/harrypotter">Harry Potter</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction">Fiction</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/publishing">Publishing</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760330010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760330010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Jan Pienkowski, illustrator
Take a look at some favourite images from the works of legendary children's illustrator Jan Pienkowski
Interview: Jan Pienkowski
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/66060?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Meg%2C+Mog+and+other+monsters&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Children+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture+section&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Alison+Flood&c7=2008_12_22&c8=1137231&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Children+and+teenagers&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>It turns out that we have the coachman's wife to thank for the proliferation of witches ? including the much-loved Meg ? who appear throughout Jan Pienkowski's books.</p><p>Growing up on a farm in Poland before the war, Pienkowski's parents were "perpetually busy", and he was left in her care. She, ingeniously, persuaded the unwilling little boy to drink up his milk with the promise of hearing the denouement of a series of gruesome tales about a witch.</p><p>"I didn't mind milk but this had to be boiled, it was absolutely disgusting, I didn't like it," says Pienkowski. "So this poor lady hit on this great scheme, that she'd tell me these totally unsuitable stories, get to a cliffhanger ? and stop." He strokes the dog lying in his lap.</p><p>"I used to have terrible dreams, nightmares, of this witch, always chasing me and trying to put me in a pot," he continues, "and you know how you can't run in a dream, you sort of freeze? It was all like that." Pienkowski smiles at the memory, lounging in the windowseat of the riverside Hammersmith house where he has lived for 40 years. "I think in a way she gave birth to Meg, because I think Meg was really sublimating, isn't that the word? Taking this terrible monster from my childhood and making it into a harmless toy." (A harmless toy which, he doesn't add, has sold more than 3m copies in the UK alone.)</p><p>Shaggy-haired and scruffily dressed, he ushers the dog to the floor and leaps to his feet to collect an old copy of the first book he ever illustrated, Joan Aiken's A Necklace of Raindrops. "Here's the Polish version ? the Baba Jaga, who lives in a little house on a chicken's foot," he says, flicking through the pages until he finds a witch who would scare the bejesus out of the friendly, scatty Meg.</p><p>That dark thread runs deep in his latest outing, a Christmas cracker of an illustrated edition of The Nutcracker, translated by his long-term partner David Walser. Walser has returned to ETA Hoffman's original version, a 19th-century tale far more disturbing than Tchaikovsky's truncated ballet. It winds through the story of a royal family at war with the Mouse Queen, with a princess transformed by a curse into a "hideous creature ... her mouth was like a gash that stretched from ear to ear". She's rescued by a handsome young man who suffers a similar fate: turned into the Nutcracker, he is eventually rescued in turn by the heroine, Clara.</p><p>Pienkowski's cut-out silhouettes marry tinselly, glittery backgrounds evoking a 19th-century Christmas with the often-nightmarish images of the story ? the "monstrous mouse king with seven heads". He cuts them out in card, before scanning them in and manipulating them on a computer. Scary Godfather Drosselmeier arrives bedecked with spiderwebs to give the Nutcracker to Clara, the Nutcracker and Clara travel through the Land of Sweets (where we meet ? hurrah! ? the Sugar Plum Fairy) lit by a blazing, sparkly sun. The finale is a breathtaking multi-layered tableau complete with sweeping pines, icicles and Clara and her Nutcracker aboard a flying sleigh.</p><p>The biker-booted, spiky-haired, spidery figure of Drosselmeier emerged from the unlikely inspiration of a horde of goths, says Pienkowski. Sitting in the Rathauskeller in Leipzig, midway through a trip to Germany to get into the spirit of Hoffman's tale, he and Walser saw a goth convention gathering in the square. "There were all these people with black hair and black clothes, smartly dressed and very outlandish," he says with glee. "Extraordinary! Extraordinary."</p><p>Although they were wearing these "frightening clothes", they weren't at all frightening. "And really they were very beautiful clothes; obviously they'd gone to great trouble ... and it was charming. [And] I thought, that's how we'll do it, in that sort of gothic style." He opens a copy of the book and flicks through, pointing out the fitted clothes, the leggings, the buttoned, spurred boots. The fairytale turrets and snow-swept trees and sleighs, meanwhile, are all based on architecture from Saxony, with a nod to the snowy winters of his Polish upbringing.</p><p>Nut Cracker sees Pienkowski returning to the world of silhouettes he discovered almost accidentally with A Necklace of Raindrops. He had been working as a book-jacket and ad designer for a few different publishers, but the Aiken title was the first time he'd been commissioned to work on a book as a whole. Nervous about how his drafts were going to be received, he decided to black out the characters he'd drawn, leaving the rest of the picture in colour.</p><p>Reaching for the book again, he turns to a drawing of a group of characters perched on a flying pie. "Originally they were all proper people, then I said they're not good enough," he says with heartfelt, if misplaced, modesty.</p><p>He gestures to his own wonderfully craggy face. "You can see I haven't got English features, so in a way if you do [silhouettes] it makes it anonymous, not obviously wrong," he says. "Also, you can read into it your own interpretation." It's much less information than a "proper picture", he continues. "You only see the profile, so really it's all to do with movement, the movement expresses everything."</p><p>Pienkowski has lived in the UK for almost 65 years, and still calls himself an immigrant. In his lightly accented voice, he talks about his idyllic childhood in the Polish countryside, his "tiny medieval world" where the family grew everything they needed, down to the flax to make their sheets. He spent his summers climbing trees, swimming in the pond ? he jumps up again to fetch an album of photos showing the fox cubs the family found abandoned in the woods and brought home (there's also a picture of a tiny Jan wearing a fox-fur collar made after one of them died), the baby deer they raised. "I was very very lucky," he muses.</p><p>But the family was uprooted by the war, which sent them on a journey to Austria, Germany and Italy before finally depositing them in England in 1946. A nine-year-old Pienkowski, unable to speak a word of English, was sent off to boarding school by his father. "I thought it was cruel at the time, but now I think he did absolutely the right thing," says Pie?kowski, who picked up English quickly enough to pass his 11+, make it through the state system and eventually to King's College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and English.</p><p>He always wanted to be an artist, he continues. "I think from the start it never occurred to me that I'd do anything else." But at that time there wasn't the opportunity to study art at university. He tried to transfer to architecture, "the artiest thing there was", but received a resounding no from his tutor. So he threw himself into poster designs and sets for university productions ? also finding the time among his studies to co-found the greetings-card company Gallery Five ? then used the work he'd done at university to land himself a job at an ad agency when he left.</p><p>"I said I wanted to be in the art department, and they looked appalled and said, 'but you've got a degree! Only damaged people do art'," he chuckles.</p><p>Now he's a double winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal, once for his silhouette illustrations to Joan Aiken's The Kingdom Under the Sea, and once for his pioneering pop-up book Haunted House in 1980 (which all adults of the right age will remember as a childhood joy ? who can resist a crocodile popping out of the bath?).</p><p>The retelling of the Old Testament on which he's currently working looks like it could be another classic ? he's been travelling in the Middle East to make sure he gets the right feel for the project. He shows me a few of the spreads he's already drafted on the computer, and it's a return to a more Meg & Mog-ish kind of drawing, eschewing silhouettes for colour and vivacity. He's pleased with the picture he's come up with for the great flood, which will see Noah standing at the door to the ark, refusing to let the dinosaurs on board because they're not on the list.</p><p>But now he's got to get back to work. There are drawings to be done, exhibitions to be sorted out, godchildren ? of which it sounds like there are hordes ? to buy Christmas presents for. He and Walser show me out, dog dancing around their feet. They wave from the doorstep, a tableau Christmassy enough to put even Scrooge in the festive spirit.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=(none)&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760378010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760378010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Short story: The Christmas wish by children's writer Rhiannon Lassiter, author of Bad Blood
Hate Christmas? Rhiannon Lassiter, author of teenage favourites Bad Blood and Hex, has a festive short story of revenge
Book corner with Lucy Mangan: No 10: The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (1950-56)
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/28565?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Book+corner&ch=Books&c3=The+Guardian&c4=CS+Lewis%2CLife+and+style%2CFamily+%28Life+and+style%29%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CFamily+and+Relationships&c6=Lucy+Mangan&c7=2008_12_20&c8=1136953&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=CS+Lewis&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FCS+Lewis" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong>No 10 The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (1950-56)</strong></p><p>A certain mother of my acquaintance has just informed me, as we flicked through the bumper Christmas Radio Times like the vibrant social butterflies that we are, that she would let her children watch the film scheduled to appear over the festive season but would never buy them the books "because of the Christianity and misogyny in them". The celluloid versions she trusts to be less injurious to infant psychic health.</p><p>Let us deal with the terrible spectre of Christianity first. I'll be honest with you. I do have one friend who got about halfway through her first perusal, at the age of nine or 10, of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, turned to her mother and said: "This is about Jesus, isn't it?" But she was the offspring of two vicars (long story) and I suspect at that time was probably seeing Jesus in her cornflakes.</p><p>I myself was about 14 and ploughing through the very last pages of the final volume in the Narnia series, The Last Battle, when the Pevensies return to stay for ever in the magical land after they are killed in a train crash and only then did I feel an inkling that something funny was going on.</p><p>I've been allergic to allegory ever since, but I still make an exception for CS Lewis (who, incidentally, claimed they were not allegorical at all) - or his first six books at least. Because the tale of Lucy Pevensie discovering the secret world beyond the wardrobe door is a story about courage, loyalty, generosity, sacrifice and nobility versus greed, conceit, arrogance and betrayal. You can call the former Christian virtues, or you can just call them virtues and let the kids concentrate on the self-renewing Turkish delight, magically unerring bows and periodic Bacchanalian rites in the forest. The risk of them haring off in search of their own Aslan-a-like is, I assure you, minimal.</p><p>As for misogyny, this charge always seems to be based on a disdainful reference in The Last Battle to elder sister Susan succumbing to the lure of face powder and stockings. But her brother adds regretfully, "She always was in too much of a rush to grow up." This is not an objection to femininity - it is the author sorrowing over the passing of innocence, making the lament that to wish childhood away is, Christian or not, a terrible sin. </p><p>The books are a heaving mass of medieval poetry, fairytale, folktale, Celtic, Norse and classical myth, legend and scholarship filtered through the imagination of an Oxford don. The films are perfectly acceptable, denatured, deracinated pablum, filtered through Disney's bean counters. I'm going to break every DVD I see in that wilfully impoverished house.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/cslewis">CS Lewis</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/family">Family</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760458010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760458010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Review: The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/68508?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+The+Magic+Thief&ch=Books&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Books%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CCulture+section%2CScience+fiction%2C+fantasy+and+horror+%28Books+genre%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Mary+Hoffman&c7=2008_12_20&c8=1136910&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Children+and+teenagers&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Orphan boy with unexplored and unexpected magical powers goes to wizard school, where the headteacher is called Brumbee - does this ring any bells? You might think so, but you'd be wrong. Although there are some superficial similarities to a much better-known series of books, Sarah Prineas's trilogy about Conn the apprentice promises to be something new.</p><p>The title is nicely ambiguous: Conn both attempts to steal magic and is a professional thief with unrecognised supernatural powers. The book begins with his tracking of a possible victim, who turns out to be the wizard Nevery, returning to the city of Wellmet at a time of crisis. Conn knows nothing about this; he is just a street kid living on his wits who picks Nevery's pocket in a dark alley. </p><p>But what he has dipped is the wizard's "locus magicalicus" - the stone that every wizard must have, which finds him by telepathy and contains much of his power. By rights Conn should be blasted into next week by the stone, but he seems curiously impervious to it, which is what interests Nevery. The boy immediately realises that he will have a much cushier billet as a wizard's apprentice - even if it does mean attending the "academicos" - than fending for himself, especially now that the Overlord of the thieves' underworld has put the word out on him.</p><p>It's a strong start, and Conn's adventures rattle along, interspersed with extracts from Nevery's diary, which reveals that Wellmet is leaking magic the way Icelandic banks lose krónur and that the wizard has been called back from exile by Brumbee as the only person strong enough to reverse the ebb. Rowan, daughter of Wellmet's ruling duchess, has been put in charge of Conn at the academicos, and she is worried about the magic leaving the city.</p><p>Conn is more concerned about finding his own personal locus magicalicus, for which he has been given a time limit of 30 days - the academicos has been stretching a point in letting him enrol without one. Towards the end of his month's period of grace, Conn finds himself at the duchess's Dawn Palace and feels his stone calling to him from a ballroom full of people dressed in their best evening clothes, including women wearing fabulous jewels . . .</p><p>My favourite character - and apparently the writer's, too - is a heavy called Benet, who is taken on by Nevery to provide muscle in his old home in Wellmet. He's the kind of knuckle-dragger whose usual form of communication is the grunt, but he turns out to have an unexpected talent for knitting and makes Conn a warm black sweater. Conn, Nevery and Benet make an odd trio, living together on a diet of bacon and biscuits - which might puzzle the young British reader, but Prineas is American, and what she calls a biscuit we would recognise as a sort of savoury scone. Quirky of Quercus not to change it for UK publication.</p><p>There are other linguistic oddities, especially at the beginning, where Prineas goes in for coinages such as "loom-doomed" and "all-tall", but these are mercifully dropped once the story gets going. Cod Latin, whether at Hogwarts or anywhere else, is best not attempted ("locus magicalicus" is a clunky expression that grates in its wrongness on anyone with a classical education, but that won't include most eight to 12-year-olds). </p><p>Quibbles aside, this is a pleasingly fresh and pacy take on some much-visited themes, which will leave readers eager to know what happens next. The aptly named Conn surely has many more tricks up his sleeve.</p><p>? Mary Hoffman's The Falconer's Knot is published by Bloomsbury.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror">Science fiction, fantasy and horror</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760508010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760508010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Guardian book club: Guardian book club: The Snowman and Father Christmas, by Raymond Briggs
Review: The Snowman and Father Christmas, by Raymond Briggs Raymond Briggs on Father Christmas's terrible job
Are the Newbery Medal judges out of touch with their readers?
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/37941?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Are+the+Newbery+Medal+judges+out+of+touch+with+their+readers%3F&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Books%2CCulture+section%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Sarah+Weinman&c7=2008_12_19&c8=1136613&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=blog&c13=&c14=Books+blog&h2=GU%2FBooks%2Fblog%2FBooks+blog" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>If you are a children's book author in the US, chances are that you've dreamed of winning the <a href="http://www.ala.org/alsc/newbery.cfm">Newbery Medal</a>. It's been the country's most prestigious honour for children's literature since its inception in 1922, with winners including Louis Sachar, Beverly Cleary, EL Konigsburg and Madeleine L'Engle. At a time when books for children have never had a more visible presence (thank you Ms Rowling and Ms Meyer), winning a Newbery can go a long way to cementing one's place within the genre's canon.</p><p>But then Anita Silvey encountered a librarian just before the announcement of this year's Newbery winner (Laura Amy Schlitz's Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village) who grumbled about "what unreadable Newbery the committee was going to foist on us this year". She began to wonder if the Newbery had lost its way, choosing books that were overtly literary in tone and fixated on subjects like death and the loss of a parent, while neglecting the idea that it should be about reaching out to as many readers as possible.</p><p>The more Silvey polled experts, the more <a href="http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6600688.html">disheartening the results</a>. The Newbery of old could guarantee sales of books like Sachar's Holes (1996) or Lois Lowry's The Giver (1994), but now children are more discerning ? less intrigued by Newbery winners and more interested in classics like the Narnia books or contemporary books like Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl novels. Even Silvey had to conclude that "most of these [recent] selections have moved away from the spirit and philosophy of those who established the award."</p><p>Naturally, when established wisdom is challenged, debate follows, and this week <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121503293_2.html"> Pat Scales</a>, president of the Association for Library Service to Children (which gives out the Newbery Medal), defended its record and methods in the Washington Post.</p><p>"The criterion has never been popularity," he said. "It is about literary quality. We don't expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?"</p><p>That statement can be interpreted in two ways, neither of them flattering to the Newbery judges. If "literary quality" means exclusivity or a limited appeal, then by definition it chooses to reward books that will never have a mass appeal, or happen to have one by accident. The more troubling interpretation stems from equating children's book habits with adults', because at a time when young people are increasingly bombarded with alternatives to reading ? be it video games, instant messaging, social networking and, of course, old-fashioned television ? is it really in the Newbery's best interest to cut off their nose to spite their face?</p><p>Still, the fact that recent Newbery choices are fostering wide-ranging discussion in the children's book world can only be a good sign ? just in time for the next winner to be named in January. And even if many still scratch their heads over how instant classic Charlotte's Web lost out the 1953 honour to The Secret of the Andes, the storms surrounding the Newbery pale in comparison to the uproar in the world of children's literature over one <a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3599732.ece">Katie Price</a>.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760561010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760561010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
JK Rowling's Beedle the Bard becomes fastest-selling title of 2008
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/28396?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+JK+Rowling%27s+Beedle+the+Bard+becomes+fastest-selling+title+of+2008&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=JK+Rowling+%28Author%29%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture+section%2CHarry+Potter+%28Books%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Alison+Flood&c7=2008_12_17&c8=1135664&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=JK+Rowling&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FJK+Rowling" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>JK Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard has been selling at a rate of two copies a second around the world, according to the first international sales figures for the book of fairy tales, released today.</p><p>The book, a slim collection of five stories set in the world of Rowling's creation Harry Potter, has sold 2.6m copies worldwide since it was published on 4 December, raising £4.2m for the charity Rowling co-founded, the Children's High Level Group, which works with vulnerable children in central and eastern Europe.</p><p>Rowling today thanked everyone who had bought a copy of the book. "I am absolutely delighted that so much money has been raised," she said. "All royalties will be going to help children without families, many of them with disabilities, whose voices have been unheard for many years."</p><p>The book shot to the top of the UK's book charts immediately after publication, selling over half a million copies in its first 10 days on sale, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan. This put it streets ahead of the other titles contending for Christmas number one, including Paul O'Grady and Dawn French's autobiographies, and Guinness World Records.</p><p>The charity's chief executive Richard Alderslade said he hoped The Tales of Beedle the Bard would remain at the top of the charts until Christmas. "We had no idea what to expect in terms of sales figures so we are thrilled by such impressive sales in the first week alone," he said. "Each time someone opens a copy of Beedle this Christmas or gives it as a gift, they will be making a difference to the life of a vulnerable child living not so very many miles away."</p><p>Reviews for the book - which had a worldwide print run of eight million copies - ranged from the Telegraph's view that the collection "would be unremarkable were it not for the body of work that lies behind it", to John Mullan in the Guardian, who felt that "Rowling's inventiveness and humour" were not quite suited to the fairy story genre. In the Times, however, Amanda Craig thought the stories "could have come new-minted from the Brothers Grimm", while USA Today advised its readers to "dump the Xanax" in favour of picking it up. "This charming little book is the best anti-anxiety medication on the market. Under the Bard's spell, readers will forget at least briefly the tsunami of bad news and find themselves happy and entertained," it wrote.</p><p>The strong sales are also a boost for a books market which has been struggling in the run-up to Christmas, with book chain Waterstone's reporting a decline in sales in what it described as "a very challenging book market" last week.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jkrowling">JK Rowling</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/harrypotter">Harry Potter</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760604010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760604010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Lauren Child's Unesco storytelling mission
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/26956?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Lauren+Child%27s+Unesco+storytelling+mission&ch=Books&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Children+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture+section&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Michelle+Pauli&c7=2008_12_17&c8=1135529&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Children+and+teenagers&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>"Wherever you go, children are children," says Lauren Child, the bestselling author, illustrator and creator of the near-ubiquitous sibling picture book characters Charlie and Lola.</p><p>Child should know. This weekend in Paris she was inaugurated as a Unesco Artist for Peace in recognition of her work with the organisation's Programme for the Education of Children in Need. She has spent the last 18 months travelling to Unesco projects that provide education to vulnerable children around the world, from Mexico to Mongolia. </p><p>The result is My Life Is a Story, a project to document the lives of some of these children and to share their stories with others via a typically bright and cheerful website. </p><p>"What appeals to me on the level as a writer," says Child of her travels, "is that you see the connections between children ? the similarities as well as the differences. You realise that they have so much in common, and we'd really like to connect children with each other."</p><p>One of the projects Child was particularly affected by was Renacimiento Children's Shelter, a centre for street children in Mexico City. It provides around 70 orphans and runaways with not only food and a place to sleep but also education and useful skills such as carpentry and baking. </p><p>"The street children said they wanted to be connected to other children in the world and feel normal and be seen like any other child. They were curious about what children in the UK, for example, do," explains Child. "We thought about that and decided that it would be really nice to get children from happier backgrounds or who don't have such extreme problems but do have things they are also concerned about, and to have them talking on the website as well."</p><p>So the children in Mexico have been given small cameras so that they can create collages of "home" ? "we are interested to find out what home means to them as there are so many different ways to have a family or home," Child says ? while Child and her Unesco partner Ben Faccini plan to visit schools in the UK and pair them up with schools and orphanages abroad, so the children can get to know each other. </p><p>Child is also hopeful that the UK schools may be inspired to raise money to help their Unesco counterparts. She enthusiastically gives the example of a school in west London that became interested in the Renacimiento project and held "Mexican days" to dress up and learn about the country, while fundraising at the same time. The money raised paid for the children's dormitory to be refurbished.</p><p>"It's not so much money you need to raise in order to make an enormous difference ? the children get photos back showing where their efforts went and it becomes very personal. We want it to be personal rather than sending money into oblivion, to be something that's not abstract but feels very local to you," Child says.</p><p>Her own fundraising is focused on a special edition of her award-winning picture book That Pesky Rat, where author and publisher profits will be donated to the Unesco programme. Her popular tale of a scrawny, unloved street rat who dreams of finding a home has a new introduction describing Unesco's educational work, and highlighting some of the children's life stories.</p><p>Although best known for her Charlie and Lola picture books, with the characters now licensed to the BBC and a production company, and for her longer stories featuring Clarice Bean, Child felt that Pesky Rat was the "perfect fit" for the street children project. </p><p>"It is also really useful as it's about an animal," she adds, "so there are no issues about whether a child is white or black. It can talk more universally about the subject, and children understand it everywhere."</p><p>Child sounds genuinely delighted with her Unesco role. "It's an amazing thing to be asked to do because it is such an opportunity to see things from other points of view so I feel very lucky in that way," she says. "It's really fascinating to go and meet people from different countries and get to talk to those children and see how they live and hear about their experiences. I always find it fascinating how children express themselves and tell you things, so this is a real privilege to be able to hear it up close."</p><p>As a prolific author, and with sales of over 3m books in more than 19 countries, she is also pleased that it is a long-term project that still allows her time to write and draw - unlike the children's laureateship for which her name has been mentioned after Michael Rosen finishes the current stint next summer. "That would be unbelievably hard work and I don't think they'd ask me and I don't think I'd be ready for it either," she says firmly. </p><p>As it is, she has just finished a new picture book which will be published next year - Who Wants To be a Poodle? ? and is starting a completely new series of novels about a girl detective. And, in between her own storytelling, she plans to continue to travel the world, listening to children tell their stories. "My Life Is a Story is about listening as much as fundraising," she explains. "You have to listen to people first and hear what they have to say, and particularly children who don't usually have much of a voice, in order to understand what they have to cope with."</p><p><em>Unesco Artists for Peace are internationally renowned personalities who help promote the agency's message and programmes. Other Artists for Peace include the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev; the Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil; British singer Shirley Bassey; Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez; and Miyako Yoshida, a Japanese dancer.</em></p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760636010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760636010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Children's audio round-up: George and the Dragon | The Snowman | Melrose and Croc Together at Christmas | Keeper
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/75831?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Children%27s+audio+round-up&ch=Books&c3=The+Observer&c4=Audiobooks%2CChildren+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CCulture+section%2CBooks%2CRoundup+review+%28Books%29%2CObserver&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Rachel+Redford&c7=2008_12_14&c8=1133721&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Audiobooks&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FAudiobooks" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781862306455#">George and the Dragon</a></strong></p><p>Chris Wormell<br />Read by Brian Blessed (Red Fox £7.99)</p><p>The awesome red dragon knocks down castles with a flick of his tail and carries off maidens in his massive jaw - until a lonely mouse called George moves into the cave next door. </p><p><strong><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780141501710">The Snowman</a></strong></p><p>Raymond Briggs<br />Read by Andrew Sachs (Puffin £7.99)</p><p>This irresistible set contains Briggs's book with pictures from the film and a story CD which includes the 'Walking in the Air' song and a read-along version. Still magical after more than 25 years.</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780007259410">Melrose and Croc Together at Christmas</a></strong></p><p>Emma Chichester Clark<br />Read by Emilia Fox (HarperCollins £7.99)</p><p>'There's no point in having a tree, just for me,' says Melrose the yellow dog sadly. Meanwhile, not far away, little Green Croc is sheltering from the snow, a tear falling from his eye... A perfect Christmas story of friendship and love. </p><p><strong><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781406310290">Keeper</a></strong></p><p>Mal Peet<br />Read by James Goode, Unabridged 6hrs 24mins (Walker Books £19.99)</p><p>El Gato is the World Cup's greatest goalkeeper and this is his amazing story: of a poor South American logger's son tutored by the supernatural football coach who lives in the heart of the forest. Suitably spooky narration.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audiobooks">Audiobooks</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/roundupreviews">Roundup reviews</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760693010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760693010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
Roundup review: A fine crop of Christmas picture books
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/21495?ns=guardian&pageName=Books%3A+Santa%27s+little+helpers+earn+their+spurs&ch=Books&c3=The+Observer&c4=Children+and+teenagers+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture+section%2CRoundup+review+%28Books%29%2CChristmas+%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CObserver&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CChristmas&c6=Kate+Kellaway&c7=2008_12_14&c8=1133720&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Books&c12=Children+and+teenagers&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FChildren+and+teenagers" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>There is nothing less festive, in the world of children's picture books, than titles designed to cash in on Christmas. They jangle rather than jingle. But this year, the delightfully inexplicable truth is that, after excluding the usual suspects, I came across a handful of Christmas plums that actually succeed in what they set out to achieve. The cover of <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781406303445 ">A Present for Father Christmas</a> (Walker Books £9.99) by Dana Kubick, story by David Wood, looks conventional enough, with Santa in glittery red uniform riding through the skies with standard-issue reindeer. But the proof of the Christmas pudding must, always, be in the reading.</p><p>In my family, we all exclaimed over this pop-up book, not least because it has a great story (most pop-ups do little more than pop). And as I read it, I wished I had thought of the story myself. It is fresh and yet has a pleasing inevitability about it. It's about a little boy called Sam who decides that Father Christmas needs to be given a present. Sam saves his pocket money and then, come December, is plausibly stumped (in the same way that many of us are about what to give our fathers). On the night that Father Christmas visits, Sam has the money but no gift. Yet Father Christmas is touched by the boy's loving intentions and takes Sam off to do work experience with him. The tale moves nicely along, like an expertly driven sleigh, and carries its agreeably anti-materialistic moral lightly - 'helping' is more precious than any shop-bought gift.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781906250201 ">I'm Not Santa!</a> by Jonathan Allen (Boxer Books £11.99) made me laugh out loud. It stars a baby owl who heads out in the snow wearing a Santa hat and pulling a rather elementary sledge. He meets a baby hare who mistakenly identifies him as Father Christmas. The Yuletide identity crisis that follows is hilarious - with both babies crying their eyes out (as is the way of babies at Christmas time). The simple comedy of the book, the double tantrum and the merry illustrations are all a delight. For two-year-olds and their long-suffering minders.</p><p>I am sure Dickens would have approved of every one of Quentin Blake's illustrations in <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781843651215 ">A Christmas Carol </a>(Pavilion £12.99). Quentin Blake's Scrooge is, as you would expect, a pale and spiky eccentric. He looks miserable counting out his gold coins. It is irresistible to flip through to the end of the book for the full 'before and after' effect. But I particularly liked Blake's take on the 'ghost of Christmas past' - a young damsel in a party frock with monstrously extended arms and a huge bunch of holly, raised high like a weapon or a Christmas warning. One for all the family.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780141502090 ">Dear Father Christmas</a> by Jeanne Willis and Rosie Reeve (Puffin £7.99) is an amusing confection of a book that would make a nice present for a child on Christmas Eve - not least because it ends with space for a letter to Santa, and comes with lots of sprightly stickers to cheer up the old bloke. </p><p>The story begins with an unnervingly scheming little girl, trying to do a deal with Father Christmas: 'Dear Father Christmas, I've been very very good ... ' Whether we believe in her virtue or not, her requests are brilliantly peculiar - such as wishing for a wand to bring her snowman to life, and a spray to see off monsters. But she has a special relationship with Father Christmas - one that I will keep under my Christmas hat. Suffice it to say that she - like Sam in the first book - has a particularly good reason to want to be one of his little helpers.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksforchildrenandteenagers">Children and teenagers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/roundupreviews">Roundup reviews</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/christmas">Christmas</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760735010609321740703"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Books&country=usa&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=1231233760735010609321740703" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a>
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