Operation Bunny by Sally Gardner

Many of you will be familiar with the name Sally Gardner, if only for all the recent media coverage for her recent book from Hot Key Books, Maggot Moon, and the huge discussions about dyslexia that surrounded its publication. You may also know her from the hugely successful I, Coriander. But did you know she also has a nice line in middle grade fiction too?

You might not, as she's been a bit quiet on that front recently, but with Operation Bunny she has hopped (excuse the pun) back onto the wagon to produce a totally mad, funny, and exciting little gem.

 Our heroine, Emily Vole, hits the headlines when she is discovered in a hat box at Standsted Airport and very nearly blown up as a suspect package. That doesn't deter the spoilt and deliciously grotesque Daisy Dashwood, who with her indulgent husband, Ronald, adopts Emily and starts to raise her as her own child. There wouldn't have been much of a story if things had stayed there, but, of course, Daisy soon discovers she's pregnant and when her triplets arrive, Emily is relegated to the role of skivvy and general dogsbody.

At this point there are nods towards Harry Potter (Emily's bed is an ironing board in the laundry room) and Lemony Snicket (ludicrously gothic characters who are as charming as they are ghastly) which might raise a wry eyebrow in the well-read but never degenerate into plagiarism. Then Emily meets the strange old lady from next door and her even stranger cat, and things start to get seriously silly. There's a bird-clawed witch with a propensity for turning people into bunnies of assorted hues, an irritable fairy and the cat, who's called Fidget, talks and walks on his hind legs. And there's a quest!

This is wonderful stuff. It moves fast, has a cast of gloriously awful villains, fairies, witches and bright pink bunnies. And it's illustrated with spiky black and white drawings by David Roberts that conjure up the characters in all their barmy glory. What more could you want?

This is the first in a series which will have Emily, Fidget and Buster (the irritable fairy) solving further cases for Wings & Co, the fairy detective agency, bringing, I am sure, lots more fantastic villains and equally fantastical stories for us to enjoy. If you have a 7+ year old who likes fun, then this would be a great little gift, and who know, might even get the odd reluctant reader interested too.

The lovely people at Orion Books provided this review copy. If you would like to get your own please click through from here and Amazon will kindly send a small contribution towards maintaining this blog.


 
 

Diamonds and Doom by Marcus Sedgwick

So, sad schmuck that I am, I only get to find out about Marcus Sedgwick's younger reader series The Raven Mysteries when the last one comes out. Not sure how that happened, but if like me you're new to these books then dive in quick because, if Diamonds and Doom is anything to go by, they are a laugh out loud riot.

Castle Otherhand is up for sale. Minty, Lord Valevine, Solstice, Cudweed and even Fellah are at their wit's end. Chaos and catastrophe reign, and there's only hours left to get rid of a mystical space time vortex tungummy, save everyone from whatever is roaming the corridors, and find a squillion or two in cash. To a noble, sulky and grumpy  raven of Edgar's abilities that almost presents a challenge worth getting out of bed for.

Diamonds and Doom starts with Edgar the Raven,the usual narrator, away on his regular, once every twelve years, two week 'holiday' and Soltice discovering that the family have run out of money leading to the banks putting the castle up for sale. We know this from Solstice's 'completely secret and totally private diary' which is quoted in full at the start of the book. Edgar soon returns to take control and is shocked to find, not only that the castle is to be sold but that a younger, more athletic, raven called Rob has appeared and is vying for Solstice's affections. And after that all hell lets loose.

Now you wouldn't think it would work would you? A raven narrator bemoaning the presence of a younger raven and getting all jealous and sulky. But then again, there's noting particularly believeable about anything that happens in Castle Otherhand. Minty, Solstice's mother, is a witch and Lord Valevine is a sort of dotty and incompetent inventor. Then there's the Solstice's little brother, Cudweed, whose need for food seriously compromises Solstices effort to use her mother's spell book, and a small cast of assorted other odds and bods. So when Solstice's food smeared spell goes wrong, setting off the aforementioned 'mystical space time vortes thingummy', you sort of expect that some seriously weird stuff is going to happen.

And it does. There are jelly staircases (something to do with Cudweed's snack?), and a space monster, people turning to stone, an upsidedown room, a room full of sheep riding motorbikes and just about anything else that you care to imagine. And, boy, oh boy, it works.

Sedgwick's style has a lot to do with it, of course. He sucks you in with his conspiratorial, chatty prose. It's easy to read, funny and exciting and so when the weird stuff happens, you just accept Edgar's take on it and move on. But then there are the spectacular illustrations by Pete Williamson as well. These are part Nightmare Before Christmas, part naive cut-outs and they work brilliantly. 

This is gothic humour for kids of the highest order and I for one will be looking for the other five books in the series the nest time I'm in a bookshop.

 The lovely people at Orion Books provided this review copy. If you would like to get your own please click through from here and Amazon will kindly send a small contribution towards maintaining this blog.