Forget climate change — a new eco-disaster threatens, reports the Lamonical Chronicle (the online offshoot of Andy Stanton’s Mr Gum series, published by Egmont). According to the Chronicle, space-squirrels are building huge sponges to dry up our oceans and gigantic scissors to cut off the tops of our mountains and steal the ice-cream inside. Read more at www.mrgum.co.uk
“You come from the slums. The slums are different,” Kitty Wintrob was told by a posh countryside resident, when she was evacuated from London’s East End. And Kitty agrees: “The slums were warm and lovely. Not like here.” I’m Not Going Back (Now & Then Books, £12) is Kitty’s memoir, written in a direct style that will appeal to children from age eight, as well as adults. Despite moving from her Stepney home with its outside toilet to much more comfortable country households, 10-year-old Kitty is miserable. One foster mother expects her to do the charring, another makes her eat with the maid.
The details are absorbing — the makeshift schools, the East End Seder, the pickle lady fishing a herring from the barrel, her fingers “red as beets from the cold and from wiping them dry on her apron”. Wintrob gets completely inside her young personality — we feel Kitty’s embarrassment when her parents visit, bringing her foster family a paltry gift of boiled sweets, while her co-evacuee’s shmatter-trade parents give rolls of material.
Also far from home is Little Mole, in June Morley’s Little Mole and the Fading Sun, (Walker, £6.99), which won Morley the 2007 creative-writing competition run by The Works. The prize was publication, but The Works went into administration and it was only after a two-year rescue by private-equity firm, Endless, that the book made it into print.
Between 1972 and 1982, thousands of Israeli airforce planes were hit and 33 damaged severely, with one pilot killed — not by hostile fire, but by birds.
Most accidents happened during migration, so ornithologist Yossi Leshem set out to map the birds’ routes.
His story is told in The Man Who Flies With Birds, by the Carole Garbuny Vogel and Yossi Leshem (Kar-Ben, £12.99).
The well-laid-out hardback is packed with photos, maps and fact boxes, answering such questions as “how do birds know when to migrate?” and “how come they don’t get lost?”. Age eight upwards, ideal for engaging kids who are reluctant to read fiction.
Lost in the woods, Mole hitches a lift on Hedgehog (with no apparent discomfort) but Hedgehog becomes tired, so they both hitch a lift on Badger. Then Badger becomes tired…
A series of “lifts” from ever-larger animals gives satisfying progression and repetition. A minimum £1,000 donation from total sales will go to Book Aid International, promoting literacy in the developing world.
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