Top 10 Books for Reluctant and Dyslexic Readers

Book lists are always good, and books to encourage reluctant readers are even better. This is a great list published in The Guardian last month of the Top 10 Books for Reluctant and Dyslexic Readers. It is taken from an even larger guide to tempt reluctant readers, Dive In, from dyslexiaaction.org.uk.

The Guardian article includes great descriptors for each book, make sure you click through to the original list.


Ruby the Red Fairy - Daisy Meadows

Horrid Henry Robs the Bank - Francesca Simon

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Jeff Kinney

Dork Diaries - Rachel Renee Russell

Goth Girl - Chris Riddell

Stormbreaker - Anthony Horowitz (review coming soon)

Brock - Anthony McGowan (see my review)

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan

The Recruit - Robert Murchamore

The Enemy - Charlie Higson

2/10

I just had to order Brock despite never having heard of it before, as the concept of a story about badger baiting was too much to resist.

April 2015 now 3/10

Mr Leon's Paris

I was very excited to receive Mr Leon's Paris recently. It was an unexpected gift bestowed by Emma from WordsandPeace, after I won the prize for contributing to the 2014 Books on France Reading Challenge. I had a $15 gift voucher to spend. Of course, I picked yet another book about Paris. I'd never heard of this book before, but loved the cover on sight. Soon, with Emma's generosity it was mine. Imagine my unexpected joy to find a signed copy (by both Author and Translator) before me!

Mr Leon is a Parisian taxi driver, about to retire, and looking back on his thirty years in the game, and all his memorable fares.

It is a cute book about finding a world, and many adventures inside my favourite city. It all turns out to be a riff on fun Parisian street names.

They do sound much more charmant in French than in English of course, which really made me wonder about the French language original. I'm more than curious about that now. I'd never heard of author/illustrator Barroux before, it's always nice to have your boundaries stretched, even by little picture books.

One possibly slight annoyance. Mr Leon says "But I'm always snug inside my yellow car", later calling it canary yellow.

But it's clearly orange, not yellow. Why print it like that? Or is it the translation? Another reason to buy the original in French.

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog 

French Bingo 2015

Lynley Dodd A Retrospective at the State Library of NSW

I had a brief summer break in Sydney last month. It was a lovely few days. I had a relaxing time, but got out and about to see a few things too. The State Library of NSW often has really interesting exhibitions in the Mitchell wing. I'd never been able to get to one before. This day I made time to go see the Lynley Dodd Retrospective. It was great.

You might reasonably expect this to be Major Mitchell.
It's not. It's General Sir Richard Bourke. 

You have to look on the explorer door for

Major Mitchell.

Ah, there he is..

It's a beautiful building inside and out. 

A peek into the reading room.

Gorgeous stained glass

Modern Artworks

Hairy Maclary was there to lead the way 

Lynley Dodd has been writing children's books since the 1970s
and is still working today

Our favourite cats 

and dogs show the way in

The exhibition was originally shown in
Tauranga Art Gallery in 2011

There's lots of great ways to get the kids involved

You can find traces of Paris everywhere if you try
An illustration from My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes

Lynley Dodd is a classically trained artist

More ways to get the kids involved

The first ever sketch of Hairy Maclary
from 1979

Exhibitions like this are always fabulous to see the amount of work that goes into producing a children's picture book. 

The 11th (!) draft for Slinki Malinki Catflaps

There were two other exhibitions on this day, all very close, and easy to drift from one to another (all free).

I caught the last day of this incredible photography exhibition
Pictures of Australian WWI soldiers taken by a French couple

There's also a fascinating permanent collection

Lynley Dodd: A Retrospective

Until 15 March 2015

Monday - Wednesday, Friday 9-5

Thursday 9-8

Saturday/Sunday 10-5

Free admission

Saturday Snapshot is a wonderful weekly meme now hosted by WestMetroMommy

See Ya, Simon

I always mean to read more Kiwi books than I do- actually I could leave Kiwi out of that sentence and it would still be true. Each February though I celebrate Waitangi Day with a NZ 1001 book. There's been some cracking reads so far. I am Not Esther. Under the Mountain. The Whale Rider. And now See Ya, Simon is added to that glowing list.

See Ya, Simon is a challenging book. Simon is 14 and has Muscular Dystrophy. He is wheelchair bound and everyone expects that he will die in the next year or so. Cheery stuff. See Ya, Simon is narrated by Simon's best friend Nathan. Through Nathan's eyes we see Simon declining- needing to be rolled over in bed, becoming thinner and frailer each month, not being able to throw the dice in their role-playing games each weekend. We see the inevitable coming.

But See Ya, Simon is not a one dimensional dissertation in misery. Nathan has his own problems too, his parents have separated, his little sister is annoying, he has to walk the dog and he can't work out how to talk to girls. David Hill employs an incredibly light touch in this moving, rather incredible book. There is much humour and fun to be had, Simon is particularly funny, and deals with his illness in a most upfront way. We the readers need that humour.

I'll be interested to read more of David Hill's books. He is a rather prolific New Zealand author and journalist. He was a high school teacher for 14 years before becoming an author in the early 90s. See Ya, Simon was his first book published, and one of the books that he is most proud of.

The very first one of my novels called See Ya, Simon was important to me because it proved to me that I could write a novel. That is a story that began with the death of my daughter's best friend in high school and it made me aware of the resilience, and the depth, of adolescent lives. Source.

I hadn't meant to read two books back to back about people dealing with progressive, debilitating neurological disease, but sometimes synchronicity deals the reading cards that way. And both Still Alice and See Ya, Simon are engrossing, thought provoking reads.

Still Alice

I don't think it's any great secret that Still Alice is about one woman's journey into early onset dementia. Alice Howland is at the top of her game, a respected Professor of Psychology specialising in psycholinguistics, she has spent the summer travelling, delivering lectures and keynote addresses, she is fit, a runner, with a successful family- a loving husband, three intelligent, capable children.

Alice is just about to turn 50 when we meet her, and she is having trouble with her memory. Forgetting the occasional word in a lecture-lexicon. Getting lost while doing her usual run. Her diagnosis takes a while, but then faces the problem of how to tell her husband, her family, her colleagues.

"I'm so sorry I have this. I can't stand the thought of how much worse this is going to get. I can't stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are."

Naturally Alice worries about her future.

But at some point, she would forget how to eat an ice-cream cone, how to tie her shoe, and how to walk. At some point, her pleasure neurons would become corrupted by an onslaught of aggregating amyloid, and she'd no longer be capable of enjoying the things she loved. At some point, there would simply be no point. 

And if she'll get through her TBR.

She thought about the books she'd always wanted to read, the ones adorning the top shelf in her bedroom, the ones she figured she'd have time for later. Moby-Dick. 

But you don't need a terminal illness to worry about your TBR and how you'll ever get through it. Or enough of it.

Lisa Genova is a neuroscientist herself. She watched her mother wither away from Alzheimer's in her eighties. Still Alice was self published in 2007 before being picked up by Simon and Schuster, and going on to be sold in 30 countries, and being translated into more than 20 languages. That's quite a publishing success story.

I'm not quite sure why I was so desperate to read Still Alice, but I made time in my busy schedule- before the movie comes out here, and I enjoyed it- it's a moving, thought provoking read.

There have been quite a few media articles in the past few days about young people with Alzheimer's. Or perhaps I just paid more attention to them. A moving piece in the Guardian from a daughter watching her mother's dementing illness. And Australia's Anne Deveson has also been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. She says

I am not Alzheimer's. I am myself. 

A sentiment that Alice could only agree with.

Catherine Certitude

It's not very often you learn that the current Nobel Laureate for Literature has written a children's book. I was pleased to hear of Frenchman Patrick Modiano's Nobel win last year- even though I hadn't heard of him before. It's always nice to learn of another French writer. I was even more excited to find that he had written a children's book, and I preordered it for what was to be a March delivery, but it arrived in January, and very soon I was reading it. I was too intrigued, a story written by a Nobel Laureate, and illustrated by the very famous Sempé.

Catherine Certitude grew up in Paris, but is now an adult living in New York, reminiscing about her Parisian childhood. Catherine lives with her father at his business.

We lived above a kind of shop on Hauteville Street, with a steel shutter that Papa rolled down every evening at seven. 

Catherine takes dance classes.

In the beginning, I envied my classmates who didn't wear glasses. Everything was simple for them. But as I though about it, I realised I had the advantage of living in two different worlds, depending on whether I was wearing my glasses or not. And the world of dance wasn't just real life, but a world where you jumped or did entrechats instead of just walking. It was a dream world, like the soft, blurry one I saw without my glasses. 

It is a very odd book. I read it through twice, back to back. I'm not sure that I still got it really. Catherine's concerns and perspective are rather adult.

We always stay the same, and the people we have been in the past go on living until the end of time. So there will always be a little girl called Catherine Certitude, who is still walking with her father through the streets of the 10th arrondissement of Paris. 

I'm not sure what I'd think of this book if I read it as a child. It's not surprising that a Nobel Laureate should write a charming but rather serious children's book I guess.

Other Nobel Laureates to have written children's books include Toni Morrison, Selma Lagerlof and Rudyard Kipling. While googling about I found this great page loaded with the books Nobel Laureates liked when they were kids. They sure were some geeky kids.

Dreaming of France is a wonderful Monday meme
from Paulita at An Accidental Blog 

French Bingo 2015

Top 10 Children's Books on Death and Bereavement

I do love a list. This is an interesting list from The Guardian about children's books dealing with death and bereavement. Children's books tackle an astonishing array of subjects, and often do it particularly well.

Goodnight Mister Tom - Michelle Magorian

Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson

 Goodbye Mog - Judith Kerr

No Matter What - Debi Gliori

The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams

Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

Duck, Death and Tulip - Wolf Erlbruch

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness (see my review)

Michael Rosen's Sad Book - Michael Rosen

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (see my review)

6/10

I have Michael Rosen's Sad Book and Goodnight Mister Tom sitting in my TBR. There is always a book you've never heard of - this time No Matter What.

I would add some other books to this rather excellent list.

The Scar - Charlotte Moundlic (see my review)

By the River - Steven Herrick (see my review)

See Ya Simon - David Hill (see my review)