The Fairytale Hairdresser and Sleeping Beauty by Abie Longstaff and Lauren Beard (Children's, Picture book, 10E/10E)

 September 2013, Corgi, 32 pages, Paperback, Review copy

Themes: fairytale characters, sleeping beauty story

Content: some humour, endless amounts of cuteness, a tissue needed

Summary from Random House Children's Publishers

A wicked fairy has cast a spell sending Princess Rose into a deep sleep in this modern retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story. With the help of some fairy godmothers and a dashing, garden-designing prince, Kittie Lacey, the fairytale hairdresser, must break the spell.

Nayuleska's thoughts

I'm a huge fangirl of Abie and Lauren's joint work so this review is biased from the start. I adore this series (see suggested reads for the other books). It creates a modern yet timeless new version of well loved fairy tales. Having Kitty s the main character brings an exciting element to the plot. It saved me from groaning too long when I was worried Prince Florian would take over the story. I should have known better! He has a cute squirrel which goes pretty much everywhere with him. I like how he didn't just happen upon Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty, it was because of his occupation that he knew her.

I was impressed at how Abie worked the back story to Sleeping Beauty into the story: there's a double page spread which recounts it all, and looks like a story book from the story with a pretty border and a few pictures of Rose's tragic tale. I liked the direction the happily ever after took too. 

I was equally wowed by Lauren's squeesomely cute and sweet illustrations. Her characters are mostly adorable (the bad ones aren't what I'd call cute), there's so much life and a real sense of movement and magic about her work. I'm a fairy fangirl (Winx...Tinkerbell...) and I squeed loudly in my head when I saw the fairies on the cover - they are even more adorable inside! They are so expressive. I liked Kitty's restyling, and had fallen i love with them all so much that, despite knowing what was coming next, tears formed as the fairies cried to Kitty about Rose's plight. That's how strongly I connect to Kitty and her new friends - seeing them heartbroken made me sad enough to cry. I did tear up at the end too - happy events make me cry over anything. 

The fairies are dainty and all so different. They are tiny, but as Kitty journeys with them they show great bravery. I loved the blue and yellow fairies' dresses, and Rose's hair is very similar to another fairy I know-Roxy in Winx! Yes I suspect few reviewers relate books to anime...there is a similarity going on! Ahem. Rose gets swept off her feet by her Prince, who wasn't the one to save Rose a second time - that was down to Kitty who pulls a ninja fast move with something that I refuse to say as it will spoil the story. She is one talented hairdresser! There are a few more books in this series to come which is very squeesome to hear.

Find out more on Abie's website and  Lauren's website.

Suggested read

Read the rest of the series which started with The Fairytale Hairdresser: Or How Rapunzel Got Her Prince (Children's,  Picture book, 10E/10E)

Manic Mondays by Michaela Weaver (Fiction, 9/10E)

December 2013, Candy Jar Books, 320 pages, Paperback, Review copy

Themes: being cheated on, having the world crash around you, feeling ignored, having to keep going for someone you love, encouraging others to love, unconventional paternity, misunderstandings, friendship new and old, revenge, being too hasty, lotss of milk, lots of Mondays, finding out who you really are, learning the reality of your friends' lives, parental support, staying strong,

 

Content: affairs, occasional strong language, a few adult situations

Summary from Candy Jar Books

Catherine has everything a modern girl needs – a successful business, idyllic family life and even an 'Aga' in the kitchen! But this all changes one Monday, after her husband decides to leave her for the cleaner. All of a sudden Catherine's life is turned upside down. She is left to raise her baby daughter alone, rebuild a tattered career, while trying to avoid the attentions of Mike, who is ‘Mr Lovely’ until Catherine notices his wedding ring...

Having lost everything, Catherine is determined to prove that she can make it on her own as a single mother. Manic Mondays follows Catherine over a year of Mondays, as she tries to put her life back together.

Nayuleska's thoughts

I didn't pick this book for the cover which was a bit too dreary for me. I picked it because what happens to Catherine is awful. How that man could abandon her and their beautiful daughter begs belief. He is such an arrogant so and so by the way he ruins Catherine's return to work, how he ignores his responsibilities, and rubs Catherine's face in his alleged happiness. His lack of parental duty drove me potty. I hate men like him, I really do.

Poor Catherine not only has to deal with being cheated on, losing the one she loves, finding a new home and a new job, she has to do all that while learning to be a mother. Parenthood is tough with a husband, but being without one drives her a tad stir crazy, as proven in several hours of choosing an outfit (I'm not into fashion and take under 5 minutes to decide what to wear). Although initially she is on her own friendship wise, moving away from those she loves provides her with the mental space to process everything. She makes a few good, reliable friends who her mother wouldn't approve of, ones who help bolster her spirits when life gets tricky. Life is never easy for Catherine; some of the difficulties she brings on herself, especially with her outlook on the future, are valuable lessons for the spoilt child side of her personality. I guess having different life views is why I strongly disagreed with her behaviour later in the story, and her choices in forging new romantic relationships which she royally stuffs up by jumping the gun many, many times. This is a funny, inspiring if at times a little frustrating read.

Find out more on Michaela's website.

 

Suggested read

Another story of a woman who has to restart her life from scratch is Issy in Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe by Jenny Colgan (Fiction, 10E/10E)

The Astonishing Case of the Stolen Stories by Anca Sandu (Children's, Picture book, 10E/10E)

 January 2014, Jonathan Cape, 32 pages, Paperback, Review copy

Themes: types of detectives, fairy tale creatures, missing books, royalty, judging people by their reputation, finding clues, surprises

Content: lots of humour

Summary from Random House Children's Books

Meet Cat, Fox and Bear: detectives extraordinaire!

The Prince’s bedtime stories have been STOLEN! And so has every last book in the kingdom.
Could the Big Bad Wolf be the thief? Or is the Wicked Witch the culprit?

Nayuleska's thoughts

What I loved about this book was the distinct characters within it. Each detective has a passion and relates almost everything to what they are best at. They discover that people - who are fairy tale creatures - have hidden depths which people don't always know about. That baffled the detectives because all their ideas about the culprit were scuppered. Thankfully clues appear out of nowhere, leading the detectives to who actually did it. That wasn't the end of the story, as the detectives quickly had a new mission which they fulfilled with top marks. I squealed with delight at the culprit because it is adorable! It was just as enchanting as the rest of the high detailed illustrations.

 I like how everyone had a weather vane which was appropriate for their story, I wanted to eat the roof of the witch's house, I laughed at the wolf's ornaments of 3 pigs doing the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil poses, as well as everyone's comments on the page which are hilarious. I love how the main parts of nursury rhymes and fairy tales feature in the detectives hunt, how in the main street I spot the back of a dragon in a window, a beanstalk on a roof, and Rapunzel dangling her hair from a tower, the hair not quite long enough to reach the ground. I love how the messenger is a sweet little gingerbread man. I love the scope this story has for many more mysteries that the detectives might need to solve, as well as the camaraderie of the detectives and everyone else they meet. Rest assured that stories get returned - the ending couldn't be different otherwise I wouldn't be reading it!

Suggested read

Another adventure is to be had in Where's Tim Ted? It's Time For Bed! by Ian Whybrow and Russell Ayto (Children's, Picture book, 10/10E)

City Farm: Zoe and Swift by Jessie Williams (Children's, 9 years +, 10E/10E)

March 2013, Curious Fox, 144 pages, Paperback, Review copy 

Themes: overprotective parents, feeling grumpy, finding a new talent, caring for animals, escaping guinea pig, evil health and safety fanatic,

 

Summary from Curious Fox

Zoe was the fastest runner in her school… until an accident crushed her hopes for the Olympics. Can a friendship with a retired racehorse at City Farm help her find a new dream?

Nayuleska's thoughts

I was certain from the cover that this would be a fun read, filled with animal mayhem, some aww moments, and Zoe undergoing important changes. I was right! I love the relationships with the animals that both Zoe and her friends had because they were each besotted with a specific one, which made me smile loads because I'm an animal lover too. I like how the realities of caring for pets -including cleaning them out which is necessary if a bit icky - are explored through what happens on a typical farm day.

I love the concept that children like Zoe can go to the farm for a kind of therapy. I actually expected Zoe to be at the farm 24/7 for a week or 2, so was surprised when it was only at weekends and after school. However, Zoe blossomed at the farm. I could easily relate to her frustration at not being able to do certain tasks that she could do so easily before the accident, as the ups and downs in my own health have meant some things won't be done again. The big turning point for Zoe is attitude. At the farm she is seen as normal - how I hate this word! She is expected to muck in (she does try doing this literally), she isn't pampered which is what happens at home. She learns the hard way that yes her original dreams may be out of reach (like mine of being in the armed forces), but she can make new ones, which give her so much hope and enthusiasm that I nearly cried with delight. This is an awesome new to me series - I've got 2 more to read and review!

Suggested read

For another story where animals are healing check out a book in a favourite series of mine by Jo Cotteril, Sweet Hearts: Model Behaviour (Children's, 9 years +, 10E/10E)

Nayu's News #109 Bit of this, bit of that

Today has been mostly a quiet one for me. I'm nearly fully recovered from Monday's migraine-yay! The after effects always take a few days to get over, but that's part of coping with them-knowing when to relax!

Because in myself I wasn't quite up to speed I purposely did not try to spend time with Muse on my fairy wip. Muse may jump up and down when she thinks I'm slacking, but when I'm ill she reluctantly pipes down, resorting to a few glares in the direction of whichever part of me isn't working as well as it could.

Other than some necessary blog work, I continued on with the long term log maintenance.After a few hairy moments involving nearly deleting a load of posts by accident, I've made a start on making my earlier reviews more uniform with the current ones. It is going to be very slow progress, yet it is really satisfying to update older reviews, delete posts which make no sense, that kind of thing. I was such a newbie to book review that my terminology at times lacked sense and continuity.

I'm not toally rewriting all the reviews so there will be varied styles. It's the ratings and content which eventually will be the same, enabling me to have a widget on the side with links to different rating levels, and the different ages/main genres I review having lovely links at the top of the home page. They are there now, I'm slowly adding more as I neaten older posts and use tags which Blogger will accept (the + sign is a tag no-go, unless you intend for no posts to show for 5 years +! 5 years works fine.)

Those who are observant may notice that I've put the linked pages more in age order, and made it clear they are reviews. This is all so that anyone looking at my blog will hopefully find it logical. I'd love to increase the number of people who visit NRC, so since I'm in the frame of mind to make changes, that is what I'm doing. I won't be posting updates every single time I change something as it is going to take weeks, quite possibly months to finish. But I'm in the early stages with heaps of enthusiasm, and want to let you know blog changes are happening!

I seem to be getting into light hearted mysteries book-wise, which is a newish area for me. From the amount I add to my wishlist there are plenty of this type of book to keep me happy for a long while. Note mostly it is for my one or so chapter a day read from personally owned books rather than review requests.

I must take photos of the crochet squares I've made this week tomorrow, otherwise yet again I will have none for Monday's What Are You Reading Meme. I also need to rest after work and not get distracted by blog stuff. Seriously, I think I could be forever tweaking my blog. I'm setting the 20 mins of blog maintenance rule only when I have days off. If I work, then extra stuff is a no-no. I still struggle with relaxing, maybe that's why I keep the 

internet mostly blocked on my kindle so I'm not distracted by Twitter and new shiny emails.

Time to go catch some zzzs...been up 21 hours. I'd gone to bed at 930ish last night since I was tired, and figured I may sleep more than 5 hours now. I don't, so was up at 3am. So it's back to resting til 12am bed just so I don't run out of energy too soon into my work day. 5am-6am feels more human time to get up than 3am. I sleep solidly when I do sleep-some of the time- thanks to the I can't live without ear plugs and an eye mask to keep everything dark no matter if family need the landing light on, or the sun says hello in the morning before I'm ready to return the greeting. Night all! 

The Blue Lady & The Grey Girl by Eleanor Hawken Competition Help Required

I'm sorry!

Okay, I have an embarrassing confession. It was the first time I used Rafflecopter for this competiton to win 2 books by Eleanor Hawken  and I managed to create the entry form using an email address which doesn't exist. At all. Which means I have no clue who's won this competition. 

Who has won these two books?

Currently a mystery!

Please could all 4 competitors contact me asap so I can put your details through a random number generator and come up with a winner. I have since created a new account under the correct email address, so current competitions should be fine (I hope...) 

You can use the form on this blog, or email me: nayu@hotmail.co.uk

Apologies for the slight error on my part - I won't make the same mistake again! 

Live & learn!

Blog Tour: Review + Guest Blog Post Dandelion Clocks by Rebecca Westcott (Children's, 11 years +, 10E/10E)

 6th March 2014, Puffin, 288 pages, Paperback, Review copy 

Themes: denial, misunderstanding, family craziness, fluctuating feelings and friendships, wanting life to slow down/stop/rewind, having family with Asperger's

 

Content: depression, grief, a box of tissues is needed

Summary from Puffin

Liv takes us on a journey through her life from "Thirteen Weeks Before" to "Six Months After". We discover Liv's passion for photography, her brother's obsession with sticking to the rules, the stupidity of Moronic Louise at school, and how the family copes as Mum's terminal illness takes hold . . . Guided by Mum's own childhood diaries, Liv finds a new way to live.

Nayuleska's thoughts

It's no secret that I can cry easily over books, anime, and video games for happy and sad occasions. I knew I'd cry a fair amount while reading Liv's story of finding out then coming to terms with her mother's death. I cried on and off a bit before page 70 something. I didn't expect to cry solidly for 150+ pages. Sure I took a minute or two to have a break, thinking the rest might help but the tears started back up. You don't need to have personally experienced losing a loved one as you can feel it clearly coming off the page.

Look, I even got a tear splodge to prove how much this book made me cry! 

This is the most powerful book about losing a loved one that I've ever read. Words can't do Liv's story justice because it is all about feelings and emotions. It's about me wondering when Liv would find out the truth. It's about me feeling so sad when Liv's mother was cramming as many life lessons in to the precious time she had left with an at first unaware, typical tween daughter.

Liv struggled to cope with her brother who needed her to be the sensible one despite being younger. She loves him but does resent the times when he makes her life abnormal to the way she thinks she should be living. I love how Liv tried to hard for her hobby and felt she failed, yet then thought of a deed for her mother which got the entire family involved and made a difference when the time came - you can work out what that time was when you read the book.

I loved how life carried on around Liv, giving her more to cope with than she cared for. The intensity of her grief was heart-wrenching to read, especially since her depression was blindingly obvious. How her dad acted to her afterwards, as well as how tender her mum was before she left pulled on my heart in many directions. The fact that words like death and cancer aren't really ever spoken heightened the emotions. I could easily go on and on about the depths of this book, but I will round it up as you need to read the book rather than my rambles. It was interesting how Liv's view of her mum's diaries changed, and that in time she realised the importance of the journals which she ends up literally sleeping on at the end. That is why as part of the blog tour Rebecca is letting us have an extract of her own diaries from when she was young! You can read all about it right after the suggested read.

You can find out more on Rebecca's website.

Suggested read

Another family orientated series with grief thrown in is the astoundingly awesome Chocolate Box Girls series by Cathy Cassidy, especially Cherry Crush which is suggested in the back of Dandelion Clocks but somehow isn't reviewed here on NRC yet (I do have it...), but you can take a peek at Summer's Dream (Children's, 9 years +, 10E/10E)

Isn't the cover awesome!!

Guest Blog Post: An extract from Rebecca's childhood diary!

Considering how important diaries are for Liv, it's exciting for Rebecca to let the entire world see what life was like for her when she was 15 years old. I'd admire her for doing this - other stops in the tour have different aged extracts.

March 1990    (aged 15)

Hi,

            Today has been quite good. Uncle M is staying with us and he’s been playing me loads of new music. My favourites are a band called INXS (everyone laughed at me at school cos I didn’t know that you have to say their name like ‘In Excess’ – I thought they were called ‘Inks’) and a singer called Tracey Chapman who has got an amazing voice and sounds a bit like a man.

            School is rubbish. In cross country me and Harriet thought we’d really make an effort today. We thought that we could do that whole ‘mind over matter’ thing and when the race started we ran as fast as we possibly could. But by the time we’d got to the bottom of the hill, virtually the entire year group had overtaken us. So we were last. Again. I really hate PE – I think it’s against my human rights to subject me to such humiliation. I must be really healthy cos Mum only ever lets me eat green stuff – but some people’s bodies just obviously aren’t designed for exercise. Carrie hid in the hedge halfway round the race loop and sat there until people started running past, when she joined back in. I don’t actually approve of that cos it’s cheating (but I sort of wish I’d done it too cos I was still hot and sweaty in maths, which wasn’t a good look).

            Got a book out of the library today called Flowers In The Attic. Mum would not be happy if she read it – she’s still trying to get me to read the very boring Hobbit. I did try (I didn’t have much choice when I got it for Easter a few years ago instead of an Easter egg) but it’s seriously boring. Just loads of dull description and nothing actually ever happening.

Thank you Rebecca for writing a book that makes me need a lot of tissues, as well as sharing your private thoughts here on NRC - your mother most definitely would not have been happy with Flowers In The Attic. Did she ever find out that you read it back then? I agree that The Hobbit is boring - feel the same about The Lord of the Rings. 

Please do check out the other stops on the tour, whose details can be found below.