Taking Off Janice Marriott, HarperCollins, 207 pages, paperback, NZ$16.99
ISBN 1-86950-637-5
Janice Marriott never writes the same novel twice. Taking Off is an original story about the importance of vision. For some, vision is simply eyesight. Alana is about to find out whether she has inherited the condition that left her father, Dave, blind as a young man. Tommy has no eyesight problems but he can’t see a way out of his difficulties; his alcoholic mother has brought him to a small coastal settlement where he feels detached from everything except the birds.
After a disastrous first encounter involving a stroppy swan and lots of mud, grumpy Alana and truculent Tommy fall into an armed truce, which makes very humorous reading. Both are writing private journals so we also learn of Tommy’s obsession with wings, kites and flight and Alana’s love of the estuary (based on the area around Foxton Beach) and its birdlife. She has more trouble appreciating humans, especially the luckless Tommy and her Uncle Brad, the Cessna pilot who flies her to the hospital where she will learn the truth about her eyesight. Then disaster strikes and Alana has to face a challenge even greater than blindness.
Janice Marriott (who has been blind herself) makes Alana’s predicament utterly convincing but she has also created a witty story with a richly described natural landscape and characters who are likeable despite their scratchiness. Taking Off may be the best teen novel of the year.
Trevor Agnew
This review first appeared in The Press, Christchurch NZ, on 12th January 2008.
Showing posts with label Janice Marriott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Janice Marriott. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Saturday, 29 March 2008
New Zealand Post Book Awards, 2007
New Zealand Post Book Awards, 2007
HISTORY WINS by Trevor Agnew
History was the winner at the NZ Post Book Awards, where our best books for young people are honoured. Showing my bias as a History teacher, I feel that almost all the finalists show an appreciation of the importance of the past.
Marcia Stenson’s Illustrated History of the South Pacific (Non Fiction winner, Book of the Year) is so readable and interesting that parents as well as children are reading it. Richly illustrated and attractively designed, it includes the heritage of every major group from French Polynesia to Fiji. Her book’s appeal stretches far beyond readers with Islands family ties, for as Stenson reminds us, we are all people of the South Pacific and this is our history too.
Reading history makes us view familiar events in a fresh way, and Janice Marriott’s Thor’s Tale (Junior Fiction winner) is a stunning example of this. Thor, a young Norwegian working in brutal conditions at a whaling station in South Georgia, is fascinated by the men of Shackleton’s expedition with unexpected results. Genesis (Young Adult winner) by Bernard Beckett is a skilfully constructed sf parable about future New Zealanders examining their past which may well be our future. Readers are craftily led into mind-expanding thought experiments and reflections on human intelligence.
Recently, young New Zealanders have been reading more historical fiction, like Bill O’Brien’s Castaway, a vivid account of the fate of the Dundonald’s survivors in the Auckland Islands. Castaway didn’t win but it will help make a new generation aware of the significance of that hand-made boat in the Canterbury Museum. Ted Dawe’s And Did Those Feet… performs the even more remarkable feat of making young people interested in the ideas of William Blake.
Fleur Beale’s A Respectable Girl, provides an evocative account of life in Taranaki on the eve of the New Zealand Wars, while in Matatuhi, Robyn Kahukiwa shows a young girl’s growing awareness of her own family history. Gavin Bishop’s Riding the Waves uses words and pictures to breathe new life into four Maori legends. In the non-fiction field, Neville Peat’s Winging It! puts Sir Tim Wallis back into the air, while Leon Davidson introduces the Anzac experience of the Vietnam War in Red Haze.
Some might argue that the winning picture books are not historical. Wrong. In The Three Fishing Brothers Gruff (Best First Book) Ben Galbraith uses an old legend (and plenty of humour) to show the flaws in our past use of the ocean’s resources. A Present from the Past (Honour Award) by Jennifer Beck, illustrated by Lindy Fisher brings a relic of the Great War to life. Kyle Mewburn, Ali Teo and John O’Reilly combine their talents in Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! (Picture Book winner, Children’s Choice Award) to show a small boy’s desperate efforts to escape an aunt who is determined to kiss him. Is this history? Think back into your own past. Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! captures an unforgettable moment from everyone’s childhood.
How fitting that all these marvellous books will now form part of a whole generation’s childhood memories.
This article by Trevor Agnew was published in The Press, Christchurch on 19th May 2007, following the announcement of the New Zealand Post Book Awards.
HISTORY WINS by Trevor Agnew
History was the winner at the NZ Post Book Awards, where our best books for young people are honoured. Showing my bias as a History teacher, I feel that almost all the finalists show an appreciation of the importance of the past.
Marcia Stenson’s Illustrated History of the South Pacific (Non Fiction winner, Book of the Year) is so readable and interesting that parents as well as children are reading it. Richly illustrated and attractively designed, it includes the heritage of every major group from French Polynesia to Fiji. Her book’s appeal stretches far beyond readers with Islands family ties, for as Stenson reminds us, we are all people of the South Pacific and this is our history too.
Reading history makes us view familiar events in a fresh way, and Janice Marriott’s Thor’s Tale (Junior Fiction winner) is a stunning example of this. Thor, a young Norwegian working in brutal conditions at a whaling station in South Georgia, is fascinated by the men of Shackleton’s expedition with unexpected results. Genesis (Young Adult winner) by Bernard Beckett is a skilfully constructed sf parable about future New Zealanders examining their past which may well be our future. Readers are craftily led into mind-expanding thought experiments and reflections on human intelligence.
Recently, young New Zealanders have been reading more historical fiction, like Bill O’Brien’s Castaway, a vivid account of the fate of the Dundonald’s survivors in the Auckland Islands. Castaway didn’t win but it will help make a new generation aware of the significance of that hand-made boat in the Canterbury Museum. Ted Dawe’s And Did Those Feet… performs the even more remarkable feat of making young people interested in the ideas of William Blake.
Fleur Beale’s A Respectable Girl, provides an evocative account of life in Taranaki on the eve of the New Zealand Wars, while in Matatuhi, Robyn Kahukiwa shows a young girl’s growing awareness of her own family history. Gavin Bishop’s Riding the Waves uses words and pictures to breathe new life into four Maori legends. In the non-fiction field, Neville Peat’s Winging It! puts Sir Tim Wallis back into the air, while Leon Davidson introduces the Anzac experience of the Vietnam War in Red Haze.
Some might argue that the winning picture books are not historical. Wrong. In The Three Fishing Brothers Gruff (Best First Book) Ben Galbraith uses an old legend (and plenty of humour) to show the flaws in our past use of the ocean’s resources. A Present from the Past (Honour Award) by Jennifer Beck, illustrated by Lindy Fisher brings a relic of the Great War to life. Kyle Mewburn, Ali Teo and John O’Reilly combine their talents in Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! (Picture Book winner, Children’s Choice Award) to show a small boy’s desperate efforts to escape an aunt who is determined to kiss him. Is this history? Think back into your own past. Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! captures an unforgettable moment from everyone’s childhood.
How fitting that all these marvellous books will now form part of a whole generation’s childhood memories.
This article by Trevor Agnew was published in The Press, Christchurch on 19th May 2007, following the announcement of the New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Chute Through
CHUTE THROUGH Janice Marriott, Mallinson Rendel, Wellington NZ, 186 pages, paperback, NZ$17.
ISBN 0-9582626-3-2
Janice Marriott is having a brilliant year. Her dramatic novel Thor’s Tale is now followed by a comic science fiction romp, Chute Through, set 70 years in the future.
Chute Through is Arlo’s account of the worst month in his teenage life. Living on a city-sized slum-raft, the bored but imaginative Arlo dodges homework, spars with his sister, Jazman, tries contacting aliens and creates inventions that generate chaos. (Invention 134, snails that consume detergent as they slide up the window, is typical.) The family watch Celebrity News and eat Lush Mush, Krill Krispees and Kelp Krackle. Arlo’s virtual lessons are sponsored by “Glittergum, the gooey chewy snack that lasts forever. Buy a pack for life. Rent it out to friends.”
Slapstick disasters abound as Arlo’s inventions catch the interest of a larcenous astronaut clothing designer, Luke Laster, creator of the motto, “The more pockets you have, the more important you are.” Tormented by the family’s talking fridge and over-efficient, under-imaginative household robot, Arlo dreams of escape but this cheerfully chaotic novel ends in a surprise for him and everyone else.
Trevor Agnew
ISBN 0-9582626-3-2
Janice Marriott is having a brilliant year. Her dramatic novel Thor’s Tale is now followed by a comic science fiction romp, Chute Through, set 70 years in the future.
Chute Through is Arlo’s account of the worst month in his teenage life. Living on a city-sized slum-raft, the bored but imaginative Arlo dodges homework, spars with his sister, Jazman, tries contacting aliens and creates inventions that generate chaos. (Invention 134, snails that consume detergent as they slide up the window, is typical.) The family watch Celebrity News and eat Lush Mush, Krill Krispees and Kelp Krackle. Arlo’s virtual lessons are sponsored by “Glittergum, the gooey chewy snack that lasts forever. Buy a pack for life. Rent it out to friends.”
Slapstick disasters abound as Arlo’s inventions catch the interest of a larcenous astronaut clothing designer, Luke Laster, creator of the motto, “The more pockets you have, the more important you are.” Tormented by the family’s talking fridge and over-efficient, under-imaginative household robot, Arlo dreams of escape but this cheerfully chaotic novel ends in a surprise for him and everyone else.
Trevor Agnew
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