Mr Men Adventure with Knights Roger Hargreaves

 

2016    

The Mr Men are invited to Sir Lance’s castle where they enjoy a banquet, take part in a jousting tournament and put out the dragon’s fire. Thus they interact with some well-known fairy tale tropes.  

This is a small book and would be easy for a young child to handle.

There is rather more text than is conventional in the average picture book. The pictures however do the normal job of telling more of the story. They use mainly primary colours and are simple. The characters are typical of cartoon and comic books and the young child may also need to learn how to read the facial expressions on the character.

The font is plain and contains simple ‘a’s and ‘g’s.

The back inside cover contains some snippets of information about knights, tournaments, castles and jousting.

Wed Wabbit by Lissa Evans

Wed Wabbit by Lissa Evans

 

2017

This is a proper book.  It has a thick spine.  It is 243 pages long. The text is blocked .  It uses a serif font and has difficult ‘a’s  and ‘g’s.   However, it does make a few concessions to the fairly new  reader:  it has short chapters,  it uses double spacing and includes some different fonts for different types of text.  The chapters are short. 

Fidge is thrown into a bizarre fantasy world with her awful cousin Graham shortly after her sister Minnie has been run over. Thus  Lissa Evans cleverly gets the adults out of the way.  Fidge grows in the other world:  she takes responsibility for Minnie’s accident.

We have a recognisable story arc: Fidge crosses the threshold, refuses the call and faces trials and enemies. 

The novel may remind us of other stories. Fidge and Graham are perhaps like Mary and Colin in Secret Garden.  It may also remind us of the Alice book; toys come to life and there is some nonsense verse. 

Pace is maintained through the short chapters, a quick exchange of dialogue, cliff hangers at the end of many chapters and plenty of action. 

It is certainly quirky.     

  

Barking up the Wrong Tree by Philip Ardagh, illustrated Elissa Elwick

Barking up the Wrong Tree by Philip Ardagh, illustrated Elissa Elwick

2018

Sally Stick has a dog called Fetch. He understands what she says and she knows what his barks mean.  Other people simply hear him bark. They set up a detective agency, Stick and Fetch – in Sally’s granny’s kitchen.  

This volume includes three separate stories – Telly Trouble, No Clowning Around and Up, UP and Away. As the overall title of the book suggests, there are misunderstandings. Yet all works out well: Sally and Fetch get to enjoy some of Granny’s celebration cake, they manage the cheer up a very sad little boy who is not enjoying his birthday and they enable children at the local library to have a very exciting story time.

There is also much to amuse any adult who reads with a child: the adult will probably realise that Sally has misunderstood something every time.  

However, Philip Ardagh remains on the child’s side and any reader will empathise with Sally.

This book is 142 pages long so it has a respectable spine.  There is only a small amount of text on each page and amusing images illustrate this well. The text is formatted ragged right and is double-spaced. The font is Anka Sans, one that is easy to read.   

 

Nasty by Michael Rosen

2009

The narrator meets a fascinating old woman who tell him stories of a giant flea on the Bakerloo line, a swarm of killer wasps, a do-it-yourself pedestrian crossing and lollipop lady, a gruesome way of killing mice, a burger supplier who uses dubious meat, a judgement worthy of King Solomon about the parentage of a baby and a strange encounter with a grizzly bear. But is she telling the truth? She has the geography of the Bakerloo line a little wrong. There is no grizzly bear called Maureen at the zoo.    

      

The story is told by an adult who visits friends late at night and has take-away meals. He doesn’t hesitate in informing us that the woman with the amazing stories has twin nieces who fell in love with the same man who impregnated both of them and then abandoned them.  

The book has a respectable spine though it is thinner than many for this reader. No concession has been made to the new reader in terms of language. The text is as dense as we would expect for a fluent reader.  The font has a serif and difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s.  The text is single-spaced and blocked.  It has just 109 pages. It includes some quirky pictures that are mainly decorative.       

Ted Rules the World by Frank Cottrell Boyce

2015, first published 2008,  

This book is produced by Barrington Stoke. This publisher asks established writers to compose stories and then they adjust them to suit the reader. This is one of their Little Gems. These texts offer several aids to the struggling reader:  short chapters, double –spacing, text formatted ragged right, a plain font with simple ‘a’s and ‘g’s, and numerous full-colour pictures which illustrate and aid understanding.  The text can be defined as a high-low.  The content is for a mature primary school child but the text is for a less confident reader.  A notice at the end of the book reminds us that these texts are tested by young people.  

The story explores some quite complex issues in a fun way. A female, populist Prime Minister tries to please the average person.  They use Ted as a test case.  However, he is not quite as average as he at first appears.  He is a redhead. This is a virtue, not a problem. But whilst he is deemed to be average several changes happen in his favour.

Ted has to learn a few life lessons.  For example if life is made easy for him it will become harsher for others. If red-heads are favoured what happens to the blonds?      

Ottoline and the Purple Fox by Chris Riddelll

2016 
Ottoline is an interesting character.  She lives alone though is cared for by servants.  She is accompanied everywhere by Mr Munroe, an almost humanoid pet who has very long light-coloured hair. “wherever they went , Ottoline and Mr Munroe looked out for each other “ (5).  

Chris Riddell offers not just an engaging story but some fascinating pictures. They are mainly line drawings thought the colour purple is added generously throughout.  There are also examples of lists, Ottoline’s own drawings and other pages from her notebook.   

Ottoline’s life is quite sophisticated: she organsizes a fancy dress dinner party, acts as matchmaker between the Purple Fox and the Crimson Vixen, and generally survives well despite or perhaps because of her parents’ absence.  

The book has a respectable spine and is some 175 pages long. The text is ragged right but uses an adult, serif font, with difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. It is double-spaced and is very clear; a sharp black on a very white background.  

Although the illustrations may help a struggling reader they also amuse and add to the story. They are part of the book’s quirkiness. Added to this are the instructions on how to make a Fancy Dress Fortune Teller. There is even a sample one included at the back of the book.       

Princess BMX by Marie Basting

2019

Princess Ava finds a portal that takes her from the colourful kingdom of Biscotti to Camden, London.  Here she learns to ride a BMX bike and become rather good at it.  But the portal is used by others including her wicked aunt, Odette, who tries to turn the kingdom of Biscotti into a theme park for our world. The usual battle of good against evil ensues and Ava is helped by her BMX friend from the other world, Ethan.   

Unusually here Marie Basing uses a first person narrative.  However this really works as it gives us a real sense of Ava’s personality. 

This is a long book – some 282 pages. The text is blocked and an adult font is used but it is double-spaced. Each chapter heading is illuminated with a monochrome sketch.  Throughout the books are further monochrome illustrations by Flavia Sorrentino.  

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

2016, first published 1964

This is quite a quick and easy read and the text is peppered with Quentin Blake’s quirky illustrations. The story opens with the family living in utter poverty. Charlie and his parents live with both sets of grandparents. Only Mr Bucket works - in a factory that makes toothpaste. Food is scarce. “The only meals they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch and cabbage soup for supper”(loc75). Charlie longs for chocolate. Charlie is poor though not necessarily unhappy.  The chocolate is a dream, yes, but his life is full of stories. After supper each night he goes into his grandparents’ room and listens to their stories. One day Charlie gets the grandparents to tell him about Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory and they talk it up big. This is the stuff of dreams. Grandpa Joe confirms this: “it makes my mouth water thinking about it” (loc150). Yet the chocolate factory is a place of mystery. Grandpa Joe informs Charlie that no one ever goes into the factory nor does anyone ever come out (loc76). It seems that Wonka has sacked normal workers because they were giving away his secrets and closed the factory. Then it reopened and he now has some sort of slave or artificial intelligence working for him (loc 199).”But most mysterious of all, Charlie, were the shadows in the window of the factory,” (loc 220) Grandpa Joe informs Charlie.

Wonka provides five golden tickets, wrapped up in ordinary chocolate bars and Charlie now looks for his golden ticket (loc 254). The children who win the tickets are already privileged and to some extent dysfunctional. Augustus Gloop is well fed and does not suffer the hunger that is part of Charlie’s everyday life (loc 273). “Eating is his hobby” (loc 278). Veruca Salt lives with her rich parents in a city far away (loc 295). Charlie has his one chocolate bar a year whilst Augustus eats several a day and Veruca’s father buys as many as he can (loc304). Violet Beauregarde is the third winner. Her mother has attempted to bring her up as a lady but has not succeeded (loc 374). Mike Teavee is the fourth. This is a young man obsessed with television (loc 399).

Grandpa Joe takes a gamble. He raids his secret hoard of cash and gives Charlie money for another chocolate bar (loc 424). But there is no golden ticket and then Charlie has to go even hungrier because the factory where his father works closes down. Charlie is third time lucky. He finds a fifty pence piece with which he buys chocolate and finds the final golden ticket - but only after he has spent his change on another bar rather than saving the money to buy food for the family. Does this bring him the joy he expected? No at first he feels dizzy and quite ill (loc 530). Charlie has to face the responsibility of being famous. Journalists pester the family (loc 612).

Wonka is an eccentric, oddly dressed character:

            He had a black top hat on his head.

            He wore a tail coat made of beautiful plum-coloured velvet.

            His trousers were bottle green

            And in one hand he carried a fine gold-topped walking cane (loc 655).

Is the factory other worldly? It does not seem like a factory for “Graceful trees and bushes were growing along the riverbanks - weeping willows and alders and tall clumps of rhododendrons with their pink and red and mauve blossoms. On the meadows there were thousands of buttercups” (loc 731). Chocolate is mixed by waterfall (loc 742). Then there are the Oompa-Loompas. The young people encounter otherness, though Wonka assures them that the Oompa-Loompas are real people (loc766). Wonka has an altruistic attitude to the Oompa-Loompas; he has rescued them form a terrible life in Loompaland (loc 770 - 73). The Oompa-Loompas are not slaves; they have wages, perhaps in cacao beans (loc 790).

There is a moral code in the book. The self-centred children get their comeuppance; greedy Augustus is carried away by the river of chocolate he tries to drink. Violet steals a piece of the new chewing-gum, the recipe of which hasn’t quite been perfected. It turns her blue and makes her swell up until she looks like a gigantic blueberry. Veruca wants everything she sees and demands it of her parents. She tries to steal one of the squirrels that is trained to remove whole walnuts form their cases and all the squirrels pounce on her. They are testing her to see if she is a bad nut. “’My goodness, she is a bad nut after all,’ said Mr Wonka” (loc 1301). Mike Teavee manages to get himself miniaturised and sent by TV (Chapter 27). A suggested rescue for Wonka seems gruesome; he can be stretched by the chewing-gum stretching machine.     

Wonka objectifies the children somewhat: “We’ll get her repaired if it’s the last thing we do” says Wonka (loc 1126).

The Oompa-Loompas bring us moral tales in their songs. In particular they criticise allowing children to watch too much TV and recommend books instead (loc 1592 -1640).   

There is sophistication of language. There are some demanding puns: the cream room contains all the normal confectionery cream and also hair cream. The bean room has such items as cacao beans but also has human beans. Wonka’s rhyme as they row along is somewhat sinister, ending in “And they’re certainly not showing any signs of slowing” (loc 962). Names are interesting: Oompa-Loompa, Prodnose, Slugworth and does Fickelgruber relate to Schickelgruber? There are intriguing concepts: hot ice creams for cold days, cows that give chocolate milk, and fizzy lifting drinks, square sweets that look round (loc 1202-15). The latter is another play on words. The sweets are indeed square and look square. However, they glance around when people come in the through door (loc 1239).  

There is some symbolism in the story even though the target reader isn’t yet ready for symbolisms. Charlie is the winner - the one child who had not fallen by the wayside - and Wonka takes him through the glass ceiling (loc 1682). Breaking through is worrying but the view is spectacular once they’re out there. They watch the other children go home; they have all changed because of their experiences at the chocolate factory (loc 1707).

Wonka sends a powerful message “’You mustn’t despair!’ cried Wonka. “Nothing is impossible! You watch!’” (loc 1739).