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  • Postcards
  • Nick Campbell, Richard Steward, Kay Waddilove, and Karen Williams

Soonchild is a graphic novel: Russell Hoban’s prose dances in the smoky charcoal work of Alexis Deacon. The latest in a series of graphic-intensive works commissioned by Walker, it represents a commendable investment in book illustration and recognition of young readers’ receptiveness to the unconventional. Hoban, best known for The Mouse and his Child (1967), tends to approach ideas of mysticism and philosophy with lyricism and bold idiosyncrasy. The eponymous Soonchild isn’t the hero of this tale: in fact, she refuses to be born. Her father, once the local shaman and now the “shamed man,” must undergo a Big Dream trance and bring the World Songs that will entice her out. Despite the potential for New Age cuteness, this is not a simple story about getting in touch with oneself. One character says: “When you boil up a Big-Dream Brew, you better be ready to drink to the bottom of the cup.” John’s experiences are apocalyptic, and Hoban explores ambitious themes of being, creatorship and fatherhood. Understatement is key, however. The warmth and clarity of the prose invite us to share in John’s shamanic view of the world in which these big ideas are the natural, demotic material of folk-lore and myth. Deacon’s fine marks and smudges conjure the Big Dream with an appropriate balance of animation and heavy substance, shifting snow-like inside, around or in place of text. And there is something about the shamed man in the charcoal too, something about redemption, the material transmuted by extremes into something suited to new, unexpected purposes.

Nick Campbel

Russell Hoban

Soonchild

Illustrated by Alexis Deacon
London: Walker Books, 2012
144 p.

ISBN: 1406329916
(Graphic Novel, 12+) [End Page vi]

In this, the third prequel to the magnificent Hungry Cities series, Philip Reeve follows the story of Fever Crumb upon her return to New London where she is reunited with her parents, the ultra-rational engineer Dr. Crumb and the beautiful Wavey Godshawk. The narrative centers on the construction of the first traction city, the star of Mortal Engines, and we witness its tentative but monstrously destructive first outing as it rolls north to take on the powerful nomad armies massing against it. Tempted by tales of the ancient technology to be rediscovered in the mysterious Skrevanastuut pyramid, Fever and her mother set off through the ice wastes to uncover its secrets. Scrivener’s Moon extends Reeve’s steampunk universe still further, introducing new characters like the snowmads and nightwights, but at the same time filling in more details about the wonderful-terrible Shrike, the resurrected man whose extended life shapes the narrative arc of the entire sequence of novels. As ever, Reeve creates a Dickensian cast of characters and sets them loose in a landscape that truly fires the imagination. The construction of the traction city is presented with what can only be described as reckless precision: it is wonderful and impossible, marvelous and terrifying. And yet, it is Fever’s epic adventure which ultimately captures the reader’s heart.

Richard Steward

Philip Reeve

Scrivener’s Moon

London, England: Scholastic
Ltd., 2011
374 p.

ISBN978-1-407115-21-4
(Fiction 10+) [End Page 55]

Since her first book, Girl, Missing (2006), was published, Sophie McKenzie has become one of the most popular UK writers of thrillers for young teenagers. Seventeen novels later, this book returns to the original characters of her multi-award-winning debut, in which fourteen-year-old Lauren uncovered the secrets of her past. Two years on, Lauren has to confront the abduction of her younger sister in circumstances that mirror her own kidnapping as a small child. From the revelation of a family tragedy to the tense and unexpectedly tragic ending, Sister, Missing provides a roller-coaster ride of suspense, told in McKenzie’s readable style: short sentences, filmic set-piece scenes and multiple plot twists. McKenzie grounds this extraordinary story in a very ordinary life. Irritated by her parents, resenting her sister, anxious about her boyfriend’s reaction s, Lauren, the some what unreliable narrator, is a realistically flawed teenage hero, stubborn, headstrong, and often selfish...

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