You know a children’s book in an English bookshop is a small miracle when it’s been translated from another language. Don’t want to sound sarcastic, but the English and the American translate enough books per year to fill a small corner of a bookshelf in a dolls’ house. It is fact. When in France, Italy, Greece and South Korea every bookshop contains pretty much as many homegrown books as translated ones, in England and the US the ratio is laughable – apart from Tintin, Astérix and the Moomins, there aren’t many foreigners in the Anglophonic hegemony.

But not only was Toby Alone translated (Walker Books), it was also extremely well translated, as Sarah Ardizzone won an award for it. I was delighted to hear it, and to see the book at Waterstones’, because Toby Alone is one of these few truly magical children’s novels which make you want to grab the nearest person by the collar and beg them to read it. A truly delightful, beautifully crafted, tender novel, Toby Alone is already, in France, a modern classic.

The premise is catchy: one-and-a-half-millimetre-tall Toby lives, like everyone else, on a great Tree-World outside of which, he is asked to believe, there is nothing. His father is an inventor, and has discovered the awesome properties of the tree sap. Properties which can be used for good… or bad (understand: for profit). And some people want to use it for profit. As a result, the tree is dying. Toby’s quest is, at the same time, to save the tree, to save himself, to save his parents, and to learn the truth about the World he lives in and the foreign people who sometimes invade, and who must come from somewhere…

Throw in a strong-headed young girl, a ruthlessly ambitious enemy, and some hilarious comic relief characters, and you get one of the most colourful and lively books for children in a very long time.

It is also an old-fashioned tale, with a nostalgic feel for a conservative order, a society of artisans, closet scientists and fragrant cooking. A world in which people’s lives follow the slow rhythm of the seasons. A world where everything is made of living matter to be feared and protected. The novel makes no mystery of its ecological dimension.

The main reason, I think, why it was translated into English (apart from the fact that it is a gorgeous book, but we have many other splendid French books that never get translated) is that the socio-cultural background is absolutely universal. Toby Alone will be readable tomorrow and in fifty years’ time, here and in Paris and in Tokyo. I am very glad Walker made this important and beautiful novel available to English children, and the second book in the duology, Toby and the Secrets of the Tree, is almost as good.

by Clémentine

Bedbound for a significant portion of the week, I wanted something light to take my mind off things, so I escaped to the jungle with Fintan Fedora the World’s Worst Explorer.  We follow the inept fourteen-year-old Fintan and Gribley, his put-upon butler, as the former decides to go on a quest for the possibly mythical chocoplum in the deepest darkest jungles of Brazil. On his way he manages to pick up a trail of would-be kidnappers eager for a ransom, in addition to a few supposed business rivals…

The blurb promised me a ‘stupidly funny escapade’ and in this it does not fail to deliver, as the humour is almost all derived from the protagonist’s stupidity. Although some jokes miss the mark – and Fintan’s clumsiness does become rather overstated by the seventeenth accident he causes – the book did elicit a few chuckles as I made my way through several boxes of Lemsip. Like Billionaire Boy (David Walliams), much of the plot and many of the jokes in Fintan Fedora the World’s Worst Explorer are very Dahl-esque, revelling in the grotesque and absurd. The obstacles generated by Fintan’s clumsiness provide many of the laughs, such as the image of furious piranha-nibbled Gonzalez with his false ginger beard.

Perfectly paced, the plot is tight and fast moving, never allowing the reader to be bored or a moment’s reflection. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read, particularly as there was a nice mix of the predictable and the unanticipated, in humour as well as elements of the plot. I did wish, however, that at least Gribley had noticed their pursuers earlier, as the belated arrival of the moment of discovery stretched the plausibility of the plot somewhat. I could believe that oblivious Fintan would overlook the unlikely yet repeated appearances of the same man with varying colours of false beards in the middle of Brazil, but not the intelligent Gribley who turns out to speak fluent Spanish and have incredible foresight.

For a children’s book lover this romp through the Brazilian jungle was exactly what was promised on the cover and the perfect distraction to summer flu – especially as it doesn’t quite turn out the way you’d expect…

By Lauren

The weekend was spent in a flood of tears. Not because of any personal crisis in my own life, but because I finally read Jenny Downham’s Before I Die – one book on my huge list of things-I-must-read.

Published in 2007 (presumably to cash in on the weepy trend sweeping the adult market in the form of Jodie Picoult novels) Before I Die tells the story of sixteen-year-old Tessa’s quest to complete her list of things to do before she dies of cancer. Yes, I became extremely emotional upon reading it. Yes, I cried so much in the last few chapters it was difficult to read the words. Yes, this was embarrassing because I was on a crowded bus. But did I care about the characters? No. Was it beautiful writing that had me in tears? No. In fact it was barely anything to do with Jenny Downham’s skill in crafting the novel at all. It was the use of a highly emotive subject – cancer in children – that allowed me to be easily manipulated by the content.

Tessa is not particularly likeable at the start; she is cruel to her family and the first item on her list is to lose her virginity – to anyone who will have her (a random boy in a club, as it turns out). This, to me, is a clumsy way of demonstrating the fact that she is angry with the situation, and is typical of the nature of the ‘developments’ that Tessa undergoes through the novel. The intent may have been to show what her illness drove her to, but the effect (on me, anyway) is that the reader is irritated with such an irresposible attitude towards her health – it is explicitly stated she is too ill/weak to go clubbing. Maybe this would have been better placed later on in the novel once the reader has got to know Tessa better, rather than as a ‘shocking opening’. Changes to her character seem clunky and forced, and as the majority of the plot developments revolve around the development of Tessa’s illness, the progression does not come across as natural. The writing itself did not particularly grab me, and given that the novel is focused around Tessa and that it is difficult to warm to her as a character, it is glaringly obvious that Downham uses the character’s illness as a crutch/shortcut to fleshing her out and making her real for the reader.

Many people have recommended this novel to me, but I am still confused as to what exactly they liked about the novel, aside from its ability to incite such strong emotions in the reader due to its subject. Novels like this strike me as manipulative and lazy, as they rely on the power of the tragedy involved, rather than the quality of writing or character development. They are designed primarily to provoke, and leave me as a reader extremely unsatisfied at the end. This is because I cannot reconcile the facts that I was underwhelmed by the novel and yet completely overwhelmed with emotion.

Clearly many readers do not agree with me – the reviews on Amazon are nearly hysterical in their admiration for this book.

‘I needed her to fulfil these desperate requests, because I lived the book like she was me or at least a best friend, which made it so painful to contemplate her death’

I can see why it has sold well, as misery lit has kept appetite for books like My Sister’s Keeper strong since the mid 2000s. Before I Die is no better or worse than any of Jody Picoult’s novels, and has the potential to be a crossover success given the subject matter, nature of the trend, and age of the protagonist. The publisher in me can see all this. But the children’s literature student in me is not convinced.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece …

What do Kid You Not listeners think of misery lit? Am I being unnecessarily harsh? Or is it too easy for writers to use tragic subjects as a substitute for poor writing?

By Lauren