THE AMBIDEXTROUS LIBRARIAN

THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO (PATRICK NESS) This book has been on my "to read" list for ages .  I finally read it.  Sweet hallelujah.  For other Librarians out there who may be reading this, you know what I'm talking about; the sheer pleasure of managing to ACTUALLY FINISH A BOOK from the ever growing pile.  I feel like I should have a drink to celebrate. And so, the talented Patrick Ness.  We recently acquired The Rest of Us Just Live Here  for the collection (another for the "to read" list), but I thought I would start with The Knife of Never Letting Go  because it has awards slapped all over it, and it's been around for ages and y'know, people generally rave.  Published back in 2008, it's been around a while now.  And it's a sort of near-future sci-fi dystopian tale.  Interestingly it was dystopian before  The Hunger Games  opened the floodgates. Todd Hewitt is a boy about to become a man.  He was born into the...

THE CAT WITH THE COLOURED TAIL (GILLIAN MEARS) I'm a Librarian, so there is a high statistical probability that I am also a cat lover (yep, it's true).  I gravitate towards cat themed stories with the same level of uncanny intuition that primary school girls have for horse and pony stories.  It's a gift. When one of my colleagues suggested we obtain The Cat with the Coloured Tail , I naturally thought it was a fabulous idea.  It arrived a couple of weeks ago and has already been borrowed once; when I put it back on display I was reminded that I should really take it home and read it one evening. And then Gillian Mears died. Gillian Mears - Sydney Morning Herald I knew of Gillian Mears; you can't be a Librarian and not know of  Foals Bread,  and I have The Grass Sister sitting on my bookshelf downstairs.  But I had not yet delved into her children's fiction, and so on the news of her passing I felt it was time to read what was to be the final fru...

LITTLE REBEL CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARDS 2016 Subversive, intelligent children's books.  Could I find a better topic to talk about? The Little Rebels Children's Book Awards ( administered by the UK's Letterbox Library as part of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers )  are a relatively new thing, having been around for only a few years (since 2013 it seems).  Is this because it is only recently that authors have felt the need to tackle big societal issues in children books?  I pondered this for a while and then realised that Dr. Seuss would argue with me (and win) on that point. Let me start by saying that although I think the title "Little Rebels" is awesome, I am actually going to say that I think there should be nothing deemed "rebellious" about reading literature that encourages us to think and form our own opinions.  In fact, I dislike my own description of the nominees as "subversive", but I'll maintain that adjective to argue my...