THE AMBIDEXTROUS LIBRARIAN

SUNSHINE, DECKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS So, that's another year out of the way! I hope you enjoyed the school holidays.  I certainly did.  For me, it wasn't so much bookish as practical.  I cleared some land, levelled it, landscaped it and made a deck.  Not much time for reading in between all that but it was therapeutic to get out in the sun. Because all this practicality left me little time to actually read, I decided to focus on something a little less wordy, but no less relevant - the graphic novel.  Now, I did read a few but they are a little too adult to be termed YA so I probably won't review them here (one was an excellent memoir of growing up in Yorkshire when the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose - highly recommended, but not particularly YA friendly). Devouring these graphic novels made me realise that literature comes in so many forms these days.  Traditionalists may find it easy to dismiss the graphic novel, but having read several excell...

WHAT DO GUYS ACTUALLY WANT TO READ? Why don't guys want to read as much as girls?  There has been SO MUCH discussion on the topic, and I'm not sure if we are really making any progress as a whole.  Guys are pretty active, and I know the really active girls at my school aren't that interested in reading, either.  They want to be out and about and stimulated in a kind of visceral and physical sense, I guess.  It's kind of hard to get that from a book, unless it's an action packed thriller with lots of plot twists and fast paced movement and all the other tactics that action/adventure novels use to get your heart racing.  And so that's pretty much the first thing that I've noticed about boy readers.  It's gotta be fast, and interesting, and adventurous, and thrilling.  They have to be able to FEEL the book, not in an emotional way but in a way that gets their heart racing a little bit, gives them a bit of a sense of moving around, running... ...

Blankets (Craig Thompson) What can I say about this graphic novel?!?!?! READ IT.  NOW. I was never a huge fan of the graphic novel until recently.  In fact, the moment I was converted was a quiet afternoon at work; my colleague and I were randomly browsing the Junior Fiction.  Enter Jane, the Fox and Me by Fanny Britt.  Suddenly I realised that graphic novels weren't all science fiction, fantasy and reluctant male readers.  The illustrations in Jane, the Fox and Me are beautiful, as is the story.  I have a colour photocopy of one of the illustrations on my fridge, which involves Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre caressing a swim-suited sausage.  Graphic novels, why had I forsaken you???? So fast-forward to Blankets.   It's a hefty read at 600+ pages.  But it's a graphic novel so it's not a dense or taxing read.  But it still takes time.  There were moments when I would stop and just gaze upon one certain picture, or ...

Raven Girl (Audrey Niffenegger) A short, modern fairy tale of a girl born to a Postman father and a Raven mother, Raven Girl is a fable of love and identity, and finding the strength within to be who you were born to be.  Narrated in a simple but moving tone, with stark, somewhat childlike illustrations, the moral behind the fable is clear - know who you are, and surround yourself with those who accept you as you are, and you will have wings to fly. Interestingly, Raven Girl has also been made into a new dance for the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs) Jacob had always assumed that his grandpa’s fanciful stories of the “peculiar children” and “monsters” were just that –stories, until he finds his grandpa fatally injured by one of the very “monsters” he so vividly described.  With his dying breath, Jacob’s grandpa imparts a cryptic message of an island, a peregrine and an old man’s grave... but what does it all mean?  So begins Jacob’s journey to uncover the truth in his grandpa’s stories, and his own personal truth. Beautifully illustrated in a stark comic book style which captures the movement and motion in a visual and even audible manner, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a fantastic novel for young readers who are seeking an equal measure of action, fantasy and horror in their novels.  Riggs, R 2011,  Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children , Quirk Books, Philadelphia. Children's - Graphic Novel / Fantasy