My Life That Books Built #1: Little Jacko and the Wolf People

Since I started writing this blog I have interviewed quite a few authors, many of whom I have asked the question: "What books did you enjoy as a child?". This is a question I have been asked many times as a teacher, and it has occasionally led to lengthy discussions about the difference between kids books then and now. I have now decided to run a semi-regular feature on The Book Zone where I go back over some of the books that I loved as a child or teenager. I say semi-regular as I am not sure I will be able to find the time to make it a weekly feature, but I do intend all of the posts to go live on a Monday morning. I hope you will get some small enjoyment from reading about the books that have made me the reader I am today - I am sure you will find at least one that will strike a similar chord in your heart.

To kick start this feature I thought I would begin with the first picture book that I can remember owning: Little Jacko and the Wolf People, with words by Margaret Greaves and pictures by Jill McDonald. As you can see by the photos I still have the very same copy that I was given as a small child - it was published by Methuen in 1973 so I am guessing that I really was very young when I received it.

The book tells the story of Jacko, a young settler in the Wild West, who has always dreamt of driving a train. However, the only train in Silver Springs is the one that brought the settlers there long ago, and is now old and rusty and no longer usable. Early in the story Jacko saves the life of Watahuni, a Native American boy and as a reward he is made a brother of the boy's tribe, the Wolf People. One night he stumbles across a group of bandits who are plotting to attack the settlers and then the tribe, in search of "Indian gold". It os down to jacko and his new friends to save the day.

As a child (and now as an adult) I loved the beautifully coloured illustrations of Jill McDonald, as well as the story of friendship and adventure. Just look at these pictures - they are surely up there with some of the best in picture books today. This book has been long out of print but a couple of years ago I managed to find a cheap secondhand copy that I gave to my godson's little brother as a Christmas present - it has now become a favourite read in that household as well.

Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.

Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan’s peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what’s ahead.

I started reading this book as soon as it arrived back at the end of September, but unfortunately I then proceeded to mislay it. I spent hours searching through every room in the house, thinking I had put it down somewhere unusual in an absent-minded moment. More books arrived, work got busy, and finding my copy of Behemoth somehow slipped down my list of priorities. Imagine my delight when, purely by chance a couple of weeks ago, I found it under the driver's seat of my car. How it got there I no longer cared, all that mattered was that I would be able to restart it, and just in case I finished it in a single sitting this time - this wasn't exactly a chore as it is nothing short of brilliant. In fact, looking back now, I feel that if I had completed it at first attempt then it may have beaten David Gatward's The Dark to The Book Zone Book of the Month title back in October.

The first book in this series, Leviathan, was one of my favourite books of 2009 and at the time in my review I described it as "one of the finest examples of steampunk fiction for boys that I have come across". I think I may have receieved the odd word of criticism at the time for calling it steampunk (I seem to remember one commentator suggesting that it should be more accurately referred to as dieselpunk), but I feel that over the past year the definition of what is and isn't steampunk has become increasingly blurred - no longer is is restricted to an alternate Victorian reality, thanks to the great workds of authors like Cherie Priest (Boneshaker and Dreadnought) and Scott Westerfeld. 

For those of you who have not discovered Leviathan yet, the story is set in alternate Europe at the outbreak of The Great War. So far, so what's the alternate bit? Well that's where Scott Westerfeld's amazing imagination comes into the fore - the British (and some of their allies) are Darwinists, a society who follow the discoveries of Charles Darwin, who after developing the Theory of Evolution went on to become the father of genetic science. His discoveries led to advances in science so that now the British use vehicles, weapons and other devices that have are custom-fabricated biological creations, with nary a gearwheel or piston in sight. Across the Channel, the Germans are the principle super-power, and they abhor the blasphemous creations of the Darwinists. Instead, they rely on the power of steam and diesel and the metal machines that they drive, and as such have been christened the 'Clankers'.

This book picks up straight after the closing scenes of Leviathan, with protagonists Alek and Deryn on board the living airship, heading towards Constantinople as part of the British mission to encourage the Sultan and his Ottoman Empire from siding with the Clankers in the war that is just kicking off in Europe. Deryn is still trying to hide the fact that she is a girl, Alek, technically a prisoner on the Leviathan as it arrives in Constantinople, is still hiding his own true identity as the possible heir to the Austrian empire. As they arrive in Constantinople, or Istanbul as the locals now prefer it to be known, the crew of the Leviathan find that they are not alone in trying to influence the Ottoman ruler as the Germans have already arrived, and the sight of so many clanker-style machines around the city suggests that the delays experienced by the Darwinists in the first book may prove to be catastrophic. This leads for a greater element of political intrigue than we saw in the previous story, with the Germans, Ottomans, British, Austrians and groups of unhappy anarchists all working behind each others' backs to meet their own wants and needs.

Must as I loved Leviathan, I feel that the reason this book is even better than its predecessor is due to its location. Gone are the claustrophobic scenes set within the Leviathan, and Alek's frantic escape from his clanker pursuers, with the action flitting from one protagonist to another, chapter by chapter. Instead, we have a story set predominantly in one city, and a richly descibed one it is too. We are able to picture in our heads the sights, sounds and smells of this fantastic alternate Istanbul, with its rich familiar traditions and religions interwoven with Westerfeld's imagined technologies, biological or otherwise. And even though the story's point of view still alternates between the two main characters throughout the story, this time they are roughly in the same locale, interacting with the same people, which makes for a much more rewarding read in my opinion.

Behemoth is even more chock-full of riveting action scenes that its predecessor, as Alek and Deryn are thrown into one perilous situation after another. Every life-threatening scene further develops the close friendship that has grown between the two, although the fact that Deryn is starting to develop romantic feelings towards the Austrian prince does start to complicate things in her mind. Boys who steer away from books with romantic elements should not be put off though, these are only a small (but essential) part of the story.

As in Leviathan, another stand-out element of this book are the incredible black and white illustrtations of artsist Keith Thompson. I have to confess, the moment the book arrived the first thing I did was scan quickly through the book to gaze longingly at each of the beautifully detailed images. I have so far managed to resist the ever growing urge to buy a couple of his Behemoth prints, but I am not sure how much longer my willpower will hold out (I do have a BIG birthday coming up in April though... hmmmmm). I have included a couple of the images at the end of this post (click on them to view the super-sized versions) but you can see more of his amazing work here at his website.

The third, and final instalment in the trilogy, called Goliath, is scheduled for a September 2011 release, and yet again I find myself wishing my life away. My thanks go to Simon and Schuster for sending me a copy to review.

Review: Wereworld - Rise of the Wolf by Curtis Jobling

‘YOU’RE THE LAST OF THE WEREWOLVES SON. DON’T FIGHT IT . . . CONQUER IT.’ When the air is clear, sixteen year-old Drew Ferran can pick up the scent of a predator. When the moon breaks through the clouds, a terrifying fever grips him. And when a vicious beast invades his home, his flesh tears, his fingers become claws, and Drew transforms . . . Forced to flee the family he loves, Drew seeks refuge in the most godforsaken parts of Lyssia. But when he is captured by Lord Bergan’s men, Drew must prove he is not the enemy. Can Drew battle the werecreatures determined to destroy him – and master the animal within?

Imagine a fantasy world on par with that created by Tolkien for his Lord of the Rings books, and then take away the orcs, elves, dwarves, etc. and throw in a werewolf. And some werelions. Oh yes, and whilst you're at it wererats, werefoxes, wereboar and even a wereshark. Add to this a huge amount of writing talent and the end product is Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf by Curtis Jobling, the most exciting fantasy story I have read for years.

I imagine that many readers will make the same incorrect assumption about this book that I made: i.e. it is about a werewolf so therefore it must be a horror story. I couldn't have been more wrong - yes, there are some pretty nasty moments throughout the book, but this is truly a traditional fantasy story, although the kind I feel would still have great appeal to horror fans who claim that they "don't do fantasy". The main title, Wereworld, is the big clue to this books genre, for that is exactly what Curtis Jobling as created - a whole new world where the ruling elite are the werelords, all of them shapeshifters, and all able to turn into their own particular animal. Some of these werelords belong to long and magnificent dynasties, others have fallen from grace and now serve the more powerful shapeshifters in some way or another. 

Like all great fantasy writers Curtis Jobling has not just created a world for his story, but in Rise of the Wolf has has also created a back history, elements of which he reveals teasingly as the story progresses. This left me completely torn in two as a reader - dying to know how the events of the story would unfold, but also desperate for the action to be put on hold so that I could find out more about this incredibly original fantasy world. This made for perfect reading in my opinion - the pages kept turning and the chapters flew by long into the night as I became totally immersed in the story. This man really knows how to tell a story!

As you can probably guess from my praise so far, the world building is one of the huge strengths of this book, but a well-built fantasy world does not on its own make a great story - for that you need believable characters who readers will grow to love and hate, and Rise of the Wolf is certainly not short of these. First up, there is Drew, a farm boy who lives a simple life with his parents and brother. He is most definitely a mummy's boy, his father very obviously favouring his brother, with whom Drew has very little in common. But he is happy. However, one night something happens that finds Drew on the run, wrongly suspected of a heinous crime committed by a hideous beast, the like of which Drew has never before seen, and so begins Drew's epic journey of discovery. For he is the only remaining werewolf, last in a long line of an ancient royal line, but also a threat to the power of the land's ruler - the evil and merciless werelion King Leopold.

For many authors it can be quite a challenge just to create one or main characters that will pull the reader into their world. However, along with world-building the other gift that Curtis Jobling has as a writer is that of character creation as his fictional world of Lyssia is populated with myriad colourful characters that somehow all manage to stick in the memory of the reader, whether they have appeared in chapter after chapter, or have only made a fleeting appearance in a couple of key scenes. Some of them will make your laugh, some of them may make you cry. Some of them will most definitely pop up in a nightmare at some point in the future, I am sure. The beautiful thing about the whole werelord concept is that as readers we have pre-conceived notions of the personalities that various animals might have, and then when reading about the werelords in their human forms we automatically associate those traits with them. This helped me create very vivid pictures in my mind of what these various characters looked like, thus making them all the more memorable. Sometimes when reading large scale fantasy stories populated with vast numbers of characters I find myself having to stop and remind myself who some of the main characters are; in Wereworld this did not happen even once.

This really is the kind of story that could get reluctant readers hooked on books, although a degree of confidence when reading is needed. I know a good number of academically able boys whose parents despair because they supposedly find book boring, and would rather be playing on their X-Boxes, PS3s, and so on. Having just equipped myself with an iphone 4, and wasted a great deal of time playing with games and apps, I wonder whether I would have read as much if all these fab gadgets had been around back then. What I do know is that Wereworld is one of those books that would have pulled me away from those other distractions and had me enthralled from the first page until the very last, leaving me hungry for the next instalment. 

If you have a 12+ boy (or girl) who loves fantasy, or who you want to get reading more, then Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf is THE book to buy this January. My thanks got to Jayde at Puffin for sending me a copy - watch this space for a Q&A session  with Curtis Jobling, coming up on 12th January.