Madagascar Misadventure
I listened to this story before recommending it to a teenager. It has that good mix of excitement and natural history that I like in a book. Read in a clear, warm voice, it's a good story to sit back and relax to.
I knew nothing about Madagascar until I heard the story, but I soon realised that the author really knows the island and by end I felt I'd been there.
book lover
Snowfed Waters
… Another super story, is Jane Wilson-Howarth's Snowfed Waters, her fictional sequel to her non-fiction book, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows. Jane, who is based in Cambridge, spoke at Words in Walden a few years ago about her very moving experiences in Nepal on which A Glimpse is based. And it is immediately clear when you read Snowfed Waters that it is shot through with cultural insights and anecdotes which could only have come from personal experience.
The story is related through five voices - Sonia, the English woman travelling to Nepal, Rekraj, a young Nepali man who has been appointed to look after her; Guliya Tharu, a Nepali village woman, Regimental Sergeant-Major Bom Bahadur Gurung, and Moti, a Nepali teenage girl. Much of the humour in the story comes from their often perplexed accounts of each other's reactions to particular circumstances, highlighting their false cultural assumptions.
Rekraj, for example reports on the following exchange between himself and Sonia:-
'"Where exactly is England in America?"
She is angry when she answers. "England is NOT in America. England, Britain actually, is very, very different!"
I do not know how I have offended her. I feel I should apologise but I do not see what the problem is. Perhaps she has tasted some alcoholic drinks...'
Very quickly one warms to each of these characters and the story, which becomes unexpectedly dramatic and is full of vivid local description, unfolds through their joint narrative. This is a really lovely, uplifting, gloriously humane read.
Jo Burch in Hub Magazine (Saffron Walden)
Chasing the Tiger
A rollicking adventure ... and a great follow-on to Himalayan Kidnap. It has boys who behave in the all the annoying ways boys do, and a girl to pick them up on their absurdities. It made me want to go away and search for images of the vividly described landscapes and, of course the amazing array of animals in the Himalayas. Can't wait for volume 3.
Himalayan Hideout
This book, not like many others, it starts by plunging you into an adventure, where you are instantly gripped. I really loved this book and read it in an afternoon. It is not the children being kidnapped, but the adults. The children set off on a long fun, challenging adventure encountering lots of different animals with beautiful descriptions and illustrations. You feel as if you could walk up to them and greet them with their full name. The different personalities of the children really bring the story alive. There are two boys, the younger one thinks mainly of food and the older one tries to be clever but fails desperately over time because the girl out-smarts his thinking with her knowledge of Nepali culture. I think everyone would enjoy this book, even if you don’t have a particular interest in different animals. By the end, you will have a knowledge of more than just foxes and badgers.
Toma, aged 12