Thursday, May 1, 2008

Books For Children?


Billed as a Young Adult Novel, How I Live Now by Meg Rossof won all sorts of awards in Britain. I think Adult is the operative word since right as our 15 year old anorexic American heroine gets off the plane in England she meets her cigarette smoking 14 year old male cousin, they hop in a car with him driving and a few chapters later they are having sex. What's so young about that? Anyway it's actually quite a good book set in a very vague future World War situation where the heroine ends up having to survive off the land.
Speaking of actual children's books Olivia and are reading The Penderwicks on Gardham Street and really enjoying it. They're quite good, both the first one and the second. The author obviously read a lot of the same fiction that I did when I was young. It has shades of Elizabeth Enright or E.E. Nesbit, not too trendy or pandering. Very satisfying.

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