Chapter 1 starts like this:
“Mr. Gum was a fierce old man with a red beard and two bloodshot eyes that stared out at you like an octopus curled up in a bad cave.”
This is going to be interesting. Continue reading
“It feels like a door has opened. And that I need to step through before it closes” – Ebo
Illegal charts the harrowing journey that two orphaned brothers make from a poor village in Ghana to promise-laden Italy. The boys cross lands that offer no sanctuary and encounter exploitative grown-ups who offer no mercy.
Illegal is, by far, one of the hardest graphic novels I’ve read with my children, but in an increasingly fractured and unkind world, it tells a powerful story too urgent to ignore, too important to be forgotten. It demands to be read. It has to be read. Continue reading
The first spread is a classroom scene. The thirteen desks and chairs are arranged in a circle, which is one of the first things Anna and Ben notice when we read this picture book together (the second thing is how few children there are in the class). A kindly, tea-drinking teacher poses a question to the bright-eyed and attentive students.
“The teacher asked us what we thought made our family special.”
What a good question. What does make a family special?
“Human beings have two names, a first name and a surname, but I’m a gorilla and I just have the one name – Sally Jones.” – The narrator, an anthropoid ape.
The beauty of this book is what strikes me first. It has a bright turquoise framed cover, gorgeous maps as endpapers, detailed black and white illustrations throughout the almost 600 pages of uncoated paper, and pleasing fonts.
Then I get stuck into Sally Jones’ story – an old-fashioned murder-mystery that is chock-full of fabulous characters, sea travel to exotic locations and suspenseful moments – and I am captivated. Continue reading
Stories That Stay With Us 