Blogs

There's two great new books for kids illustrated by ABCtaler El Ashfield and written by Corinne Davies. They follow on from the magnificent Ralph is (not) a Superhero and follow much the same format. Written in rhyming couplets they trace the adventures of 8 year old nerd Ralph as he survives the pitfalls of school, ignominy and his elder sister and her friends. In 'Vampire' Ralph is fooled into going to sister's groovy party in fancy dress when...

Just to let you all know that long term member Chelsey Flood has signed a major book deal with Simon and Schuster (and Arena in Germany). She's gone with them after an auction in the UK and Germany. The provisional title of the book is Silverweed and it is hoped it will be out in early 2013. You see - it does pay to be an ABCtales member! Congratulations to Chelsey, Tony Cook

A review by Tony Cook: Let me begin by stating quite clearly and unequivocably that I like this book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, I found the characters realistic and engaging, the storyline compelling and the writing direct and lean. BloodMining is divided into three sections. The first and third sections are set in the future Britain of around 2050 after a devastating plague has wiped out swathes of the population, the middle section is...

Every word is placed down in sentences that sing and paragraphs that burn and pages that brand themselves into your mind. Pitch perfect the action unfolds at the pace of ‘bony mules hitched to Hoover carts…slowly, but sure-footedly it builds up into a crescendo and just when you thought it was finished another flash of brilliance carries you that extra page. Scout, the narrator, Atticus her father, Jem her brother and friend Dill, dance like...

The Body Farm BBC 1 9pm. Forensic science is the new hairdressing and beautician kind of thing everybody kinda knows about and wants to do. We can’t all be Kathy Reichs, or the English version, Patricia Cornwall. The body farm is, as far as I can remember, a place in the US, where human bodies were left to rot, be eaten by insects and grow into the soil like any other piece of meat to see what kind of patterns emerged. With the added use of DNA...

Australia is a country, a short arsed continent and now a movie! Baz Luhmann’s (2008) epic Australia, starring Nicole Kidman as Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman as ‘The Drover’. Epic means, of course, it takes a longer time to get to Australia, than watch the actual movie, give or take the odd 15 or 16 hours. I didn’t have that kind of time frame, so I watched the first half hour before the ad break on Film 4. Australia had a cartoon feel as if it...

Buddha in Suburbia BBC 2 7pm, but only in England. BBC 2 Scotland had Dad’s Army, you know that programme they put on when they think nobody is going to watch this, so we’ll put it on, anyway. Buddha in Suburbia was, however, well worth watching. Not many families have the eleventh Lelung Rimpoche, one of Tibet’s three highest Lamas, living in Ruslip, in their garden shed. The Dusek’s have. It beats having a tortoise, but, of course, there are...

Whistleblower starring, you guessed it, Rachel Weiz. A whistleblower is someone who informs the public or tells someone in authority about dishonest or illegal activity (lawyers always put in alleged before dishonest/illegal) that has occurred, or is occurring in a Government department, a public or private organisation, or a company. What Whistleblower shows are there is no real distinction between any of these categories. The corporation is...

Two Days in Paris (2007). Not only is it written directed and starring Julie Delpy, she is also bilingual. The Human Genome Project has shown that people who are bilingual begin life in the womb with two heads. Later when talking to you, they can pause, and talk to themselves in a foreign language and laugh at you using there other head. Ha. Ha. Ha, Ha (in French). Julie Delpy makes very good use of this. It’s a comedy so we must play along and...

BBC4 Legends: Doris Day was on the cusp of the adult watershed because she was so risqué that she sometimes cussed and wore men’s trouser most notably in Calamity Jane (1953) her best remembered movie, because I can remember it. To be fair, which I never am, it is shown somewhere on Earth every other day. Two weeks ago it was shown here and I started watching bits and pieces. Doris was born to an immigrant farming family. She learned to shoot a...