Chook Doolan: the Newest Pet

Chook Doolan: the Newest Pet by James Roy, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford (Walker Books)

PB RRP $7.99

ISBN 9781922244949

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

A new illustrated chapter book series for the 5+ year age group introduces the lovable character, Simon ‘Chook’ Doolan. He has been named Chook, because he’s chicken (as in not very brave). Chook has two pets: Flexy-Lexi the cat, and Bruce a goldfish he inherited when his cousin moved overseas.

It’s ‘bring a pet to school’ day. Chook’s mate Joe doesn’t have a pet, so Chook tries to find him one for the day. This is a big step for the not very brave Chook, even if it isn’t successful.

When Chook takes Bruce to school with the idea of sharing him with Joe, to their delight, there is an amazing development.

This is the first of the series written by the award-winning James Roy. Talented illustrator Lucinda Gifford has created delightful and expressive characters in pencil, ink, crayon, marker and watercolour, to complement Roy’s text. The series is produced in bright, different coloured covers. The first two titles are available now with two more due in August.

Themes of confidence, being brave, family and community are blended together to create a lively story for early readers. 

Chook Doolan: Rules are Rules

Chook Doolan: Rules are Rules by James Roy, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford (Walker Books) PB RRP $7.99

ISBN 9781922244932

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Chook Doolan is scared of everything. That’s why he’s called Chook, for chicken, because he’s not very brave. He always walks to school with his brother Ricky. Today Ricky is sick and Chook must go to school by himself. Dad can’t drive him as he’s running late, so he gives Chook some rules to follow for his own safety.

But Chook takes the rules literally, and without meaning to, upsets all his friends in his community. Can things get worse?

Joe, his best mate, comes up with a brilliant solution to rectify the damage done.

This is a brilliant series for early readers which carry themes of family and community, and being brave when attempting things for the first time. Each book has a specific problem Chook must address, and young readers will easily associate with his feelings of insecurity and fear. They will also applaud his successes and the way he keeps trying no matter how difficult he finds the challenge.

Miss Understood

Miss Understood by James Roy (Woolshed Press – imprint of Random House Australia)
PB RRP $16.95
ISBN 9781864718607
Also available as an ebook
ISBN 9781742748771
Reviewed by Marian McGuinness

Ten-year-old Lizzie Adams has certainly been misunderstood in her short primary school life as she melodramatically explains to the principal of Our Lady of the Sacred Wimple College how she accidently set alight his life-sized cardboard cut-out. Not only has she set off a chain reaction of burning the bike shed and singeing the surrounding grass, she’s also traumatised the nearby third graders. It’s the ‘latest in a very long line of wild events.’ There’s one result and one repercussion. Lizzie is expelled and to her horror, will be homeschooled by her mum.

Forever an optimist, Lizzie’s sassy attitude shines as she sees the positive side of being homeschooled. ‘It’d be a ‘stroll in the park, but with a late start.’

Lizzie’s misunderstandings continue at home. The dynamics of the novel open up as we are brought into the lives of Mum, Dad, their neighbour, Miss Huntley and the blow-ins from the adjoining HomeFest world of display homes.

Award-winning author James Roy makes you laugh out loud with his witty, visual prose. In the early morning hours, when Lizzie realises she’s forgotten to put the garbage bin out, Roy takes you into the scene as Lizzie is ‘charging down the driveway with the bin getting the speed wobbles.’ When she confides in Miss Huntley that her dad will kill her for forgetting, Miss Huntley wryly remarks, ‘I seriously doubt that. We haven’t had a murder in this street for three or four years.’

Roy’s layering of humour and seriousness is deftly written as Lizzie realises that she is not the only one to be misunderstood. Her dad has changed. He is grumpier than usual. He’s getting more forgetful and tends to spend a lot of time sleeping. Lizzie confides in the reader, that when your dad shouts ‘it felt extra yuck.’

Just when you think things are settling down for Lizzie, the next chapter races you off in another direction as Roy interweaves the parallel plots of those in Lizzie’s life. 

As Lizzie’s world broadens it’s finally revealed that her dad is suffering from depression. After he’s been to the doctor he gives Lizzie a brochure. ‘Mood swings, having no energy, feeling like everything was hopeless …Yes … a lot of them sounded like my dad,’ thinks Lizzie.  Roy deals with this issue in a gentle and sensitive way that just might speak to some of his readers who find themselves in a similar situation to Lizzie. And if that’s the case, as a separate entry at the end of the book there are a few helplines for those in need.

With six CBCA Notable Books and a litany of major awards to his name, James Roy has created another winner with Miss Understood. There’s a lovely sense of a moving-on cycle as all the characters grow within themselves and with each other. Will Lizzie be given another chance at Our Lady of the Sacred Wimple College? I’m sure, after the principal has seen how much Lizzie Adams has grown up. 

City

City by James Roy (UQP)
PB RRP $19.95
ISBN 978-0-7022-4926-6
Reviewed by Jo Antareau

In this companion piece to his previous short story collection, Town, award-winning Australian author James Roy brings us a cross-section of city life told in twenty-two short pieces. Although aimed at a Young Adult audience, I (an adult) found it enjoyable. There are some drug references in the novel, but substance use is not portrayed.

Set in an unnamed modern Western city, Roy offers us tantalizing glimpses into the lives of some young adults. Roy is a skilled tease. With economical use of words, he gives us a lot – and leaves the reader wanting to know more.

The characters span the social spectrum – the unemployed, junkies, poets, artists, private school boys, students, speed-daters, workers, visitors from the country – mostly strangers, are linked by invisible threads. The connections that bind a city's inhabitants similarly unite the protagonists... the music, the streets, nightlife, the buses, the poem scrawled on a wall, the sporting teams. Roy elegantly demonstrates that we are all only separated by a few degrees.

Each piece in this anthology skilfully portrays the hopes and disappointments, wisdom and stupidity, prejudices and tolerances, pain and resilience of these people. They are all unique, yet easily recognisable. My favourite was Lauren the nurse, and her budding romance with an African musician, but admit to a soft spot for the slow-witted Chunks, who takes umbrage at a thug and ends up naked and hog-tied, dragging his equally impulsive mates into a head-on confrontation with a group of armed men.

City can be read as a series of discrete short stories. But this would be denying the fun of referring back to a previous story, to confirm where you might have read about this particular person earlier as they make a cameo in another's story.

Beautifully written with an economy of words, City had the effect of making me want to go back and read Roy's previous work Town. I can offer no higher praise to a writer than that.

A set of teaching notes is also available from the publisher, RRP $19.95.

Book Launch: Trust Me Too

Ford Street Publishing invites you to the launch of its latest book, Trust Me Too. Edited by Paul Collins with an introduction by Judith Ridge, Trust Me Too has never-before-published stories and illustrations from 57 contributors including Shaun Tan, Leigh Hobbs, Oliver Phommavanh, James Roy, Michael Gerard Bauer, Gary Crew, David Miller, Michael Pryor and many others.

Ford Street will be launching Trust Me Too in both Victoria and NSW.

Launch 1: NSW residents -- come along to the launch at Parramatta High School (Great Western Freeway) on Friday 20th of July. It'll start at 9:15. Wendy Orr (who will read from her story), Susanne Gervay, Meredith Costain, Oliver Phommavanh, Judith Ridge and others will be there. RSVP by July 14 to Terrie: fordstr@internode.on.net.

Launch 2: VIC residents – You’re invited to: Princes Hill Secondary College (Arnold Street, Carlton North) on July 27 at 6 pm. A STACK of children's authors and illustrators will be there, including Isobelle Carmody, Kirsty Murray, Meredith Costain, Marc McBride, Leigh Hobbs, Sean McMullen, Corinne King, Adam Wallace, David Miller, Janeen Brian, Gabrielle Wang, Sue Bursztynski and many others. It'll be a hoot! RSVP July 23 to Terrie: fordstr@internode.on.net.

Buzz Words loves Trust Me Too. This review was posted at BWB on 3 July:

Trust Me Too edited by Paul Collins (Ford Street Publishing)   

PB RRP $24.95

ISBN 978-1921665585

Reviewed by Francine Sculli

Trust Me Too is a wildly diverse collection of short stories and poems, edited by Paul Collins, that is jam packed with intoxicating tales written by an all-star line up of Australian writers. In her introduction, Judith Ridge sums the collection up perfectly: “If reading is something you do to find your way into the lives of other people, whatever kind of world they live in, you will find something to enjoy and ponder on within.”

And there is definitely no shortage of worlds and lives to explore in this collection; nor a shortage of themes, motifs and genres that will perfectly engage the middle-readers audience, but the one thing that truly binds this anthology is the thrilling sense of adventure and strong themes. From the very first story, Kerry Greenwood’s ‘The Calabar Crystal’, readers are thrown right into the very heart of a historical otherworldliness through the daring adventures and discoveries of best friends, Red and Liam, who unearth Liam’s eccentric great-aunt’s secrets from Zimbabwe.

There is no turning back from the benchmark of Greenwood, and the ripping pace continues as readers travel from world to world meeting strong characters of both old and young who encounter everything from a lone child raised by dingoes, scavenger hunts with prized ashes, sci-fi detective deaths inspired by plagues of rats, failed rock star fathers, cartoon farmers plagued by Zombies and so very much more. The big draw card of the Obernewtyn novelette ‘The Journey’ by Isobelle Carmody, is well worth its weight in gold. Carmody outdoes herself, once again, with a brilliant sci-fi story of Hannah, her telepathic powers and groundbreaking research. Hannah, drawn to the corporate city in search of people like her and a research internship that could change her life, finds herself attacked by a nunazi ganger and rescued by Jake Obernewtyn who shares his wisdom and creates a new path for Hannah.

The Obernewtyn novelette, however, does not outweigh the brilliance of this anthology as a whole. Each and every story, poem and illustration is well crafted and stands impressively on its own. This collection really does present the best of the best and there is so much to chew on that it is almost impossible to even select a stand-out. 

Spitting Image

Spitting Image (Lightning Strikes) by James Roy (Walker Books)

PB RRP $ 12.95

ISBN 978-1-921977-49-7

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Lightning Strikes is a terrific series of books for junior readers of both genders. They are by different authors with different topics. In Spitting Image we meet twins Helen and Charlie and toddler Abby, and Mum and Dad as they set out on a family outing. The destination is supposed to be the Zoo but they end up at Farmer Phil’s Fabbo Funtime Family Farm, aka a petting zoo.

The twins know it will be boring. They’d looked forward to poisonous snakes, reticulated pythons, even an anaconda. What they get is farm animals and alpacas, and even more boring events - or so they think.

Their parents mock their negativity and try to shift them into a positive mood by suggesting to Helen that she make use of her new camera to take photos of the animals. The complaints and groans continue. It is this new camera that causes her to fall into the alpaca enclosure which sets off a chain of unfortunate, catastrophic and chaotic events that are anything but boring.

It starts when Farmer Phil forgets to close the gate to the enclosure and the alpacas escape. They mix in with and frighten the cows that are halfway through an automated milking session. The cows try to escape and mayhem follows as the children try to round up the alpacas and experience all the animals’ oddities in the process. But then there’s the sheep dog trials, and the tangling of the rope attached to the alpaca with the mountain bike, and the list goes on.

This is a hilarious and unbelievably entertaining read.  It’s fast moving; unstoppable in fact until the last full stop. This is certainly a fabulous read for young people and older people who still nurture the child within and who enjoy a good laugh.

Edsel Grizzler Book 2: Rescue Mission

Edsel Grizzler Book 2: Rescue Mission by James Roy (UQP)
PB RRP $16.95
ISBN: 9780702238444
Reviewed by Jo Burnell

Edsel Grizzler Book 1 had me glued to the page. I couldn’t wait to see how my many questions were resolved in Book 2, but there’s always a problem with intriguing reads like this. Your questions may be answered, but they draw you deeper into the mystery and expose more unanswered questions.

In Book 1, Edsel returned from Verdana, the land of lost things because of Jacq’s sacrifice. Now Edsel is on a mission to rescue Jacq. When he finds her, he provides updates on all that has happened in her absence. This switching between worlds through conversation and flashback works well.

James Roy creates three dimensional worlds. I watched the steam rise as the retreating train left Widen and could almost breathe the despair in a sadly changed Verdana.

If you enjoyed Edsel Grizzler Book 1, you’ll be waiting for Book 2 like I was and you won’t be disappointed. On the scale of light to dark, Edsel’s tales are more dark than light. There’s not a lot to make you smile, but plenty of intrigue instead. Lives are at stake. Does Jacq hold the key to set things right – again? Who would have guessed that Ben would turn out the way he has? Is there any other way to save the children?

You guessed it. Some questions won’t be answered until Book 3.

Jo Burnell is passionate about hooking reluctant and struggling readers into the world of books. Her current project for teenagers looks at Juveniles in the Old Melbourne Gaol in the 1850s. Facts, Fictional Play Scripts and Faction recreate gaol life in early Melbourne in short easy read chapters.