It's legendary now, that Madeleine L'Engle's classic novel was rejected by numerous publishers and eventually even its agent handed the book back to its author. It was "too different", different because it credited young readers with being able to grapple with the concept of evil, and because it
Jeff Lemire's style is immediately recognizable. The colours are sombre, earthy. Faces are often smudged with shadow. Sometimes entire pages appear to be shadowed. The lines are raw, sometimes inexact. Details in the background are sometimes perfectly drawn, like expertly squared tiles, and other times they are hasty cross-hatchings, a
I've been wanting to holiday in Newford for more than ten years; finally, this spring, I spent time in Dreams Underfoot. "In Newford, creation is the supreme act of magic, whether that creation be a painting, a fiddle tune or a poem, an AIDS clinic or battered children's shelter, or
In which I chatter about Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief, the Mythlopedia series, the third in Bill Willingham's Fables series, and make hasty notes about my other reading for the un-challenge. The Lightning Thief is intended to be larger than life. Percy Jackson is not a normal boy. He is
We want that "paradoxical search for familiarity combined with strangeness; want more of the same – but with a difference," says Victor Watson in Reading Series Fiction. Watson's book considers series written for children, but it still applies, doesn't it? There's nothing like reading a series. Robert Kirkman's The Walking
