November 2013: EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES

We also went on a trip to see the National Theatre production.

October 2013: WONDER

The clear favourite when we voted for our book of the year.

September 2013: a new school year, and a new year for Book Club

Our introductory meeting for the beginning of a new year, and we first agreed our ground rules:

Read - try to finish each book
Listen to Each Other
Keep an Open Mind
No shouting or Messing Around

Then we had a lovely chat about the books we like the most and what we like to read.

We talked about how we choose books - by reading the blurb, or being recommended from school, or reading the first sentence. We confessed that quite often we read late into the night. And in general we prefer the books to the movies - because as Rachel says 'they miss the exciting bits', and Sophia points out 'they're the originals' and Dylan agrees, recommends reading the book first, because it will have more description.

We like a wide range of different things, but there's a definite preference for fantasy, ('because they can write anything they want'), mysteries and adventures. Sofie particularly likes 'sad mysteries' and Dylan likes to be scared. Sophia says her dad says she's read more books than he has!

You can see our recommended reads on our pinterest board

Katherine Rundell, author of ROOFTOPPERS, visited us in July 2013

Katherine was captivating, and we loved the book - no surprise that it has gone on to win some very well-deserved awards. Here's just a little extract from our chat:

Mercedes:      Did you ever think of joining a circus?

KR:                  Yes! I never thought I’d be a writer, so for a time I had the more realistic ambition of joining a circus. I went to clown school. I always wanted to learn trapeze, but there is no trapeze in Zimbabwe.

Alice:               How do you write?

KR:                  I try to write a thousand words a day. I also teach about Shakespeare during the day, so I get up at 4am to write before I go to work.

Scarlett:          It’s amazing to hear about your childhood in Africa. You really liked it there. Do you like it better here or there?

KR:                  I like them both the same. My mother is still in Zimbabwe, so Africa is home. The world is more wild there. People in England are much better dressed. In Zimbabwe they only wear shorts and sandals, which is wonderful. I’d love to go back.

Rafferty:         I can’t decide whether to be a vet or a writer.

KR:                  Read James Herriot and you’ll see that maybe you can be both!

Maia:               If you could live on a rooftop in Paris for a week, what would you take?

KR:                  How many things am I allowed? Matches, definitely. And my brother. He’s a jazz musician, and very calm. He’s such a cool human being.

Kes the monkey (he could have a tiny backpack and help me carry things). A rain hat and an umbrella, because I used to live in Paris so I know that although when you think of Paris you think of sunlight and stars, actually it rains a lot there, just as much as in London.

Oh, and sausages and a saucepan. Comfort food. Treacle tart. What other comfort food? Yes – sticky toffee pudding, and spaghetti Bolognese and malteser cake.

Alice:               Why did you choose a cello?

KR:                  When I was your age I’d never heard a cello. Then, when I was ten, I was taken to hear Bach played by the best cello player in Zimbabwe. He was a most beautiful human being, a black Zimbabwean man. And I vowed then I’d marry a cello player. Only maybe that won’t happen now because my boyfriend doesn’t play the cello!

            It was also a practical decision, because Sophie is found in a cello case, so it had to be big enough to hold her: either a cello or a double bass, and a double bass is less soulful; and a harp is too difficult to carry around …

Mercedes:      How did you choose the names for your characters? They’re so unusual

KR:                  Vivienne is named after my aunt. Matteo I named because I had a distinct picture in my mind of a boy who could fend for himself. It sounded like a tough name.

                        Anastasia and Saffire – my two cousins wanted to be in the book, so that was easy.

                        Sophie I thought was a good name for a stubborn, practical person.

                        Charles is sort of like one of the Fellows I work with at Oxford, who is one of my favourite people in all the world. When I first wrote it, I used his name, but I had to change it so people couldn’t tell who it was!

And I chose his surname because Maxim means a saying, a famous phrase. And I wanted it to be like maximum, because he’s an extravagant human being.

Scarlett:          My favourite bit was when Sophie was learning to walk on the roof.

                        When I’m reading a book, it’s like watching a little film in your head, and I didn’t want it to end.

Mercedes:      My favourite bit was when she got the package and ate all the food. And my most favourite bit was when she heard her mother’s music. That was …

KR:                  I love writing about food! And reading about it. I always remember the food in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE: when they make toffee out of snow, and DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD and jam sandwiches.

My agent always says that books need to answer the two most important questions: What’s for dinner? And Are we there yet?

Look how much we loved The Apothecary by Maile Meloy!

OTTIE AND THE BEA BOOK CLUB Meet to talk about THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE 27 April 2013

We had very different opinions about the Book Club read this month.

Scarlett and Alice really enjoyed it. They liked the story, the adventure and the descriptions, which Scarlett said painted a picture with words.

Giacomo liked the adventure parts of the book, but on the whole found it a bit strange.

Rafferty, Maia and Mercedes didn’t really get into it at all: the beginning was slow, and they had other books they were enjoying more.

Books are so personal, aren’t they? That’s what makes talking about them so interesting: you find out a lot about how people think and feel when they tell you about the books they like.

Like FIVE CHILDREN AND IT, THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE is a classic. We talked about what we think that means, and whether it makes us more or less likely to want to read a book. Alice had a nice description of them as books ‘from back in the day’ and Maia explained that it can be a book that lots of people like – it doesn’t necessarily have to be old.

Rafferty pointed out the difference between books set in the past and books actually written in olden times. He’s really enjoying MURDER ON STAGE at the moment (and some of the rest of us had liked it too) – it’s a mystery set in Victorian times, but written now. Other books like this we’ve read and enjoyed are VIKING BOY, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON and the Percy Jackson series.

Maia used to read a lot of classics, but is a bit sick of old-style language now and these days is more into writers like Jacqueline Wilson who use the kind of words we use now, and write about more realistic problems. Mercedes agrees that if something’s called a classic it can be off-putting – like classical music is boring. When your dad plays it in the car it sends you to sleep!

So what did we think about this classic in particular?

It all seemed to depend on whether we had read past the beginning, because the story takes a while to get going and when you first meet Bonnie, the heroine, she seems spoilt and annoying. Rafferty liked the wild wolves in the forest, they were awesome, but stopped reading when he got to the nonsense of the maid and the girl.

Read on, though, and you find that Bonnie changes, and Scarlett enjoyed the surprise. You never expect that she would dress up as a boy, and there are really funny bits – like when Bonnie throws water on Miss Slighcarp and it knocks her wig off. That was one of Scarlett’s favourite bits.

In the back of the book there is a quiz to see which of the main characters you are like: Bonnie, Sylvia, or Simon? (I’m glad to say that Miss Slighcarp isn’t on the list!!) It turned out that a lot of us were like Bonnie, and the others are like Simon – so you see, we’re not that different after all, even if we like to read different things!

Our two reviews this month are from Scarlett and Alice.

Scarlett thought:

“Usually I find classics boring but I really liked this. The story was interesting, and the descriptions really painted a picture with words.”

And this is what Alice said:

“I liked it because it was adventurous and a bit scary – I like scary books”

Looking forward to our next meeting, on 5 June, when we voted to talk about THE APOTHECARY by Maile Meloy. Remember Bea’s suggestion that we all bring a note of our favourite page to share with the group!

OTTIE AND THE BEA BOOK CLUB meet to talk about FIVE CHILDREN AND IT 20 March 2013

If you found a fairy who could grant you any wish you wanted, what would you wish for?

Now that we’ve read FIVE CHILDREN AND IT by E. Nesbit, we know that this isn’t necessarily as brilliant as it first sounds.

We loved the suspense and the adventure in this story, which kept us turning the pages as if it was written yesterday, and not 100 years ago.

It was only the clothes that really give it away as being a classic: Maia was very intrigued to know what pantaloons were. (Very long baggy pants that girls used to wear under their very long dresses, since you’re asking!)

There is a lot in this book that is not as we might have expected, before we started to read. For example, when we hear the word ‘sand fairy’ we all have quite particular pictures in our minds: maybe a Disney style fairy, with a sandy dress, or a boy with an elf hat made out of sand, and sandpaper wings. Definitely not the strange bug-eyed creature described in the book, and so brilliantly illustrated on the cover by Quentin Blake. The Sammyad (for that is his name) looks more like a rat than a fairy, we thought.

So the children in the story are quite brave, really. Even though Mercedes’ favourite animal is a rat, she wasn’t sure she’d make friends with one straight away, if she found one in the sand.

The other thing that turns out not quite as we expected are the wishes. We learned that you must be careful what you wish for, because the Sammyad is very literal in the way that he grants them.

We talked a lot about what we would wish for, if we had the chance.

Maia thought wings.

Rafferty would like things to be perfect (but then, thinking more carefully, knew that the Sammyad would give you what you thought was perfect, which might not be perfect for other people …)

Mercedes would like to change people’s minds about destroying the rainforests.

Giacomo would stop wars and guns.

Grace would feed the children in Africa.

Maia wishes she could meet Jessie J, and she and her best friend could go on tour with her.

Bea would wish to raise all the funds for her trip to Africa – oh, and for world peace, too!

Then we had a really interesting discussion about what the Sammyad might make of our wishes. For example, what if the way he granted Grace’s wish, to feed the children in Africa, was by taking all our food to feed them? Food for thought, indeed …

So here is a book, written a hundred years ago, and starring children who wear pantaloons and don’t have telephones, which got us thinking about the world and talking in a most interesting way.

And we realized that not a lot has changed, really, if you don’t count the clothes and the technology: especially when it comes to country life versus the city. We all agreed that our friends and relatives who live in the countryside are much more free to run around and have adventures.

But, you know, they don’t live near Ottie and The Bea …

See you all after the holidays, when we’ll be talking about THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE. It’s another classic: will you love it as much as I did, when I was your age?

© Copyright Nigel Cox and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Photograph: Kelly Redinger / Design Pics Inc/Rex Features

PS Here is a picture of the gravel pit near where I grew up. As you can see, it's been turned into a nature reserve now ... on the right is a working gravel pit: you can see why parents might not want you to play there!