Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for literature

The 2005 award has been won jointly by Philip Pullman and Japanese illustrator Ryôji Arai. [Press release]

Children's Laureate Announced

There is an interview with the new Children's Laureate, Jacqueline Wilson, on Radio 4's Front Row tonight. You can listen to it online HERE. In it she stresses the importance of reading aloud, and discusses the controversial nature of some of her books. She calls for 'more funding for public libraries', and old-fashioned story-times in schools. Unfortunately she comes right at the end of the programme. There is also an interview with her in Friday's TES.

REVIEW: Noodle Head, by Jonathan Kebbe

The theme of sending troubled or delinquent adolescents off to some kind of correctional institution seems to be a popular one nowadays. It started with Louis Sachar's wonderful book 'Holes'; more recently we have had 'Come Clean', by Terri Paddock, in which Justine is sent by her parents to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre. Like Stanley, she suffers at the hands of the sadists who run it - and as in Holes they get their come-uppance in the end. A real life example comes from Augusten Burroughs, author of the amazing memoir of his seriously dysfuntional childhood 'Running with Scissors', where you don't know whether to laugh or be horrified. In his follow-up, 'Dry', he writes with the same black humour about the time spent in a clinic for alcoholics.

But back to Noodle-Head. Described in the blurb as a junior 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest', this tells of how Marcus King, called Noodle Head on account of his curly hair, is sent to a correctional facility for young offenders. The treatment at Dovedale Hall is to drug you senseless so that you cooperate and 'reform'. But Marcus tries to resist, with terrifying consequences.

REVIEW: Freaky Green Eyes, by Joyce Carol Oates

Shame about the title and cover, which are rather off-putting and don't at all reflect the contents. It might seem like a run-of-the-mill teenage story, but what begins as yet another tale of warring parents slowly turns into something much darker. A short but powerful read.

REVIEW: The Oxford Murders, by Guillermo Martinez

A detective novel with a difference. The killer appears to be deliberately appealing to mathematicians, since each crime is accompanied by a symbol, one in a series. The number theories of Godel, Wittgenstein, Fermat and others were a bit over my head, but it was a compelling story with an unusual twist.