Ritchie the Roach

Toonhead by Fiona Dunbar is a book which is really clever because it feels so realistic, because that's what can happen to people.
In the book this boy named Pablo has a not very nice life in a place where the only important thing was art. His mum and dad were artists and they wanted him to be like them too. But he wasn't especially good at art.
One day he meets a person whose very friendly to him and lets him watch television in his house. He never gets to do this in his house because the only important thing is art, so there is no television.
He starts watching cartoons at their house and then starts drawing them. He then finds out that he can predict the future through his cartoons.
One day he predicts the result of a football match and then him and his friend go to the betting shop but they reject him, so a man says 'I'm over 18 shall I go in for you?' and then they say no, and then he gets detention and then he gets kidnapped!
When he's held prisoner he makes friend with a little cockroach named Ritchie the Roach, which is a cartoon he used to watch with his friend. Ritchie helps him to try and escape.
This is a very clever book because I think it's sort of a realistic plot but then there's fantasy as well. Some bits made me laugh and some bits I was dreading what was going to happen next.
I give this book five out of five stars. A really good book for seven plus.

A voice in the head

Street Heroes by Joe Layburn is a book which is going to be published in May 2010. I got an copy from the publicity person at the publishing company because they are also going to publish my mum's book and they know I have a blog. If other publishers want to send me books I am very happy, and I will give them very honest reviews.
This book is very interesting because it's coming from lots of people's point of view. One thing bad about it is that it's quite confusing because there are so many people involved. The main sides represented are Fatima, who is Muslim and black and Georgie who has a father who has extreme fascist views.
It also shows how everybody's different because Georgie's dad wants him to be the same as him, but which side will he take? Fatima's or his father's?
This story is about one boy who has a dad who's very extreme and one person who's trying to help Muslims and stop racism. Everyone thinks Georgie has the same views as his father, but he doesn't want everyone to think that.
I liked that it was about politics and you don't get many children's books about politics.
Why the title is 'A voice in the head' is because Fatima can communicate by making her voice go into other people's heads which is a way of helping them.
My star rating is five because I really liked it. I think it's good for seven plus and if seven year olds read it or even similar age groups would have to have some help with it.

Too Big Expectations

I listened to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens on an audiotape on two car journeys. It was great having it there to listen to, because it can get boring in the car if you have nothing to do. It was read by Anton Lesser and he did a very good job with all the different voices.

The story was about a boy who brings pie and food to a convict who has escaped from a prison ship. Pip, the main character, gets a mysterious inheritence and he doesn't know who it's from.

He thinks it's from Miss Havisham, however he is not sure. While he is at Miss Havisham's he meets a mysterious girl named Estella. He falls in love her, however Miss Havisham got heartbroken because of a boy so Miss Havisham wanted to take her revenge on men by breaking Pip's heart. Poor Pip falls for her trap because Estella is very cold-hearted.

I thought it was good but it could have had a bit more storyline, the bits that it did have were very very good. It was a bit complicated but we paused it a little bit to help me understand it. The moral of the story was what comes around goes around.

My favourite bit was when Pip ran to the convict and gave him the food.

I give Great Expectations four stars out of five because I think it could have had a more exciting story.

Statue Art

Today I am writing about an art exhibition instead of a book because I found it so amazing that I thought I just had to write about it.

I went to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. Before I went I knew nothing about him, but my expectations were still high because I'd heard great things about him. I was paticularly interested to see it because all the art I do in school is drawing and painting but I want people to know that there are more ways of making art, for instance paper mache and statues and sculpture and animation. These are my favourite sorts of art because I prefer making things 3d because it's more fun.

The first thing I saw was huge giant metal balls all lined up to eachother, on eachother which was amazing because it was really exciting. That was in the courtyard before you even got into the exhibition.

Once we got inside we saw a big wax train, which was slowly moving and squeezing through doorways. I thought it was a very clever idea however it really should have gone zooming fast because then there would have been a big splat.

In another room there were rocks and things made out of concrete that my mother thought looked like poo. I disagreed. I thought they looked more like worms.

There were shapes coming out of the wall and on the ground that looked amazing because they were just sticking there, they looked like powder. They should have fallen but they just stood there.

There was one other room that we did not look in for very long but however it had a hole in the middle that was very hard to see which made it like an optical illusion.

In one room there were mirrors which made you go upside down, turning you in to a giant and turned you into little thin stripes, making you very very very tall.

Then we went into a room with a big crowd of people just standing there. In the room there was one large gun. The doorway that it was pointing at was filled with red wax. Suddenly a man came, and pushed in a cylinder of red wax and fired the gun. It was a stinging shot that hit the wall bang on and just stayed there. At first I wondered what happened, and then I saw it. It was amazing.

There was also one sculpture that looked sort of like a twisted trumpet with lips for the place where the music comes out.

My favourite piece was probably the mirrors, because I found that one the most strange, which I liked. My friend Adam went to see the exhibition on the same day as me, but I didn't see him there.

Anish Kapoor has made a very good exhibition, and I like his style.

The Golden Eagle

Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff is a really really good book full of action, adventure and some cleverness.

This book is set in Roman times. Marcus lives with his uncle Aquila who's not the happiest of people when Marcus comes to live with him. Marcus goes with his uncle to see a gladiator match and saves somebody by saying don't kill him and making the crowd agree with him, then buys him and then they become friends.

The Ninth legion is believed to have walked on and then just disappeared. Marcus and Esca (the rescued gladiator) go on a quest to find the missing eagle of the ninth legion. The eagle was the sign of the Romans. On the quest they think they've won it, then they don't and you're always wanting to know what happens next.

It's one of those books that you'll be trying to read in your sleep because it you're just so interested and excited because you just don't know what's going to happen next.

I learned quite a bit about Roman times, mainly about how many different types of soldiers there were and what games they played.

It was easy to read however some bits of it were quite difficult to understand and so it was good that my dad read it to me.

Star rating is five out of five because I absolutely loved this book. I would recommend it for eight plus but if you're 8 or 7 someone should probably read it to you.

Where am I?

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce is a very good book. It is quite exciting and the main plot would never actually happen in real life but all the other things could.

It's about a boy whose brother gets measles and he has to live in a flat with his auntie and uncle. At first he finds it boring but then one night he creeps out to find a garden that in daylight is not there. He meets a girl who he spends lots of time with, named Hattie. She becomes his friend in the garden.

I liked how it always had that slight touch of mystery, and you were wondering what was really happening. I really enjoyed the characters because they had a good personality and it really showed that in the bbook. The two people who are friends, Hattie and Tom just seemed to click. They seemed like they were always meant to be friends.

This is a good book for eight plus but you might want to get your dad to read it to you like mine did. It gets four stars out of five. I give only four because some of the clues give the story away a bit too much, but it is still very intriguing.

Where is my Money?

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner is a wonderful adventure about a boy who is very poor and gets his money stolen on the train when he goes to sleep. The adventure is about how he gets his money back.

The main character, named Emil, meets some very reliable friends who help him on the quest to get his money back. Their adventure is so big and exciting because you never know what's going to happen next. You never know if he has won or lost and several times you are convinced he has lost his money.

It was first published in Britain in 1931, so as you can see it's not a new book. The setting is in Germany. The time and the place affect the book by the ways that they do things such as how one of the boys is called The Professor which wouldn't be very likely in England today. I liked the fact that it was set in Germany because it felt different from most books, because most books are set in Britain and it's all about what British people would do, and this is an example that shows you whatr life was like in Germany in the 1920s.

This weekend there was a production of Emil and the Detectives on Radio Four which was good but I imagined the voices different, because they sounded like they were cockneys and I didn't imagine that. I thought they'd use better English. The producation did not change the story which I thought was good and it was as still as exciting as the book. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them

My star rating: five out of five.

This would be good for eight years plus.

Sorry for the delay in posting the review, the next one will come soon. Please leave comments on this and also on the last one - Bloggs's guest blog.