A tangram is a puzzle made of seven geometrical pieces that you must assemble to replicate various patterns. With patience, observation and imagination, the possibilities are vast. And if, as R. Henderson does in his latest picturebook, you allow yourself to add some extra detail in pen, then there is no limit to what you can create: animals, people, objects and whole stories to showcase them.
A space portal is opening in front of our very eyes, we might get to see aliens! Except, in this very clever reversal of perspective, we are on the outside and have become someone else’s aliens. Addressing the reader directly and inviting plenty of audience participation, Zrg and Blrg zoom through all the emotions from fear to relief to excitement and even cheekiness as an unusual inter-species friendship grows over the pages.
Nanabapa’s birthday party is imminent, and Devin still hasn’t decided on an outfit. With comfort and style as his guiding principles, Devin tries out a few options but none of them fit the bill, until he spots his sister’s sparkly blue skirt and that feels just right. But stepping onto the dance floor in front of the whole family in this piece of twirly fabulousness is a step too far for Devin, who decides to hide the skirt under a ninja costume. But it’s getting pretty hot under there …
Haughton’s first foray into non-fiction books tracks our species’ history through the lens of information accumulation. Sharing, storing and building up on information, Haughton posits, is what made possible the extraordinary achievements of humanity in a relatively short amount of time. This compelling argument is made clearly through chapters that are both chronological and thematic, starting with the origins of language all the way to AI.
Hyo Hakai is an artisan hellmaker who can manipulate bad luck and cast intricate curses on the targets designated by her clients, while her brother Mansaku hosts the parasitic spirit of a deadly weapon that feeds on his life force. They live in a world where gods, ghosts and demons are not just real: they are also very interested in the Hakai siblings. When a hellmaking commission brings the teens to the island of Onogoro, Hyo and Mansaku must navigate a complex network of secrets, lies and conspiracies.
The second collaboration between writer Julian Sedgwick and manga artist Chie Kutsuwada will grow on you. The deeper you wade into this collection of tales of kami gods and yokai spirits, the more attached you will grow to its characters, its décors, its language.
Gus the Goat has never met Mavis Mole, but that’s not going to stop Gus making conversation … and absurd assumptions. If Gus is an alliterative goat, then of course she must be an alliterative mole (he’s not wrong) and obviously, she must live in a hole, or a bowl, or at the very least in a sausage roll. Gus is determined to guess which rhyming abode is Mavis’, piling on the ridiculous suggestions. Mole is unimpressed, but readers will delight in the heady nonsense of Clarke’s text, made even more playful by Frang’s illustrations.
Rural England, 1994. Anti-gay sentiment isn’t just in the air, it’s in the law, with Section 28 of the Local Government Act stating that ‘a local authority shall not intentionally promote homosexuality (…) or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’
Human 2.0 is, as its subtitle promises, a ‘celebration of human bionics’ encompassing millennia of the ingenuity, innovation and resilience deployed by our species to assist, replace or even surpass human biology.
Playful, outrageous, deep, restrained, heartbreaking, thoughtful, downright silly … the range of tones and emotions that just fifty words on a page can elicit is amazing. Poet, performer and storyteller Simon Lamb’s first published collection follows this word-count rule to great effect, bringing to life a whirlwind of vignettes about grannies and baby brothers, wet weekends and Monday-morning dread, childhood hotels and slug-infested compost bins, pets and friends, growing up and grief, writing and creating, and more.
