On the lines of stories like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, Elizabeth Von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s own, The Blue Castle, where a change of scene and importantly nature bring about a life changing transformation in the characters’ until then dreary and oftentimes even miserable lives, is Jane of Lantern…
Book Review: Limberlost (2022) by Robbie Arnott #AusReadingMonth2023
My thanks to the Text Publishing Co for a review copy of this book via Edelweiss. A coming-of-age story, the story of a memorable summer, of dreams (dreamt, achieved, shattered), of a young man from Tasmania from his teen years to old age, of Tasmania itself or at least a sense of it from its…
Book Review: The Children of Cherry Tree Farm (1940) by Enid Blyton #1940Club
Monday the 10th of April 2023 and time for the #1940Club hosted by Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. For those new to club reads, twice a year Simon and Karen pick a year and anyone who wants to participate reads a book or books originally published in that…
Book Review: The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson
A school story, a Ruritanian adventure, a story rich in nature, a story about friendship and about family, about World War II and standing up to the Nazis, and also about freedom—The Dragonfly Pool (2008) is all of these—a strange seeming combination perhaps, but one that works rather well. In The Dragonfly Pool, we meet…
Book Review: Field Notes on Listening by Kit Dobson
My thanks to Wolsak & Wynn and Independent Publishers Group for a review copy of this book via Edelweiss. Field Notes on Listening is a reflection or rather, reflections on the connection we as a species have lost or perhaps broken, with the land, the environment around us, and even with each other, and on…
Book Review: A World Full of Nature Stories: 50 Folk Tales and Legends by Angela McAllister (author) and Hannah Bess Ross (illustrator)
My thanks to the Quarto Group and Edelweiss for a review copy of the book. A World Full of Nature Stories: 50 Folktales and Legends is a beautiful collection of traditional stories, folk tales, and legends from pretty much every corner of the globe, and all of which are centred on different aspects of nature—be…
Review: The Living Mountain by Amitav Ghosh
My thanks to Harper Collins India and NetGalley for a review copy of this story. The Living Mountains: A Fable of Our Times by Amitav Ghosh is a short work, less than novella length, which explores a range of themes including colonialism and the attendant exploitation of people and resources, devaluing of traditional knowledge, de-sacralisation…
Book Review: Ela Green and the Kingdom of Abud by Sylvia Grief
My thanks to Booktasters and the author for a review copy of this book. Ela Green and the Kingdom of Abud is the first of a fantasy–adventure series set around the theme of humans' disconnect with nature, and based on myth and legend. Eleanor or Ela Green is fourteen and studies at a boarding school…
Book Review: Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis #Narniathon21
Opening with the same words as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy…, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951) picks up exactly a year after the events of the first book. The four Pevensie children are at a railway station at…
Book Review: Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville
My thanks to Handheld Classics and Edelweiss for a review copy of this book. Malcolm Saville is another from the list of authors whom I was aware of but had never read. I only had a vague idea that he wrote adventure stories for children. But on seeing my friend Alwynne's review of this book…
Literary Potpourri 