Reviews

A Swift Return by Fiona Barker and Howard Gray is an absolutely beautiful book. The story is sweet and life affirming without being saccharine, whilst the pictures manage to depict a dusty cityscape without detracting from the beauty of the city itself.

Arabic isn’t one of my languages, so I’m unable to comment on the translation/interpretation, but having a second language present is lovely – bilingualism in picture books really doesn’t have to be difficult and it would be amazing to see more stories offered in this way.

What I really loved about this book was the way in which it dealt with personal responsibility in regards to the environment. Can we fix things on our own? Nope. But can we make things better? Absolutely. And if everyone makes a few things better, then that’s a lot of improvement in the world. It reminds me a lot of this quote, actually:

I fully intend to gift copies of this to young children in my life – the sense of hope in it is infectious and what better gift is there to give?

Blurb

Aria has her head in the clouds. Yusuf keeps his feet on the ground. But when they work together to save a bird who has lost her way, something magical happens. When Swift loses her way on her epic migration. Aria and Yusuf come to her rescue and are inspired to think big about looking after the sky above their city. Inspired by Fiona and Howard’s love for wildlife of all kinds, A Swift Return is the follow-up to Setsuko and the Song of the Sea. Howard’s beautiful illustrations evoke a strong sense of place, strengthened by the beautiful Arabic text distilled by Maysoon AbuBlan.

About the Author

Fiona is a middle-aged, married mum of one. She is positively potty about picture books; reading them and writing them. When writing, she longs for alliterative loveliness but is reluctant to rhyme. When reading, she looks for a marriage of words and artwork and loves anything that is fun to read aloud.

Fiona loves doing school author visits and speaking to adults about picture books and children’s publishing.

Visit www.fionabarker.co.uk for details of forthcoming events.

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I’ve set up a ‘bookshop‘ of sorts, over on Bookshop.org, so that I can point you to somewhere to buy that isn’t Amazon. I get a small commission for any sales made there. This helps to support me running this blog. If you’d like to get your copy of A Swift Return this way, please just click here. Thank you for your support.

The Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani and translated by Sawad Hussain is one of the books that I’m most excited for this year. I should actually have been reviewing it for this tour, but because of various technical difficulties on my end, I’m going to have to wait and review at a later date.

As former linguist (does anyone ever really stop being a linguist?) I’m especially excited by the fact that this book won an English PEN Translates Award. Good literary translations are really difficult to do, so I’m excited to look at Hussain’s work.

Morani’s novel is described on the Neem Tree Press site as:

The book comes out on February 29th, 2024. You can buy your copy direct from the publisher here, or from your usual bookshop.

Little Mo and the Great Snow Monster by Michael Foreman is a beautiful book, that I was lucky enough to receive a digital copy of via Random Things Tours. The illustrations are so pretty, and the story is a lot of fun.

This tale didn’t go where I was expecting – when the monsters appeared at the family cave, I expected either an ‘everyone is welcome, no matter what they look like’ scenario, or a clever, Gruffalo-esque twist where Little Mo managed to scare the monsters away. But it was neither of those things, and was definitely all the sillier for it.

I’m largely out of the habit of reading picture books these days, so this was a rare, lovely treat. I especially appreciated the timeline at the end of the book. Concepts like evolution are so abstract and difficult to understand – I’ve met a few children who’ve earnestly asked, “when did I stop being a monkey and become a baby?” Having a book to point to which explains things like this is always really helpful, especially when it’s a fun story too. It’s also really lovely to see the prehistoric world through a non-dinosaur lens. I mean, we all love a good T-Rex, but there’s so much more to pre-human life, and it was great to get a look at that for a change.

What was the last picture book you read? Do you have any favourite books about pre-history for children? I’d love to hear about them! <3 

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I’ve set up a ‘bookshop‘ of sorts, over on Bookshop.org, so that I can point you to somewhere to buy that isn’t Amazon. I get a small commission for any sales made there. This helps to support me running this blog. If you’d like to get your copy of Little Mo this way, please just click here. Thank you for your support.

A huge thanks to TheWriteReads for including me in this blog tour.

Adult books aren’t something I generally review on here, but my YA reader saw the cover in my emails and deserately wanted to give this a go, so here we are.

And I’m SO glad we got a copy! Aside from the absolutely beautiful review pack (thank you!) the book itself was everything I could have hoped for.

The best way I can describe this – without giving the game away – is that it’s a festive ghost story in the spirit (see what I did there) of a Christmas Carol. There’s an almost villainous protagonist, a spectral presence, and a chance of redemption.

Set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, we follow a London thief, hiding out in a country village until heat from a job he pulled dies down. When he discovers a rare book in the village bookshop, he decides to chance his luck and steal it, with disastrous consequences.

This couldn’t be a more perfect stocking filler/Christmas gift/Christmas Eve story round the fire.

Like I said, this is a book my YA reader was super-keen to read, and given that we’re both big fans of Williamson’s work, I thought I’d chance it. I read through this first and though there are some unsettling descriptions of wounds, and warfare, I have a fairly robust child who absolutely loved this book.

You can pick up a copy from the publishers, Silver Thistle Press, or from your usual bookseller.

You can also check out reviews of some of Williamson’s other books: Norah’s Ark, Whistlers in the Dark, and Feast of Ashes.

Do you have a favourite festive horror story?