Bernice Williams is a teacher from the Wellington area who
works with small groups of children in various schools. One of her most
enviable jobs (apart from the smallness of the groups) is to talk to
gifted children at Ngaio School about books and book related activities they
might like. Sometimes she reads aloud to them and a couple of weeks ago they
visited Gecko Press here in Wellington. The group have recently been looking at
books by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham including Mysterious Traveller (see earlier entry on this blog) and just last
week Cloud Tea Monkeys.
Here is a review of that book from
Alex Lewis age 11 from Ngaio School.
Cloud Tea
Monkeys by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham is a book about a girl called Tashi and
a group of very helpful monkeys. I really like this book for lots of different
reasons. The first of these reasons is that it has very detailed illustrations.
In my opinion these make it more interesting. It also pays attention to the
tiniest of details, which adds depth to the plot. For example, when it said
”Inside the house her mother coughed, twice.” Just that tiny snippet of
information leads to a very big event in the story. My final reason is that it
uses an amazing range of captivating language eg. “a light the colour of lemons
was soaking into the sky and painting out the stars”. Overall, I think that
this book is an amazing story suited for anyone with a craving for a
captivating adventure.
I highly
recommend it.
UK Writers
Mal Peet and Elspeth Grahame
Cloud Tea Monkeys
Walker Books 2011 $17.99pb
ISBN 978 1 40633 386 2
Mal and Elspeth will be leaving New Zealand shortly after
being here for the whole summer (they are probably escaping just in time). Mal
has been teaching in New Zealand at Victoria University at the International
Institute of Modern Letters. They will be farewelled at the Children’s Bookshop
at Kilbirnie tonight around 6pm after the book launch for Mandy Hager’s latest
title – Dear Vincent. All lovers of
children’s books are welcome.
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