Brit Picks

Nicolette Jones, at the London Sunday Times, also warms up to the picture book Oscar's Half Birthday, by Bob Graham, which I mentioned recently.  With the exception of that and The Jungle Book (a new edition),  I've not heard of the rest of Jones's recommendations for toddlers through teens. The books are from U.K. publishers, after all, but  that's part of the reason I include them: to offer a wide variety of sources for  kids' reading matter.

In her roundup of reviews,  Jones talks about the Noughts and Crosses  series, another one I was unfamiliar with.

The popularity of Malorie Blackman’s raw, uncomfortable and original Noughts and Crosses trilogy (about a society where black people are privileged and white people the underclass) is proof that young adults are not fazed by brutality or passion. The concluding volume, Checkmate (Doubleday £12.99), is another emotional hard-hitter, the bluntly told and ingeniously constructed story of Callie Rose, the child of the first book’s ill-fated lovers, and victim of the sinister manipulations of her dangerous Uncle Jude. Again it is painfully near-the-knuckle about race, sex, politics and family relationships, but after much anger and despair, the trilogy ends with hope.

Comments

[slade tadd]

i like brit picks they look good.