Children's books review: Three local reads to consider for your younger reader
Méabh McDonnell cooks up a literary storm in 'Any Way You Slice It'.
Dara Harte is rich, outrageously arrogant, and the heir to a baking business chain.
Carrie Quinn is none of the above, but a talented young chef whose hopes of forging a career in baking rest on winning the Castlecreagh Cup Young Pastry Chef of the Year contest and the fellowship offered as its prize.
She hasn’t even applied for college, since she can’t afford to go, and has happily sacrificed her Leaving Cert study time to spend long nights preparing for the heats of the Castlecreagh Cup, her target for the last two years.
So when her nemesis Dara, bane of her life at the hotel restaurant where they both work at weekends, attempts to muscle in on her oven space during the Castlecreagh contest, her answer is an emphatic “No!”
His own oven might be malfunctioning, but Carrie has soufflés rising in hers and there’s no way she’ll risk them deflating while Dara Harte, of all conceited people, opens the door and lets the temperature drop.
An irresistible force meeting an immovable object, however, is a recipe for disaster.
Spilt custard and shattered ramekins are the result of the ensuing scrap between the arch enemies in the middle of the prestigious competition, from which they are both summarily disqualified.
Dara’s future in the family cake empire is already mapped out, regardless of any competition result; plus, he has another chance of glory when he competes in the team contest with his twin brother Oisín.
For Carrie, there is nothing now on the horizon but dishwashing drudgery and a bleak home life where she carries the emotional burden of a mother teetering on the brink of mental breakdown and the loss of a father who walked out on his family.
How could she have let the one chance for which she had worked so hard slip through her hands because of the actions of one egotistical culinary rival?
She will never, ever, forgive him, she vows.
However, deep their mutual aversion, Dara and Carrie have in common an unyielding determination to succeed — whatever it takes.
So when Oisín and Dara fall out, leaving Dara in the lurch for the team contest, he and Carrie both realise that the other would be their obvious baking partner if they can just manage to set aside their differences in pursuit of the culinary crown.
What begins as a begrudging arrangement born of necessity is fired by a shared ambition and a passion for pastry perfection as intense as their rivalry.
The line between love and hate is a thin one, it is said, and soon caramel sauce isn’t the only thing simmering in the kitchen.
The mouth-watering ingredients of bake-off drama and possible against-all-odds romance are blended to produce a delicious debut YA novel from Galway-based Méabh McDonnell, released next month.
Where do books come from? Well it’s a long story, at least the way Wexford author Eoin McLaughlin tells it. And quite a smelly story too, involving squirrel poo.
We all know books are made of paper, which comes from trees, but McLaughlin’s picture book takes readers right back to the start of the process, and even before it, in a tale narrated by an expert in the field — none other than the tree from which the book was made.
The pine tree takes us back to the time when it was just a seed inside a cone, hurtling towards the ground after falling from the branch of its parent tree.
Though the seed is then consumed by a squirrel (called Derek), its “impermeable outer layer”, while not a phrase normally found in picture books for young children, ensures it comes out of the other end of the ordeal intact.
Still encased in a pellet of squirrel dung, the seed is next rolled around by a beetle called Barbara, before landing fortuitously on sunny, fertile ground — the perfect location for putting down roots.
Spoiler alert: After growing into a tall, handsome tree, its life is cruelly cut short.
But wait, that’s not the end of the story, and the tree reacts to its truncated circumstances with deadpan, wooden humour.
“‘It’s not so bad,’ they said. ‘You’ll get made into something new…you’re going to be paper.’
“‘OK. As long as it’s not toilet paper.’ I didn’t want another Derek situation,” the tree opines.
“I’m not tall, or green. But I’m still quite handsome. And I still smell good,” says the tree who is now a book, addressing its reader directly.
“You’ve just read my story. And if you share me, I can go on…and on…and on…because books are magic and stories are forever.”
From seed to squirrel bum, poo to printed page, this arboreal tale is eco-edutainment rooted in a love of reading and produced on paper made from wood grown in sustainable forests.
Whatever about books that tell their own life story, Navan author and primary schoolteacher Kieran Fanning’s latest work is a bit of a puzzle. A bit of an adventure mystery.
A bad-pun joke book. And a bit of an Irish travel guide, all rolled into one little paperback.
The story goes like this: Detective O’Malley and his sidekick, a seagull sleuth named Twist, have been called in to investigate a robbery at Dublin Castle.
The call comes in the form of a coded email and, from there on in, the reader is challenged to assist O’Malley and Twist as they decipher a series of clues in the hunt for whoever has stolen the Irish Crown Jewels.
Eight people were inside the castle at the time of the robbery and were captured on CCTV, but these suspects have now dispersed across the city.
Twist not only has a bird’s-eye view of the city — her own “Goo-Gull Maps” system — she is also adept at using tracking devices to keep tabs on suspects.
Readers must navigate Dart and Luas stops, solve crossword puzzles, and use maps and bus timetables in order to follow the search, which broadens out significantly when the suspects head for Glendalough, the Rock of Cashel, Blarney Castle, and the Giant’s Causeway.
An ingenious geography, history, maths, spelling, and science lesson disguised as a detective story, with a bonus mystery that can only be solved by making an in-person visit to seven real locations.
Now who would suspect a schoolteacher of constructing such a cunning plot?
BOOKS & MORE
Check out our Books Hub where you will find the latest news, reviews, features, opinions and analysis on all things books from the Irish Examiner's team of specialist writers, columnists and contributors.
