Jane Godwin
Autor von Red House, Tree House, Little Bitty Brown Mouse
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Bildnachweis: Allen and Unwin Media Centre
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The text she read ended with…”don’t tell Bella.” But she was Bella and this was from her friends! What was happening? Set not long after the COVID lockdown ended, Bella was just starting to go out again to the city with her best mate Connie and her strange cousin Misha but something id not quite right. There are cameras everywhere, there are strange people about - who is watching and why?
A book about friendships and trust set in Melbourne.
A book about friendships and trust set in Melbourne.
I think this can be read at least two ways:
1. As a read-aloud for a group of kids, I'd emphasize colors, counting, and answering the simple questions ("Shoes go on your feet. What goes on your head?"). The text is simple and the illustrations are clear and bright. This could be a great story time selection!
2. For an individual preschooler, this is an easy seek-and-find to pore over. The little bitty mouse is on every page and they can match the endpaper patches to the illustrations. Also, there are lots of connections to make between the final illustration of the interior of mouse's house and all of the previous scenes. How fun!
The rhyming text is really fun to read aloud. I was also a big fan of the illustrator's previous work in [b:One Family|22718696|One Family|George Shannon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406526556l/22718696._SX50_.jpg|42246990].
One last thing: I don't think I've ever seen sun-showers depicted in a picture book. The train scene has simultaneous sun and rain. And there's a scene of a girl looking out at a window at a "sunny rainy day." This made me google sun-showers and find all the strange things people around the world call the phenomenon.… (mehr)
1. As a read-aloud for a group of kids, I'd emphasize colors, counting, and answering the simple questions ("Shoes go on your feet. What goes on your head?"). The text is simple and the illustrations are clear and bright. This could be a great story time selection!
2. For an individual preschooler, this is an easy seek-and-find to pore over. The little bitty mouse is on every page and they can match the endpaper patches to the illustrations. Also, there are lots of connections to make between the final illustration of the interior of mouse's house and all of the previous scenes. How fun!
The rhyming text is really fun to read aloud. I was also a big fan of the illustrator's previous work in [b:One Family|22718696|One Family|George Shannon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406526556l/22718696._SX50_.jpg|42246990].
One last thing: I don't think I've ever seen sun-showers depicted in a picture book. The train scene has simultaneous sun and rain. And there's a scene of a girl looking out at a window at a "sunny rainy day." This made me google sun-showers and find all the strange things people around the world call the phenomenon.… (mehr)
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Trigger warnings: Hospitalisation of children in the past, physical injury, blood, grief and loss depiction, death of a child and friend, car crash, cancer, medical content, surgery, near-death experiences
Score: Six and a half out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.
As Happy As Here by Jane Godwin wasn't as strong as When Rain Turns to Snow. I wanted to read this one for a while after enjoying When Rain Turns to Snow last year, but I put it off for a few months before it was time to pick it up. I glanced at the intriguing blurb, but headed in with low expectations after seeing the ratings. When I closed the final page, I thought it was okay.
It starts with a prologue with Evie seeing a car crashing into a van, with a piano falling out of it and hitting her legs, ending her dreams as a long-distance runner, then the story begins when I see two more characters hospitalised for different reasons--Lucy, who has leukaemia, and Jemma, who underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix. The premise implied these three girls would bond together, and I thought they might befriend each other, but that's not what happened. The mystery is more of a subplot and not part of the central storyline, and that only caused Evie, Lucy and Jemma to work together, not as friends, though, more like partners. However, at that point I didn't care for that anymore, nor could I connect or relate with them.
Anyway. Once the narrative sidelined that investigation, the three characters try to further develop their relationships, which wasn't that exciting, until all of them escaped the hospital. That's incredibly unlikely. Where's the security? All their parents only play a minor role and are mostly in the background, letting the nurses take care of them while they were in the infirmary. I enjoyed When Rain Turns to Snow more since it had better characters and execution, unlike As Happy As Here. The conclusion finishes the creation on a bittersweet note as Evie and Lucy get to leave the hospital alive, but Jemma succumbed to a hit-and-run. I wanted the best case scenario where all the protagonists survive, but I didn't get that.