And now for something completely different: two extraordinary books from left-of-centre that have caught our eye in the last couple of weeks, and they’re both from the dynamic duo of Wellington typographer/designer Catherine Griffiths (interviewed on LeafSalon here in 2005) and her photographer partner Bruce Connew (pictured).

Stopover was put out by VUP but was actually printed and produced in Italy by craftsmen who have worked with some of the world’s best photographers. A solid, heavy little book, black cloth-bound, silver foil glinting, it’s a definite work of art. The word ‘Stopover’ is punched or debossed into it, over and over, with various ‘o’s picked out with the silver – this ‘represents the interlacing and movement of Indian-Fijians about the Western world’. There are several different stocks throughout the book: heavy, matt black endpapers, equally heavy white gloss, matt, finely-ridged, oyster grey… and it’s been set in Bryant Light and Letter Gothic Standard, so the type has a no-frills documentary feel, which contrasts rather deliciously with the luxuriousness of the binding and stock. You get the idea. This is a book that has been thought about on every single possible sensory level. It even smells classy.

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I’ve just read two new NZ books back to back and enjoyed them both hugely in totally different ways. They were Louise Wareham Leonard’s Miss me a lot of, and Mary McCallum’s The Blue (Mary, pictured).

The Blue is set in 1938 on Arapawa Island in the Tory Channel. The whole island spends three months of the year immersed in whaling. As whale season looms, a look-out is posted on the highest point of the island watching for the spouts which will galvanise everyone into adrenaline-pumped action.

Most of the men spent a part of their lives in the Great War and have terrible scars on their bodies and minds, which are, of course never discussed. There’s a lot of the past that’s never discussed in Lilian’s life and it’s those excruciating family skeletons which finally demand to be hauled out of the closet – the return of a broken but beloved son is the catalyst.

This is one of those stories which builds to something hinted at all the way through, but when it’s finally outed it leaves you gasping. The scale of some human grief and loss, whether adult or child, can be breathtaking – but even more quietly brutal is the way we can live our lives with it, twisted and buckled, but alive.

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Another LeafSalon reader, Auckland poet Tania Brady, has happily (for us) consented to helping us out with the occasional poetry review. Tania is a Sydneysider by birth, but has settled on this side of the Tasman with her NZ hubby and two kids. She's had poetry and short stories published in the NZ Listener, Poetry NZ, Takahe, Turbine, Spin, Bravado and Catalyst and has been a guest editor of Blackmail Press (Issue 13). She's also very hands-on in the Auckland poetry scene and is involved this year in the Auckland launch of Poetry Pudding (Reed, $18.99 see launch details below). She's rather outrageous actually - when I first met her not long ago, quite late at a party, she was reciting a very saucy poem, about oysters if I remember rightly, to a bunch of hapless men (at their request, I must hasten to add). Putty in her hands they were.

So without further ado, as Chris will no doubt point out I always say, it's over to Tania:

The title of this book made me think of those children’s books with lift-the-flaps. I half expected poems to pop out of the pages like cut out aliens or monsters but it wasn’t at all like that. The colour of the cover, green with cartoonish yellow daffodils, gives us a small clue that this book is based on Fiona Farrell’s six month visit to Ireland, the land of her ancestors. If you are familiar with The Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala Erenn) as a “compilation of manuscripts describing the specific discovery of Ireland (‘on the fifteenth, on a Saturday’) following the Creation and the Flood” you might better understand the title.

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A LeafSalon reader, Jen Wittig, has sent in a review of Carl Nixon's Rocking Horse Road. As regular readers will know, we're always happy to have help here, so without further ado, it's over to Jen:

“At fifteen we did not know that there are before and after moments in every life; events people look back on as being gateways into new ways of living, new phases of their lives, sometimes better, but often not as good. It was a turning point for all of us living down the Spit. At that moment we moved through to a landscape from which, events would later prove, there was no going back.”

Rocking Horse Road (Random House, $27.99) is Carl Nixon’s first endeavour in the genre of the novel. Originally the piece was published as a short story, but Nixon felt there was more to be explored in the narrative and the characters, so expanded on it as his first full-length work of fiction.

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It’s actually been a few weeks since I finished Nigel Cox’s truly remarkable final novel The Cowboy Dog, but my oh my – some novels do linger, Jean. (Old ad-line that only people of a certain age will remember unfortunately). It’s stayed on my mind, even chewing through the present full-on mental occupation occasioned by Damien Wilkins’ The Fainter, something Damien wouldn’t take from many other writers and be ok with, I’m sure. Phil Twyford, my boss at NZ Book Month has just come back from holiday having whipped through it in a couple of days and been ‘absolutely amazed’ by it. We agreed it was unclassifiable, like pretty much all of his previous work, but that’s just fine with me – it’s kind of unthinkable to try and give Nigel any kind of label.

Before I launch into my rant, I must just draw attention to yet another glorious cover by Sarah Maxey. How is it that every time, she gets it so right? It's art, pure and simple. Just perfect.

I said ages ago, when Sport 34 came out with an excerpt of Cowboy Dog, that it reminded me of Nick Cave’s book And The Ass Saw The Angel. I think it was mostly the language that made me recall that mad, bad story. Cowboy Dog is not fully phonetically written like Angel – apart from the odd ‘cain’t’ or ‘hongry’, or dropped ‘g’: runnin’, cryin’ – but it has a similar quaint, old-Testament, Southern-dialect feel to it. This choice of the narrator’s voice gives the book a kind of bible-belt, mad edge – think Deliverance, but move it a fair way west.

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It’s high time I caught up with a few reviews of some of the best NZ books I’ve read over the last couple of months, before Christmas is upon us. And by crikey there’s been some good ones: John Tomb’s Head by Stephanie Johnson, Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip and Nigel Cox’s Cowboy Dog to name just a few.

But the first in my ‘series’ is a book I was so impressed by that for the first and probably only time in my life, I was moved to find out how to option a book for film. I now know that the process is absolutely not one that anyone without huge amounts of film nouse, contacts, money, time and sanity should attempt, so it’s currently in my Seriously Daunting tray, but I live in hope that someone will take up the torch. Because this book could make a movie that, I’m convinced, would make the Billy Elliot of NZ film.

Davey Darling by Paul Shannon (Penguin, $28) has got the perfect coming-of-age plot, the perfect, nostalgic/retro setting, and the perfect male lead – an endearingly observant, always-in-the-shit smartarse with a Mrs Robinson complex – aged 12.

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Maggie Rainey-Smith has sent in, as she occasionally does, a review of a new young adult book she's just read and was impressed by. It seems to be a useful sort of book for a particular situation…

'Last night I attended the launch of Frances Cherry’s new young adult novel ‘Flashpoint’ (published by Scholastic) at the Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie. And today I read the book. It’s that sort of book – you open it, start reading, and feel compelled to finish. The title is very well chosen and the subject (family break-up) not new, but endlessly new, when and if you are the family concerned.

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We occasionally review children's books on LeafSalon, but we're inevitably looking at the books from a parent's perspective.

So we thought we'd give three of the best recent releases to Ciaran and Callum from Laingholm Primary, and let them tell it like it is. Over to you, guys:

Portable Ghosts by Margaret Mahy (HarperCollins $17.99)

Ciaran: The story is about a 12-year-old girl who finds a ghost in a school library. She tries to help free the ghost from the book and from where he stays which is in the library. The girl thinks that the ghost can go through the computer but you have to read it to discover if this happens. My favourite character is the ghost Hilly because he can go through things to disappear and reappear. I would like to be able to do that.

The book is a paperback. I think 9-12 year olds will like it because it is at their reading and interest level.

Warrior Kids by Tim Tipene (Reed $16.99)

Callum: Sean is a kid who is always being bullied by two kids called Mark and Eric.

He meets a man called Papa Tim who runs a program for kids which is called Warrior Kids. He teaches the kids self-respect and respect for others. Mark is the kid who bullies Sean. But once he goes to Warrior Kids he stops bullying Sean because he learns about respect for others.

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Chad Taylor’s Departure Lounge kept me gripped in a way that most New Zealand novels do not. It crackles and snaps like a Guy Ritchie movie, combining sleazy authenticity with smart, throwaway observations and pared-back dialogue.

But when I came to the end, I was left with a curious feeling of detachment. Normally, when I race through a book like this, I’m sad to finish it.

This is nothing to do with the undoubted writing skills of Mr Taylor. And I’d be very happy for him to use the opening paragraph of this review as a quote, because he deserves the compliments.

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Once I’m snuggled up in bed and the electric blanket is kicking in, it takes a lot to tear me away from the flimsy pages of National Geographic, Fortune and North & South.

But over the past couple of weeks, two books have succeeded: Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries - a birthday present from dearest Kathy - and The Elegant Universe of Albert Einstein, a new collection of science essays based on the National Radio series E=mc2.

TEUoAE, as I’m afraid I shall have to call it, is a newbie from Awa Press. And one’s first impression is that this slim paperback has serious class, thanks to a sublimely understated design by Wellington outfit The Letterheads (we love your work, Gus and Kris).

The essays have been written by some of New Zealand’s top scientists and historians, and the level of intellect required on the part of the reader is just right for me – several notches down from Hawking, and a couple of notches up from three-year-old Tom’s How Machines Work.

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‘Tis the eve of the NZ Post Childrens’ Book Awards – as I write this they've been announced, earlier tonight, at Parliament. There’s been quite a bit of hoo-ha about the chosen finalists or conspicuous lack of them, but it’ll all be done and dusted by now.

A few superb kids books have arrived on the LeafSalon doorstep in the last couple of weeks, only one of which, alas is on the list, but it’s a goodie: Tim Tipene’s Haere – Farewell, Jack, farewell (Huia, $16.99) with utterly beautiful illustrations by Huhana Smith. This is an excellent ‘circle of life’ book about death and birth, in that order. There’s no false sentiment about it –Tim has somehow managed to make it both matter-of-fact and quietly spiritual at the same time. The illustrations probably helped with that – our kids were deliciously horrified by (at first, then quite accepting of) the occasional see-through ghost (calmly smiling, in funeral best) who had come to pay their respects to old Jack.

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I’ve been reading! So much so that I’ve been forgetting to do the reviews in between. This has lead to a horrid situation to which I am deeply reluctant to subject any writer: the group review. However, needs must, and one oughtn’t to point any fingers at a harried mother of three who’s just trying to do her best. A bit of a whine creeping in here – better get on with it. In the order I read them, we’ve got Nigel Cox’s Dirty Work, Deborah Challinor’s Union Belle and Eleanor Gill’s In the Shadow of Trees.

First up, Dirty Work. I was swanning about all over Europe when this book first came out in 1987 (this is a reprint from VUP and as usual, a superb cover from design goddess Sarah Maxey) and NZ literature was the last thing on my mind. Having said that I vividly remember reading C K Stead’s A Fitting Tribute in London around that time, finishing it in a state of almost unbearable thrall on the top deck of a number 73 bus, if my memory serves me correctly. I only found out recently that it was based on the life of Barry Humphries. You could have knocked me down with a feather, but in hindsight it is, of course, so obvious.

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In the wake of Margaret Mahy winning the coveted 2006 Hans Christian Andersen Author Award we thought it would be a good time to indulge in a spot of kid-lit. We have a review or two, and the news that your child or children have but a month to go to vote in the Childrens Choice section of the NZ Post Book Awards. (To vote online, hit the ‘Vote now’ button on the top right of the screen). What happens if the book you love is not on the list of twenty finalists? Dunno – I suppose you could send Booksellers NZ an email…

Anyway, now to reviews. My friend Percy's Magical Gym Shoes, by Ulf Stark, from Gecko Press ($14.95) has been reviewed by leafsalon’s friend and neighbour, Debbie, who is a primary school teacher and has three children of her own. She liked their previous book The Fox Hunt but gave this one a bit of a bollocking:

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Kelly Ana Morey’s latest book is not a novel, but the eighth instalment in Awa Press’ Ginger series. It’s called How To Read A Book but the title is something of a misnomer, because this more of a mini-autobiography, and all the better for it.

The book most frequently referenced by Morey is the ‘horse novel’ My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara. Flicka is one of those children’s classics that, when read by an adult, proves to have depths its target audience never perceives.

And that sets the tone for this enjoyable troll through Morey’s world of books. Morey is refreshingly honest about the books she likes and doesn’t like, books she simply can’t be bothered to read, and the travails of attempting to write a book. Witi Ihimaera describes her as ‘a literary Holly Golightly, hauling her arse through her life’ and that sums it up well.

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Today's guest reviewer is teacher Debbie Morgan, who has kindly road-tested one of Gecko Press' newly-translated classics on her brood:

The Fox Hunt by Swedish author Sven Nordqvist has been read in our house a number of times during the week that it has been here, and it has proven to be popular with our children. Our four year old enjoyed hunting for the tiny odd quirky items, including what appeared to be a miniature longdrop, hidden amongst the detail of the pictures - and I have to say I did too.

The Fox Hunt is the story of a middle-aged eccentric, Farmer Pettson, and his cat Findus and their increasingly elaborate plan to scare a fox away from their chickens. The story builds to an exciting but not predictable (by seven year olds anyway) ending. This story was enjoyed by my class of six and seven year olds who listened intently.

It reminds me a bit of another oldie but goodie: The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage. If you know and enjoyed that story, give this one a go.

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