Review: Operation Bunny by Sally Gardner

Magic, mysteries and a resilient heroine - fab start to a new series for 7+

Sally Gardner is so great! I've never been disappointed with one of her books, and this quirky magical tale is no different. With shades of Roald Dahl and Eva Ibbotson, this is classic young fiction at its best.

As the first book in a new series, it lays the groundwork for the future, showing how the wonderful cat Fidget and little Emily Vole on the book cover come to be working together at a Fairy Detective Agency. The gorgeous illustrations are perfect, starting with the cover style that shows us this is no 'pink and sparkly' fairy book.

Emily's life has fairytale elements: she's an orphan, found in a hatbox at Stansted Airport and quickly adopted by the incredibly wealthy Dashwoods, who soon grow frustrated by Emily's inability to perfectly complement their otherwise perfectly coordinated life and treat her shockingly. It's through Emily's adoptive parents that comparisons to Dahl are most valid, with their caricature-like superficiality and materialism. Once the magical elements start featuring, things look up for Emily and the adventure truly begins.

Children of around 7 and up will lap this up, revelling as they do in deliciously bad parent-figures and tough and resourceful child protagonists, not to mention magical talking animals. I know I would have loved this as a child (umm, actually I loved it now :) ) and my 9yr old will too.

Overall, this is definitely a fun read for newly confident readers (shortish chapters and lovely b/w illustrations throughout), or would work well as a shared bedtime read.

From the Back Cover:

When Emily Vole inherits an abandoned shop, she discovers a magical world she never knew existed. But a fairy-hating witch, a mischievous set of golden keys, and a train full of brightly coloured bunnies are just a few of the surprises that come with it.

With the help of a talking cat called Fidget and a grumpy fairy detective called Buster, it's up to Emily to get to the bottom of Operation Bunny.

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Published in October 2012 by Orion Children's
My grateful thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy
For more info: publisher's website

The Problem with NaNoWriMo ...

... is that it leads to some crazy coverage in the press and social media. Yes, of course, writing a novel in a month sounds absurd, but the spirit of nano isn't to produce the finished product in a month. It's all about getting the words out (well, 50,000 words anyway) and for many people it's extremely helpful to concentrate on word count and to give yourself permission to press on regardless. Anything can be fixed later - and perhaps there's the key. I suspect that most nano naysayers don't see this month of manic writing as the start of a long process, but rather as the whole process. Or perhaps more importantly, that's what they imagine the NaNoWriMo writers (or wrimos) themselves see it as. Or maybe less charitably, they simply don't want others messing around in their pool.

The Guardian's 'how to write a novel in 30 days' piece has hardly helped this year, encouraging many novelists on Twitter to snipe about what they presumably see as the misrepresentation of their craft. But if you actually read the Guardian piece, it's about producing a detailed outline in 30 days and not at all about a finished product ready to go to press.

If you want to know more about NaNoWriMo, your first stop should be the official website. I particularly like the list of published NaNo novels. If that's not evidence that NaNoWriMo can be a way to write a 'real' novel, I don't know what is. And OK, there will be many times more unpublished NaNo novels, but I would be surprised if the published/unpublished ratios weren't similar for NaNo novels and those produced under different circumstances. People write novels that don't get published, you know - and often they've still benefitted from the process.

I've seen two particularly good blogs about this NaNo snobbery over the last couple of days. Check out Catherine Ryan Howard's great piece about what NaNo is good for, and Keris Stainton's excellent stand against the 'that's not how you do it' brigade.

Tuesday Tidings: So, How's NaNo Going?

This is a phrase that fills me with dread at the moment. Dread and shame. I have been struggling away, adding shamefully few words every day to arrive at my current word count (7578 at the time of writing but see the widget on the right for an updated figure). I have been writing mostly on the bus and train on my daily commute (on my BlackBerry), with a few additional sessions at home at my desk. It has been going well while I'm writing: I'm happy with my idea and feel like it's going somewhere. The problem is, I am failing to give it enough time. There are excuses I could make, some of them are even legitimate, but I'm finding it way too difficult to put in the necessary time to get up to the word count. It probably didn't help that the first two days of November were both extended work days.

That said, the bottom line is clearly positive: I've written words that I wouldn't have done and I've established a new routine of writing on my commute. That will, of course, reduce my reading time but you can't do everything, can you? And there's still time. I will keep going and see how far I get, but the 50k is not looking very likely at this point (although today I did add more new words than the daily target to get me there on time, but I don't think that's repeatable on a daily basis). I do feel, though, that NaNo may have achieved for me what I needed it too.

I'm still going to grit my teeth when people ask me how it's going, though...

Tuesday Tidings: It's NaNoWriMo Day 1!

By the time you're reading this, I should have started writing my NaNo novel. I know, cool eh? I'm ready and raring to go - and a little bit nervous, since we're being honest.

In preparation I have:

• done a little writing (on separate non-fiction work) on my BlackBerry on the bus and train, so I know I can claw back that time for writing
• dug out, refreshed and reworked my notes for a YA novel I hadn't got round to working on yet
• made notes on characters, setting, theme and structure (there is an outline, but it no longer works since I changed some key aspects of the premise, but I think it'll be ok)

If you're doing nano as well, and you want to be buddies, I'm over there as BethKemp (for I am nothing if not imaginative...)