Review of Crane Guy – Sally Sutton, illustrated by Sarah Wilkins

Let’s see all the things we can spy, high above the city with Crane Guy!

Spend the day with Crane Guy and see how many things you can spy from up high in his crane.

Crane Guy, up so high,
Building towers in the sky,
Tell me, tell me what you spy.
Something beginning with . . .

Join Crane Guy for a game of I Spy up high in a crane – how many things can you see that begin with the letter B? Or S? Or P?

Crane Guy

Sally Sutton

illustrated by Sarah Wilkins

Picture Puffin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

A man wearing a hard hat heads off to work in the city, where he operates a ginormus crane. He climbs up and gets to work high up in the clouds, where he is challenged to a game of I-Spy by finding items starting with a certain letter.  A letter is nominated, then the next pages feature a panoramic view of a landscape viewed from up high and packed with things that may start with it.  At the end of the book he climbs down and heads to a preschool to get something beginning with D…..

This is an excellent book to read aloud as the text is a catchy rhyme with a good beat and makes learning letters and their sounds fun.  The font is clear and easy to read, and the illustrations are bright, vivid, and gorgeously detailed. There’s a list in the back of objects to look for.

Packed with people, construction machines and vehicles of all kinds, Crane Guy is perfect for all young children obsessed with ‘up high’ places!  The amount of detail is amazing!  I still can’t find some of the items listed and some letters on the last page. 

Young readers will love exploring the scenes over and over again to find things beginning with a certain letter.  Parents not so much.

Review of Books Do Furnish a Life: Reading and Writing Science – Richard Dawkins

At a time when science can seem complex and remote, it has a greater impact on our lives, and to the future of our planet, than ever before. It really matters that its discoveries and truths should be clearly and widely communicated. That its enemies, from the malicious to the muddled, the self-deluding to the self-interested, be challenged and exposed. That science should be brought out of the laboratory, taken into the corridors of power and defended in the maelstrom of popular culture. No one does this better than Richard Dawkins.

In bringing together his forewords, afterwords and introductions to works by some of the leading thinkers of our age – Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert – and a selection of his reviews, both admiring and critical, of a wide range of scientific and other works, Books do Furnish a Life celebrates the writers who communicate the ideas of science and the natural world in both fiction and non-fiction. It celebrates the courage of those who write about their experiences of escaping religion and embracing rationality, of protecting the truths of science and analytical rigour against charlatanry and obfuscation.

Books Do Furnish a Life: Reading and Writing Science

Richard Dawkins

Bantam Press

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

When you get as successful as Richard Dawkins, you get invited to review books, write forewords, and get to interview other celebrity scientists. Dawkins has been around so long that this is the third such anthology (the others being The Devil’s Chaplain, and Science in the Soul). That it is number three reinforces the reality that Dawkins is a good writer.

Books Do Furnish a Life is divided into six sections, each starting with an interview or dialogue between Dawkins and someone germsin to the theme at hand. For example, Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with Dawkins about scientists with apparent illogical beliefs. The six categories are; writing science, celebrating nature, exploring humanity, supporting scepticism, interrogating faith, and evangelizing evolution. The latter is because Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist.

Dawkins gives the provenance of all the essays, which span a period of about 15 years. Most of them are supportive of authors, or champions of other fields in science. Only a few of the review essays are negative with one particularly biting review of a book where the author dug himself into a hole, then kept digging. Its sharpness is akin to finding an acid drop in the after dinner mints. Dawkins also does the favour of introducing a new to me webcomic, Jesus and Mo, which lampoons theology in a weekly four frame strip.

At over 400 pages, this is not a quick read. But due to the shortness of the essays (about 50 essays averaging 8 pages per), it’s easy to dip in and out of the book. This one is staying in my collection, and I wish to thank Jerome Buckleigh at Penguin Random House for the review copy.

Review of Better Off Dead: Shawn O’Brien – William W. Johnstone & J.A. Johnstone

On the West Texas border a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world–and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas, incredibly rich.

Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the town tamer.

\Shawn rides to Texas to find the missing boy. What he discovers in Big Buck will spark a ferocious, bloody battle with the greatest evil the West ever known: masters of war who (laugh in the face of anyone who defies them–until Shawn O’Brien raises his six gun. Then the laughing stops.

Better Off Dead: Shawn O’Brien

William W. Johnstone & J.A. Johnstone

Pinnacle Books

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

Shawn O’Brien, at the behest of his brother, goes to Big Buck, Texas, to search for Manuel Cantrell, a young Mexican believed to be working at the Abaddon Cannon Foundry. Only the folks running Abaddon are none too keen on his enquiries, and Shawn is forced to live up to his sobriquet – the Town Tamer.

This is my first horse opera in a long while, and the Johnstone’s know how to write a page-turner. Shawn O’Brien is a likeable character, but he does seem to carry a number of modern attitudes. The body count is also quite high – Shawn himself kills at least six people.

Of the other major characters, Shawn’s brother Jacob, the partial love interest Maria Cantrell and the short-lived Hamp Sedley are fairly well drawn, but the villains do come across as two dimensional, with Caleb Perry, owner of the Abaddon Cannon Foundry the most cartoonish.

The basic plot revolves around Perry’s racist and deadly exploitation of his workforce, with a whiff of steampunk thrown in: cannon armed, steam driven, air frigates. Imperial and colonial powers are beating a path to Perry’s door, though why, after seeing the prototype they don’t go home to their industrialised countries and build them there I don’t know. Definitely the weak point in the plot.

As I said above, it’s a page-turner and kept me interested until the end despite the plot flaws. For those wondering why I’ve reviewed a book released six years ago, there was a minor confusion with a more recent release with the same title, Better Off Dead. If you like Westerns, this is probably up your wagon trail. For afficionados of steampunk, keep looking.

Review of Night Race To Kawau – Tessa Duder

‘He’s not there, Mum. He’s fallen overboard.’

What started as an exciting challenge turns into a nightmare when a gale unexpectedly develops during the night race to Kawau Island. Sam and her mother suddenly find themselves in charge of their yacht with a dangerous task ahead of them. It is the early 1980s, and technology on the yacht is limited: they are on their own.

Will Sam be able to save her family?

Night Race To Kawau

essa Duder

Puffin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

This is a re-released classic story from forty years ago and is still a gripping read.

Sam Starr belongs to an ordinary working class family that is heavily into sailing, spending a few weeks every holiday sailing around New Zealand on the family’s boat, the Aratika.  Nearly 60 years old, the Aratika is 9 metres, built from kauri and well-respected amongst sailors in the Hauraki Gulf. Being so old it’s been a struggle to retrofit the boat with new motors and equipment, such as a lightweight dinghy or a radio.

The family enters the night race to Kawau Island now that the kids are old enough to crew, along with both parents and a family friend.  Sam is beside herself with excitement; she loves sailing and has never raced at night before.  The forecast for the night is calm so it should be smooth sailing.  What could go wrong?

Sam and her mum and siblings arrive at the Aratika first get everything prepared before Mr Starr appears, running late.  They quickly launch and make their way to the start, discovering the family friend has an emergency and can’t make it.  No big deal, they still have two adults.   As the race starts they settle into a smooth routine, enjoying the journey.  The wind picks up and they need to take the spinnaker down to avoid being blown out to open water.  Then disaster strikes and it’s up to Sam to save them.

I’m not into sailing at all but this story drew me in and I found it enthralling. I had to know what happened next and found it hard to put down.  The index of nautical terms was invaluable and the index of New Zealand terms would be very helpful for non-kiwis. The lack of technology in the book – set in the 80s – made me marvel at how much we take for granted now and the convenience they bring to our daily lives.

The gender roles discussed by Sam’s mum were very pronounced and it’s interesting to see how much the lines have been blurred and how much has stayed the same.  It’s also slightly depressing to see how much has changed – a not rich family would find it hard to fund their sailing dreams in Auckland now, and a teacher owning a home in Devonport…… haa!

An adrenaline-packed story from the award-winning Kiwi author of of the Alex quartet. I highly reccomend it for all ages.