Summer book recommendation for adults
Jane Corry: I Made a Mistake (Penguin Books 2020) Tóth Gábor Ákos: Balatoni Futár (21. Század Kiadó 2021) Many thanks to 21. Század Kiadó for sending me the books! I have read two books that do not belong to the genres I usually read. If you are still looking for the right summer reading, you can find something in this post even if you love shivering thrillers or if you’d rather read a heartwarming romantic story. Poppy Page, the protagonist of Jane Corry’s book, runs a successful casting agency while trying to balance between parenting and caring for her elderly father and between the roles of wife and a working woman. However, her life turns upside down when she meets her previous love. Poppy gets into a difficult situation and is very envious of her mother-in-law for not having to deal with such difficulties in her life. She has no…
The world of folktales
Donald A. MacKenzie: Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend (first published in 1917, Edinburgh) Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (edited by: Robert Chandler) (Penguin Books Ltd. 2013) Jacob Grimm – Wilhelm Grimm: Grimms’ Fairy Tales (HarperCollins Publishers 2019) I find it remarkably interesting how many common motifs are present in the tales of different cultures and countries: the luck of the youngest brother, the three trials, the talking animals can all be familiar to us. What is even more interesting is that full tales also appear with different details but the same structure and moral lesson. One of the best examples of this is the story in which a heroine is married to or taken by an enchanted prince and the task is waiting for the girl to break the curse on the man after several trials. The most famous retelling of the tale is The Beauty…
Castle in the middle of the lake
Katherine Rundell: The Good Thieves (Bloomsbury Publishing 2019) Many thanks to Manó Könyvek Kiadó for sending me the book! Katherine Rundell has won numerous prestigious literary awards for her middle grade novels. The Good Thieves is her fifth book which received the Foyles Children’s Book of the Year award in 2019. The main protagonist of the story is Vita, who arrives to New York with her mother to visit her grandfather and persuade him to return to England with them. The grandfather was dispossessed by a notorious fraud after the death of his wife. The little girl then decides to get her grandfather’s home back, a castle in the middle of a lake. In her head, the PLAN was formulated, and it will be implemented with the help of a pickpocket, an animal tamer, and an acrobat. These four children are the “Good Thieves”. It’s a very nice story, yet…
Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Smith of Wooton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Leaf by Niggle, Roverandom J.R.R. Tolkien’s Tales was first published in one volume in Hungarian in 2000 by Sukits Publishing (since then they were also published with illustrations by Alan Lee by Partvonal Publishing in 2020, but it contains the Roverandom instead of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil as the fourth tale). The stories have already been published in separate volumes, as well. In addition to the world known from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (Tom Bombadil), vibes of Medieval English legends come to life here. We meet a dragon who is greedy but swears on anything just to save his skin, even dares to help a human. Master Niggle fears that he cannot finish his painting, just as Tolkien did, he felt he could not finish The Lord of the…
Nevermoor – The „wundrous” adventures of Morrigan Crow
Jessica Townsend: Nevermoor Jessica Townsend: Wundersmith Jessica Townsend: Hollowpox Orion Children’s Books in Hachette Children’s Group 2017, 2018, 2020 In June, at the same time as the paperback edition in English, the third book of the popular Nevermoor series entitled Hollowpox will be published in Hungarian. In English, the long-awaited new volume (hardback) was published in September 2020 in Australia and then in October in the UK and America. The protagonist of the series is Morrigan Crow, a cursed child who is destined to die on her 11th birthday. But on the eve of the sad day, a mysterious stranger appears who asks her if she wanted to live? The little girl, of course, doesn’t say no and that’s when her new life begins in a hitherto unknown different world, Nevermoor. In my opinion, the book opened a new era in the so-called portal fantasy genre and balances well on…
Using simplified reading for learning languages
ELI Graded Readers I discovered the graded readers when I was preparing for a language exam. Now I present to you my favorite, the ELI Graded Readers series. ELI Publishing is an Italian publisher that has been teaching languages for over forty years. They organize language school courses, prepare activity books and arrange teachers’ resources for schools; prepare language games and publish magazines and graded readers texts in five languages (English, German, French, Italian and Spanish). The Graded Readers series includes well-known literary works abbreviated, reworked, or even in their entirety. Each work is rewrote in its original style and the text is complemented with beautiful illustrations, thematic assignments, audio material, and curiosities about the author and the era in which the work originated. The booklets are sorted by age (young learners, teenagers, and young adult) and vocabulary (from 100 words to 2,500 words or unabridged text) so everyone can…
Middle grade series
In this series, I will write about book series that are already popular abroad and (I hope) they will be or are already popular in Hungary as well. Jamie Littler: Frostheart (Puffin Books in Penguin Random House 2019, 2020) Shortly after his publication in English, the first book of the debut middle grade series of Jamie Littler, who had been working as an illustrator (and illustrated for example Enid Blyton’s books, among others), was published in Hungarian also. The fantasy dystopian story takes place on an all-ice planet (polar fantasy) where we can follow Ash’s adventures. In addition to the nice illustrations, it is recommended for slightly older kids. The book reminded me a bit about Mad Max and Waterworld. The third book will be published in this September. I’m looking forward to the next adventure… Michelle Harrison: A Pinch of Magic (Widdershins Adventures Trilogy) (Simon & Schuster Ltd. 2019)…