The white fox
Chen Jiatong: White Fox (Chicken House Ltd. 2019) Chen Jiatong is currently one of the most popular Chinese authors. The idea came to him by looking out the window one night as a child, seeing a figure who looked like a man, but his face resembled that of an arctic fox. It would have scared me to death, but he then invented the figure of the god of arctic foxes, from which this story later evolved. We can follow the adventures of Dilah, whose only desire is to become human. Along the way, he also encounters other animals who are helping or just want to prevent him from achieving his goal. It was overly exciting to read a work by a Chinese author as I have not yet encountered a Chinese middle grade novel. In China, the series has six volume. The story was translated to English by Jennifer Feeley.…
London 1899-2120
David Walliams: The Ice Monster (HarperCollins Publishers 2018) Davis Walliams: The Beast of Buckingham Palace (HarperCollins Publishers 2019) David Walliams is one of the most famous authors of contemporary children’s books nowadays, and I’ve already read Gangsta Granny in Hungarian. It was a very nice story, though a little sad. It is characteristic to the author that although his theme is general, the story itself is “very English”. London appears almost as a live character. In these two books, we can look at the past and future of the city. The Ice Monster is set in 1899 and we can follow the hair-raising adventures of Elisa, the homeless orphan. Although the story is fictional, many of the things described about the mammoths as well as Victorian London have a basis that we can read about at the end of the book. In the other book (The Beast of Buckingham Palace),…
Books that make you wants to read more books
Anna James: Pages & Co. – Tilly and the Bookwanderers (HarperCollins Publishers 2018) Nick Hornby: Ten Years in the Tub (Believer Books McSweeneys 2014) I only finished Anna James’ (writer-journalist) book a day ago. What I liked best was not the story, but its atmosphere. It was a book I didn’t want to read quickly to last as long as possible. And from the bookstore and the descriptions of the books, I became even more interested in reading: the sequel and other books as well. Three volumes of the series have already been published in English. This book reminded me of Nick Hornby’s Teen Years in the Tub, which consists of articles published in Believer magazine. The first part (The Complete Polysyllabic Spree) was published in Hungarian, and the entire collection containing all articles was published in English in 2014. I read The Complete Polysyllabic Spree back in 2019 in…