Children's fiction: if trees could talk, what would they say?
Arabella Pepper: The Wild Detective
(8+, €12) is a middle-grade mystery with a pair of compelling central characters: fish-out-of-water Arabella, and her companion crow, Blue.
Neither are happy with their new home in Greytown, where Arabella's mum has a prestigious new job. With no wild animals to track, like she used to back on her former island home, Arabella compiles case notes on her suspicious new neighbours instead: the Pinch family are not all they seem. With vivid illustrations from Monika Pollack, this is a fun, fast-paced manifesto for flexibility in the face of adversity.
Bex Sheridan's distinctive picture book
Wild Eyes
(3+, €10), meanwhile, targets younger readers, with an attractive black and white colour palette enhanced by pops of primary yellows and blues. Narrated by a wild watcher in an urban garden, it directs its gaze towards human activity, encouraging the reader to see the link between their actions and the creatures who they share the earth with.
Once I Was a Tree
(Nosy Crow, 3+, £12.99) gives the natural world its own voice and agency too, presenting a laugh-aloud version of the life cycle of a tree, 'written by a book, with help from Eoin McLaughlin', and full colour illustrations from Guilherme Karsten.
READ MORE
It begins with a seed's early undigested adventures in a squirrel's bottom, passes through a nourishing relationship with beetle dung, before embracing the glory of a tree's full green growth. Finally, the book reveals its journey to the form in which you, the reader, are enjoying the immortality of its bounteous gifts: 'Because books are full of stories, And stories can be about anything … [they] make us laugh and cry and learn and grow.' A metafictional delight.
The Friendship Cup: Palestine to Ireland
by Winnie Clarke (Mercier, 8+, €14.99) and
17 Martin Street
(O'Brien Press, 10+, €41.99), a graphic novel adapted by Alan Nolan and Jason Browne from Marilyn Taylor's 2008 novel of the same name, both provide fertile opportunity for children to reflect on historic and contemporary events.
Clarke's novel is based on a real-life cultural exchange from 2017, when a group of children from Gaza came to Ireland to play football with Irish teams. Clarke shifts the action to 2023. Co-operation is more important than competition here, and the Irish and Palestinian children make strong friendships, which endure even when the tournament is over and the Palestinian team returns home. When the Irish children hear the news of intensified conflict, they wonder what they can do for their friends abroad. Clarke does not avoid the difficult questions raised by the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and while the individual stories are worked out in the narrative, it is clear that the characters we meet here are the lucky ones.
17 Martin Street is set in Dublin in 1940 among a mixed community in Portobello, where Irish families like the Byrnes are living side-by-side with recent refugees from Nazi Germany, and not always happily. Ben is delighted to work as shabbos boy for the new arrivals next door, but his father has different views on immigration. When Ben persists in pursuing friendship with the Goldens, however, embarking on a mission to help an illegal refugee get to a place of safety, his father is presented with an opportunity to change his mind. Cultural differences are sensitively explored in scenes that unfold succinctly and with visual flair, while the high-stakes plot offers a nuanced representation of contemporary political events through a historic lens. The triumph of compassion is a reminder that individual action can make a big difference.
Finally, Jenny Pearson's
Shrapnel Boys
(Usborne, 10+, £7.99) and
Westfallen
(Bloomsbury, 10+, £8.99), by Ann and Ben Brashares, put the reader right up close to the action of the second World War. We spend time with children who remain in London as their peers disappear to the safety of the countryside. At first Ronnie is relieved not to be evacuated when war breaks out, but as he watches his community mobilise against the foreign enemy, he discovers his younger brother has been recruited by a fascist infiltrator to their family unit: there are terrifying battles to be fought on the domestic front too.
Pearson's book is charged with a propulsive plot that offers a slanted perspective on well known historical events, and characters whose preoccupations are not so different from our own.
Westfallen is set at the end of the second World War, and 80 years after, offering a thrilling blend of historical and speculative perspectives on history and what might have been. The book opens in 2024, when three former besties are forced to reignite their friendship at the funeral of their shared pet and come across an old radio, a portal to the past. The dual timelines and competing voices make a compelling contrast between then and now, but the children find common ground, and a common enemy, that drives the plot with page-turning, filmic agency, as they work together to stop Germany winning the war.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Irish Independent
‘It has to start earlier' – Galway camogie star Aoife Donohue calls for better year-round coverage
Galway star Aoife Donohue feels the year-round coverage of camogie isn't good enough, saying 'you would barely know they're on' when it comes to games outside of the All-Ireland final.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Útóipe Cheilteach: The Mary Wallopers and more on Ireland's ‘politically offensive' underground folk scene
'I don't like the term 'based between',' Dennis Harvey says. 'A friend of mine said when she hears of people who are based between London and Dublin she thinks of Holyhead.' But, the Irish director admits, the past eight years of his life have been split pretty evenly between Dublin and Stockholm. The 34-year-old's latest film, Útóipe Cheilteach (Celtic Utopia), balances the objectivity he gained from living in Sweden with his intimate knowledge of Ireland's capacity for 'chaos'. Its subject is Ireland's underground folk scene, a movement propelling its music out of a 'weird safe space where everyone's wearing tweed', as The Mary Wallopers put it in the documentary, into a politically offensive art form. 'It was an interesting way of reinterpreting really old music and taking it in different directions. When you listen, you can feel hundreds of years of oppression and repression and survival. It gives you a feeling of how communities survive,' Harvey says. READ MORE The idea for Útóipe Cheilteach, which has just won the Grand Prix award at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, originated in a Word file called Ireland Now that Harvey created in 2014. 'I don't want to look too closely at [the document]. I was probably a bit naive,' he says, laughing. 'What I wanted to take the temperature of, roughly 100 years after independence, was where were we at.' The key question, according to Harvey, is a reference from Peter Lennon's 1967 film Rocky Road to Dublin: 'What do we do with our revolution once we've got it?' With his Swedish codirector, Lars Lovén, Harvey decided to use folk music as a lens through which to examine Ireland's transformation from a poor, conservative, postcolonial and deeply religious nation to a relatively liberal one: to see 'how young people are interacting with politics and social history with their music'. Útóipe Cheilteach: Útóipe Cheilteach codirector Dennis Harvey The film features a diverse range of musicians: alongside The Mary Wallopers are Negro Impacto, The Deadlians, Jinx Lennon , Branwen, Lankum , Naoise Mac Cathmhaoil, Rising Damp, Young Spencer and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin , among others. The directors wanted to film them in 'living spaces' and 'loaded landscapes' around Ireland. Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin sings in O'Devaney Gardens, where Dublin City Council flats were emptied and demolished. It's an environment that 'adds a weight to the images', Harvey says. [ Mel Gibson: 'I've still got the Irish passport... I think I understand the quirky nature of the Irish mind' Opens in new window ] The locations also reveal the humour of the city: 'The two scenes beginning and ending the film were literally from the first day of shooting. It was funny to bring a crew from Sweden – like, we drove into town, set up the cameras and within a few minutes someone had launched themselves into the river.' They began filming in June 2021, when bars and restaurants were opening up after lockdown restrictions. 'Around Capel Street, pubs were serving drinks outdoors and people were running around, going a bit crazy. It suited our style, but it's also often how it is. Dublin has that charm that if you stand around in town for 10 minutes someone will start talking to you. It's very different in Sweden.' Útóipe Cheilteach: Young Spencer Celtic Utopia is Harvey's second full-length film. His first, I Must Away, followed four migrants across six countries over seven years as they rebuilt their lives away from home. He was interested in 'the unequal distribution of rights and privileges' when it comes to migration. 'I was in school when the banks were bailed out after the crash. Even though I definitely wasn't the most affected by it, there was a sense that even if you go to university you have to leave Ireland to make a life for yourself. I wove in my own experience with migration, coming from a more privileged background, with people who had a lot less choice. Migration is in flux constantly. Who knows who the next group is going to be?' Harvey produced two other short films on migration: The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (2024) which won awards in Sweden and Lisbon, and The New Policy Regarding Homeless Asylum Seekers, about the Irish Government policy to make most male asylum seekers homeless on arrival (2025). Celtic Utopia is due to be screened at Irish film festivals this autumn and winter; I Must Away is available on the IFI@Home platform
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
New Irish albums reviewed and rated: Caimin Gilmore, Tebi Rex, David Keenan and Rún
Caimin Gilmore: BlackGate (New Amsterdam/Ten Spot) ★★★☆☆ You might not be familiar with the name, but you'll know some of the artists the double bassist Caimin Gilmore has collaborated with: Sam Amidon, Lisa Hannigan, Jessie Buckley, Dermot Kennedy and Aaron Dessner. Musicians like Gilmore are rare, and debut albums like this one are rarer still. Usually residing between indie and minimalism, folk and orchestral, contemporary and traditional, Gilmore veers into compositional territory here with a suite of instrumentals mostly written with the cellist Kate Ellis, a fellow member of Crash Ensemble. Exquisite harp playing by Lavinia Meijer, as well as synthesiser swirls, adds to the sonic gravity, resulting in the beautiful quartet of MVE I, MVE II, MVE III and MVE IV. David Keenan: Salvable (Concord/Silva Screen) ★★★★☆ While we await the next studio album from David Keenan , this commissioned soundtrack for Salvable, the 2025 boxing-themed feature film by Björn Franklin and Johnny Marchetta, will do very nicely. Blending songs (Stay Still, The Hum, I Leave You Gone, Rip Your Eyes from Your Phone) and score cowrites with his fellow Dundalk composer Paul Campbell (Requiem, Cogadh, Served, Heart to Heart, I Leave You Ethereal), the mood board is appropriately one of struggle and resignation. Is it one of the best singer-songwriter soundtracks since that by Alex Turner, of Arctic Monkeys, for the 2010 film Submarine? We reckon so. Tebi Rex: Fin (Self-Released) ★★★☆☆ It's never a pleasure to say goodbye to an artist you feel has never been fully valued, either critically or commercially. The rap duo Max Zanga and Matt Ó Baoill have spent 10 years presenting music with dry humour and astute social observations, as well as live performances that matched the passion of the songs. Alas, the aptly named Fin is the duo's final album. It is also their best, with more depth than you might think a swansong could provide. Between tracks such as The Ship of Theseus (a view of artistic growth inspired by Plutarch's study of personal identity), And I'm Mad (an appraisal of grief – 'This is our last album and it's the first one you won't hear'), Ireland's Full (spiky, pointed trad-rap) and I'm Cooked, I'm Done (resigned romance, featuring the poet Natalya O'Flaherty), Zanga and Ó Baoill sign off with panache, regret and, one senses, relief. Rún: Rún (Rocket) ★★★★☆ Comprising three interdisciplinary artists – Tara Baoth Mooney , Rian Trench and Diarmuid Mac Diarmada – Rún is the culmination of several years of collaboration. Fusing their creative characteristics on a debut album that is inspired, according to Mac Diarmada – brother of the Lankum and Poor Creature member Cormac – by 'dreams, synchronicities and other uncanny influences found in everyday life', they make improvisation the heart of the album. Influenced by experimentalists such as Sun O))), William Basinski, Throbbing Gristle, Pauline Oliveros and Psychic TV (as well as more recognisable acts, such as Talk Talk and Portishead), they channel the music into areas that are as primal as they are mesmeric. The closing track, Caoineadh, is stunning.
