Books

Drawing has always been second nature to him, and at nine he became, in effect, a sort of junior war artist, visually recording life under German occupation – including the allied bombing, tanks, guns, ruined houses, flames – and creating caricatures of German soldiers. His detailed observational drawings are astonishing in their confident handling of perspective, composition and atmosphere – and the menacing tilt of war planes curving through the sky. His mother preserved those drawings, and in his book Tomi: A Childhood Under the Nazis, they illuminate his experiences in a way that few written accounts could match. The appalling things he witnessed left him with a desire to see an end to prejudice, intolerance, and what he calls the "absurdity of war", and he expressed these themes powerfully in his storytelling. … [Read more...] about Tomi Ungerer, rennaisance man of children’s book illustration

Financialisation has two faces. One is well described in Adair Turner’s Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance, which illustrates how the financial sector basically is providing finance to other parts of the financial sector, aptly called “FIRE” (finance, insurance and real estate). … [Read more...] about Mariana Mazzucato: the best books about the financial market

In Kate Elizabeth Russell’s powerful debut novel, Vanessa Wyes is 15 when she becomes involved with a teacher at her Maine boarding school. At 42, Jacob Strane is neither young nor attractive, but Vanessa is only too willing to be pulled into what she believes is first love. Russell cleverly lures us inside the labyrinth of the teenage mind – hot with hormonal turmoil, pushing boundaries, craving admiration, breaking rules and obsessing about sex. Vanessa has never kissed a boy, but she welcomes the advances of her English teacher. Strane begins by touching her knee under the desk in class, progresses to furtive kisses and then they go to bed. “I’m going to ruin you,” he says, as if tormented. He praises her writing and quotes Nabokov – “My Dark Vanessa” comes from Pale Fire. He also gives her Lolita, which becomes such an obsession that she later confuses her own memories with those of “Lo and Humbert”. … [Read more...] about My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell review – a powerful, shocking debut

With access to his many hundreds of letters to lovers such as the musician Kamala Chakravarty and photojournalist Marilyn Silverstone, Craske paints a fascinating picture of what Shankar has termed his ensuing “butterfly lifestyle” of promiscuity: “Multiple relationships, all passion, no commitment,” he explains. “Often he used his letters to express erotic desire for Kamala, switching from English to Bengali for the more explicit lines, which he playfully liked to punctuate with a modified exclamation mark in the shape of a phallus.” … [Read more...] about Indian Sun by Oliver Craske review – a virtuosic portrait of Ravi Shankar

Riddell wrote in the Observer on Sunday that the response to his complaints about the John Lewis ad had been overwhelming. “My fellow children’s book illustrators and writers have been outraged on my behalf, for which I heartily thank them. Talk of legal action has flooded my Facebook feeds, but I won’t be pursuing that,” he said. “Instead, I hope that advertising agencies, and the big companies they work for, take care to credit creative people whose work they might reference. We have the finest children’s book writers and illustrators in the world – their work should be cherished and credited properly.” … [Read more...] about John Lewis plagiarism row gives Christmas sales boost to Mr Underbed