Monday 2 September 2019

Book Review: Tidelands by Philippa Gregory

Tidelands
by 
Philippa Gregory

THE BRAND NEW SERIES FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BEST SELLING AUTHOR.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster AU 
Series: The Fairmile #1 
Publication date: 20th August 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 438
Format read: Uncorrected proof Paperback
Source: courtesy of the publisher via Better Reading


Midsummer’s Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands – the marshy landscape of the south coast.

Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life.

Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands.
  







England 1648 is a dangerous time for a woman especially if you have intelligence, beauty and determination.

Allinor is a herbalist, a healer just like her mother before her. However her skill with herbs and her outstanding beauty cause mistrust and jealousy. She is gossiped about as being a witch. With her husband missing she is left to bring up two children alone.
Tidelands is set during the last few months of King Charles I’s reign and a time of religious upheaval. It is troubled times in England and those troubles reach as far as the remote Tidelands.

The major part of the story is about the political unrest of the time and a plot to save the King. Allinor is unwittingly pulled into the danger when she helps a handsome stranger and falls in love.

Gregory deftly portrays the poverty and remoteness of Sealsea Island and through Allinor we see the life that women had to endure. With her husband missing she was neither wife nor widow. Her working hours were long and hard.

The plot is slow but immersive with the book spanning only 9 months it is a solid basis for the continuing saga. As the rest of the series unfolds we will have no doubt of the poverty and hardship these characters came from.

Philippa Gregory is a master story-teller. Her research and knowledge of the time period shines through in how effortlessly and smoothly the story flows.
A missing husband, a handsome priest; Tidelands is an unforgettable story of love, perseverance and danger. 

            

                            🌟🌟🌟🌟 

My rating  4/5


Photo credit: goodreads
 
Philippa Gregory was an established historian and writer when she discovered her interest in the Tudor period and wrote the novel The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a TV drama and a major film. Published in 2009, the bestselling The White Queen, the story of Elizabeth Woodville, ushered in a new series involving The Cousins’ War (now known as The War of the Roses) and a new era for the acclaimed author.

Gregory lives with her family on a small farm in Yorkshire, where she keeps horses, hens and ducks.

Her other great interest is the charity she founded nearly twenty years ago; Gardens for The Gambia. She has raised funds and paid for 140 wells in the primary schools of the dry, poverty stricken African country. Thousands of school children have learned market gardening, and drunk the fresh water in the school gardens around the wells.

A former student of Sussex University, and a PhD and Alumna of the Year 2009 of Edinburgh University, her love for history and her commitment to historical accuracy are the hallmarks of her writing. She also reviews for US and UK newspapers, and is a regular broadcaster on television, radio, and webcasts from her website. 

 

Sunday 1 September 2019

Storybook Corner Book Review: Arabella and the Magic Pencil (Children's Picture Book) +related craft


Arabella and the Magic Pencil
by
Stephanie Ward
Illustrated by Shaney Hyde


Publisher: EK Books 
Publication date: 1st September 2019
Pages: 32
RRP: $24.99 AUD
Format read: Hardcover
Source: Courtesy of the publisher



Arabella is a very happy only child living a perfectly pleasant life.
Until she gets a baby brother who utterly upsets everything!
So Arabella erases Avery with her magic pencil. Problem solved.
She's sure her life will go back to being perfect now....wont it?

A fun-filled look at sibling rivalry and creative problem-solving!


“There once was a girl named Arabella”

We loved how the story started like a fairytale. A simple statement that sets the scene!

Arabella was the only child of the Duke and Duchess. She was granted a royal wish every year.
Arabella’s wishes were for fanciful things, wishes a child could relate to; a pink dog (that gave Dot a giggle). Dot’s wish was a real live unicorn.

Arabella didn’t wish for a little brother but that’s what she got. She loved Avery but he made lots of noise and ruined all her games until one day Arabella got so annoyed she made him disappear.
But life was too quiet, too calm and Arabella was sad. How can she get Avery back?

Anyone who has ever been a sibling probably knows what it feels like to wish that their irritating brother or sister would just vanish for a little while.

I remember when Jay first arrived on the scene Dot was not at all impressed and even drew family pictures without him in it. Luckily our young memories are short and she doesn’t remember ever not wanting her little brother around.

Stephanie Ward has produced a story that will never age. Sibling rivalry will be with us as long as little brothers and sisters keep arriving to change the family dynamics.

Arabella and the Magic Pencil is a charming story filled with magic and wonder to enhance a child’s imagination. The story includes words to extend the child’s vocabulary and Dot was quick to ask the meaning of ‘mayhem' and ‘acoustics’.  Alliteration is used at times to give a fun rhythm to the story; Dainty dolls dined, Pretty princesses paraded.

The watercolour illustrations are a feast for the eyes. Shaney Hyde has given the story extra meaning through little touches in her illustrations. A royal bird (wearing a crown) can be found on each double spread, Arabella in her tent, headphones on, listening to music, Avery’s little blue dinosaur makes quite a few appearances, dragonflies, ladybugs, singing flowers all displayed in beautiful pastel colours until Avery disappears. The colour also disappears leaving Arabella and her surroundings in a sepia tone.

Arabella and the Magic Pencil is a wondrous picture book, not only for a young girl or boy who has had a new sibling enter their world but for any girl or boy who is enthralled by magic and imagination.

Dot had a lot of fun colouring and playing with the Arabella and Avery paper dolls.

 



Visit Stephanie’s website to download the paper doll activity sheet and colouring pages.
https://stephaniemward.com/books/

End note: Jay stomped around the room making dinosaur noises while we read the book. (little bothers 🤣🤣)


🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Rated by Dot 5/5
About the author:

 
Photo credit: Goodreads
Stephanie Ward is an award-winning children's author and reviewer who splits her time between London, Seattle and Sydney. She spent 15 years in public relations before deciding to dedicate herself to what she loves - writing stories for children. Stephanie has five award-winning picture book manuscripts.



 About the illustrator:
Photo credit: EKBooks
Shaney Hyde is an Early Childhood Teacher from Melbourne who runs art workshops for children and draws inspiration from her own playful childhood. Arabella and the Magic Pencil is the first book she has illustrated, fulfilling a long-held dream. 









 




Saturday 31 August 2019

Book Bingo - Round 18 #BookBingo

Book Bingo is a reading challenge hosted by Theresa Smith Writes , Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse. Every second Saturday, book bingo participants reveal which bingo category they have read and what book they chose. 

This week I have chosen the category 'Book with a Red cover'




Book with a Red Cover:

For this category I have chosen The Ex by Nicola Moriarty.
It's pretty self explanatory why I've chosen this book..... the cover is red!! 

This is a thrilling page-turner about a woman that enters a relationship but finds that the ex-girlfriend is in denial and cannot let go. Things get really crazy when she finally confronts her.
 
You can read my review of The Ex here 



 #BookBingo 2019

Friday 30 August 2019

Guest Post: Corella Press publishing intern, Joy

What's it like to be an intern for a publishing house? Joy gives us a behind the scenes look at her time at Corella Press.

Today's guest on The Burgeoning Bookshelf is publishing intern, Joy. Here Joy tells us the ups and downs of working in a high paced field.

Guest post:

Hello, and thank you so much for having me on this wonderful blog! My name is Joy and I'm an English Literature and History major at the University of Queensland. 


Today I would love to share a little of my experience as a publishing intern, and what I learned throughout this unique and exciting, industry-focused journey. I also hope it inspires you to go and grab yourself copies of the new releases from Corella Press!

At the beginning of this year, as I was considering my academic journey so far and where I wanted it to go from there, I knew I wanted to get some real-life industry work experience in the arts and literature, which would also be creative and innovative and outside the classroom scene (much as I truly love it). I had not heard anything about Corella Press until I was contacted by one of my university academics, Dr. Kim Wilkins, inviting me to join as an intern for the semester. Being committed to developing my creative writing and professional editing skills, the prospect of getting training in a publishing organisation had a strong appeal, especially as it was a UQ not-for-profit small press “committed to making beautiful, collectable editions of recovered Australian nineteenth-century crime and mystery stories”. 

It was the bringing together of both my academic interests with the creative areas I was most passionate about. I became more thrilled by the opportunity of being trained with the team at Corella Press, as well as interning and doing research at AustLit for the duration of my internship (AustLit is a literary bibliographic and research organisation at the University of Queensland).

My first supervisor meeting, where I first met with Ms. Kerry Kilner, Dr. Catriona Mills (of AustLit) and Ms. Meg Vann (of Corella Press), helped me appreciate the process of cross-organisational collaboration and partnership on a project. While this was at times a time-management struggle for me during my internship, I observed and appreciated the professional respect and consideration shown between AustLit and Corella staff on this project, based on a mutual love for uncovering great authors and literary treasures of the past. This conversation about nineteenth-century feminist women writers inspired me in investigating these unknown dynamic female authors but I didn’t know how I was going to do that.

On my first day at the office, I gained fundamental research skills, such as using the “Advance Search” on the AustLit database and on the National Library of Australia’s Trove. It was fulfilling to gain the skills to do more in-depth research, and learn to dig-up articles, stories, family news and history in digitised Australian newspapers. There is a vast array and depth of material from Australia's literary past, and it is just waiting to be uncovered—or as I like to say it fancily, unearthed! 

In the first few weeks of my internship, I learned about how the AustLit website functions and observed the intensive bibliographic, research and administration tasks the AustLit team do on a regular basis. Learning the basic principles of the expression and manifestation of a work (FBR) gave me insight into the importance of accurate bibliographic record-keeping and critical analysis of data. This is essential both for preserving and uncovering Australia’s literary traditions past and present in their diversity and complexity. An example of a time when I felt enabled as a contributor to this recording and preserving process was when I found on Trove the digitised stories and articles published by Leontine Cooper under her nom de plume Onyx and added external links to all of the AustLit entries of Onyx’s works connecting them to Trove.

Similarly, there was a special feeling in contributing to the bibliographic database when I was able to discover a new unrecorded story for our Corella Press by author, Jeannie Lockett, called “An Awfully Sudden Death”, and added it as an entry in the author’s works page.

My experience as an intern at Corella Press was dynamic but also different from my normal academic work and studies. Our team met up in weekly meetings held on Thursday from 2:30-5pm led by our supervisor Meg Vann, where we broke down our production schedule systematically over thirteen weeks to achieve our goal of transforming a nineteenth century Australian piece of fiction into a beautiful collectable book. 

I initially struggled to connect my work at AustLit with the weekly responsibilities and tasks required at Corella Press. This was largely due to the academic vs. creative and industry-focused approach each role required. However, eventually I was able to separate the roles in my mind, and gained insights in my research that aided me in working on both projects. This enhanced my ability to multi-task and take on responsibility as a researcher for the Corella team, and writing the first draft of Jeannie Lockett’s biography.
I was passionate as an AustLit intern at Corella Press to bring my research skills to the role as an editor and team member, do my best, and prove my ability as a creative industry professional.

The Corella Press meetings each week differed in focus, depending on the work required weekly for the project, with the aim of developing our practical skills and work ethic. Some weeks our focus was on learning how to edit and proofread, which we then had to apply in tasks across the semester through several rounds of editing The Millwood Mystery by Jeannie Lockett (the second book we are launching this year!). Through this hands-on process I gained confidence in my ability to transcribe, edit and proofread manuscripts, finding it a particularly rewarding experience. 

In week 4, we learned the rhetoric of an acquisitions meeting within a bigger publishing house, before developing our own acquisitions proposal that we delivered to the Acting Director, Dr. Richard Newsome.

This gave me insight into the publishing technicalities and also our role in making authors of the past relevant and engaging for modern readers today. This included the process of identifying the genre of our manuscript and pitching it for a reading audience to Dr Newsome.

One of the things I found beneficial for my development at Corella Press was the opportunity to hear and connect with professionals from Australia’s wider publishing industry, with guest speakers from IngramSpark, AustLit and UQ Press. 

A particular instance that had an impact on me was in week nine when Sally Matthews from the Marketing Team at UQ Press came and shared with us the work involved in marketing and promoting a new release, with consideration to sales, meeting the vision of the organisation and supporting their authors. She used a book of poetry, The Lost Arab by Omar Sakr, as a case study of the process involved in employing social media and contacting influencers and reviewers to get the book in the hands of the reading public. Hearing her speak of her professional journey and her work in UQP’s marketing team positively shaped my attitude about the possibilities I could pursue in publishing. Recognising in myself a passion for this aspect of the industry, I was able to bring my personal love of blogging to the team with the idea of hosting a blogtour launch ahead of our Corella Press book-release—so hey pursue your hobbies, guys!

Having Meg approve and assign to me this task of co-organising the blog-tour with the wonderful Eva encouraged me to take on responsibility in my team and feel empowered as a young industry professional.

Truthfully, my professional practice at AustLit and Corella Press has been transformative in helping me develop my industry skills and confidence as a young writer and publisher in training. It has provided me with experience to apply my academic and theoretical knowledge into practical real-world outcomes as a researcher, editor and writer in the related industries. 

I feel privileged alongside my fellow interns to have been involved in the cultural contribution of AustLit as a key information resource and record of Australia’s publishing history, and be a part of the legacy of Corella Press in preserving and uncovering unique voices from Australia’s literary past. I am beyond thrilled to see these two nineteenth-century works by some genuinely marvellous Australian female writers get relived and loved by a new generation of readers.

Joy is a third-year UQ student majoring in English Literature and History. She is thrilled, as a Corella Press intern, to see the works of nineteenth-century Aussie female writers like Mary Helena Fortune and Jeannie Lockett, see the light of day again and be read by passionate readers like herself. 

The  books the interns were working on are:

                                        Bridget's Locket and Other Mysteries



                                                      The Millwood Mystery