In celebration of World Book Day 2019, we asked a few of
our recent and upcoming authors and poets to tell us the best book they’ve read
in the past year…
Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag
Hood – Rachel Plummer, poet
‘A book I've really loved
sharing with my kids this year is a picture book called Aalfred and Aalbert, by Morag Hood. It is a sweet and funny queer
love story for younger children, about two aardvarks who are perfect for each
other but need a little push along the way. Sweet and charming, this book is
great LGBT representation and a lovely read. What's not to love?’
Don’t miss Wain by Rachel Plummer, a
collection of LGBT themed poetry for teens based on retellings of Scottish myths.
The
People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
– Rassi Narika, author
‘The People in the
Trees was my second Yanagihara after I read A Little Life - I was an emotional wreck after reading it. It was
so good, I laughed and cried with it. In 2018, The People in The Trees left me with a different kind of wreck. I
kept rereading its pages just because I wasn't sure how I feel about the story.
I love the book because my interpretation about each character, and their story,
was continuously challenged in every turn of events. I had many moments of
self-conversation, questioning the social construct of how we see culture, and
who decides – or defines the cultural narrative of the Ivu'ivu's world. It made
me think about an alternate universe where civilization has a different
storyline than one we have today. And, the fact that this fiction was inspired
by true events, made me even more obsessed with how Yanagihara beautifully tells
such difficult story.’
Publishing later this month, When It Rains
by Rassi Narika is a children’s picture book that spins a story of hope and
discovery to brighten even the rainiest of days.
Keats: A Biography by Andrew
Motion – Kathy
Pimlott, poet
‘My favourite book during
2018 was the only prose book I read, Andrew Motion’s biography of John Keats,
published in 1997 and given to me, I see from the inscription, in 2002. I’d
started it two or three times but had always been distracted. In 2018 I was
just finishing an 18-month Writing School with the Sheffield-based Poetry
Business and one ‘homework’ was to read a poet’s biography. Keats was my
schoolgirl crush (along with Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, Simon & Garfunkel
and Hamlet), the book was on the shelf, so it was a no-brainer. Though, of
course, I knew Keats’ short and tragic story, I wasn’t ready for the emotional
undertow of the book, how it would drag me into the deeps over and over again.
It sent me straight back to the poems I thought I knew so well, to the house on
Keats Grove, and prompted four new poems of my own. What more could you ask?’
Newly released, Elastic Glue is a
poetry pamphlet by Kathy Pimlott exploring the ways we own and are owned by
land – how we both make and are made by the places we inhabit.
The Bubble Wrap by Dean
Parkin – Ieva Flamingo, author & poet
‘It’s so hard to choose!
Because all of them are really interesting and special to me. The Bubble Wrap is a poetry book, written
and illustrated by Dean Parkin. I choose this book because the author not only
writes for children, but also thinks and lives in these poems like children.
The poems are vivid, funny, cheerful and heart-warming.’
Snail,
Where Are You? by
Tomi Ungerer - Rūta Briede, author & illustrator
‘Sometimes there
are books with not a lot of text in them. And sometimes silence and observing
is the best state of mind when nothing really happens but everything happens. In
Snail, Where Are you? by Tomi Ungerer,
there aren’t too many lines to read. Only two. But can a story be told by a
good question? Can one feel the author’s bright and playful mind by seeing some
illustrations and reading one question and one simple answer? Yes, it’s
possible if the author is Tomi Ungerer. This is a book where simplicity is done
by a true master and one question is exactly the one that must be asked and the
answer is truly simple. Can you guess it?’
Don’t miss Rūta Briede’s latest children’s picture book, The
Dog Who Found Sorrow, a beautiful, resonant story about sadness
and healing, suitable for all ages.
Insectopedia
by Hugh Raffles – Lenni
Sanders, poet
‘Last year I
really loved reading Hugh Raffles' collection of essays Insectopedia. It's a fantastic book that I read slowly from summer
through to winter, dipping in, reading an essay here and there. This means for
months at a time in 2018 I was saying "Oh look, a bee! Hey, did you
know...?" and things like that, to anyone around. His style is
captivating and clear as he explores our various relationships to insects. I
was especially into 'My Nightmares', a poetic and incantatory piece about what
it is about insects that can be so frightening to us - 'There is the nightmare
of putting the shoe on and of taking the shoe off. There is the slithering
nightmare and the one that walks backwards. There is the squirming nightmare
and the squishing nightmare.'’
Publishing in May this year, the wryly funny Poacher by Lenni Sanders is influenced
by magical realism and puts strange characters in mundane places.
The
Book of Clouds by
Juris Kronbergs – Reda Gaudiamo,
author
‘This is a book I cannot stop talking about. The Book
of Clouds by Juris Kronbergs showed me that Indonesian
children need to read and enjoy poetry — the format often considered the most
serious one compared to other formats. Poems are seen as being the type of
text for adult, the rhymes we know are so old, and forgotten. Little do we
know that poetry is the type of format that helps children to read, love
reading, helps their articulation... and much more. This book makes me want to
pursue a new project: working with Indonesian poets to write poems for children.’
Launching at the London Book Fair, The Adventures of Na
Willa by Reda Gaudiamo is
a collection of stories of curious adventures and musings of a multicultural
girl growing up in Indonesia.
The
Carrying by Ada
Limón – Jeffery Sugarman, poet
‘Ada Limón's newest collection, The Carrying, is one for these times, and I think, for
the ages. Her poetic speakers are most always astonished and bewildered in, and
by, this troubled world; yet they won't be stopped by it, nor let us be
stopped. She's a poet whose very flesh seems composed of compassion—the poems
of incandescent feeling, wrought in simplest words. Seeing and feeling
with, and through, the flesh—often in emotional and physical pain—she captures
essences, in poems which, nonetheless, cast outward toward timeless reflection,
resolutions on the desire and will to survive, indeed flourish. She's also
a master at "saying the thing", and plays few linguistic games. I
marvel at her directness and clarity, how it conjures the profound; and gain
great pleasure too from the jewel-like epiphanies that rise up within, and
often end, her poems with fresh insight, but seem also inevitable! In this new
collection, especially, she's unflinching in her effort to understand and
describe the world, even if her methods become ruthless; thus she's able to
live in this world, I think, for the better—and so might we. In
"Killing Methods" her speaker, reflects— "I'm thinking of how we
make stories, / pluck them like beetles out of the air // I don't know how to
hold this truth, / so I kill it, pin its terrible wings down / in case,
later, no one believes me." The Carrying, helps me to see how we
might hold the truth, and believe.’
Jeffery Sugarman’s pamphlet Dear Friend(s) is due to publish in April. Its long title poem is an elegy, to a specific
“Dear Friend”, dead from AIDS in its earliest years.
What's your favourite book from the past year? Comment below or tag us @TheEmmaPress on social media. We'd love to know what you're reading!
The writing and colouring process are my favourite parts because it's all about exploration and finding new things. I enjoy writing because that's where I usually start things from, and it's usually very raw without having any boundaries to tell my story. It's very fun. I enjoy colouring because it's very soothing and therapeutic. I mostly do water-colouring, so there's a phase where I have to leave the artwork to let the colour dry and set; and that's like a letting go process to let the colours interact with the paper and be whatever they need to be.
MORE ABOUT RASSI:
Rassi Narika has been writing since she was a child. She worked as a creative writer for Tulisan in 2011, where she fell in love with the combination of writing and illustration. While studying at Goldsmiths, University of London, she started to explore this combination, and she wrote and illustrated her first picture book when she co-founded Seumpama. When It Rains is her second picture book.
