Blackberry Blue

By Author / Illustrator

Jamila Gavin, Richard Collingridge

Genre

Adventure

Publisher

Penguin Random House Children's UK

ISBN

9781848531062

Format

Hardback

Published

07-11-2013

Synopsis

Prepare to enter a world of magicians, enchanted forests, talking animals and wicked witches ...Here are six magical stories to thrill and enchant you. Watch Blackberry Blue rise from the bramble patch; follow Emeka the pathfinder on his mission to save a lost king; join Princess Desire as she gallops across the Milky Way on her jet-black horse. These beautifully written and original stories will delight readers of all ages, and the stunning illustrations by Richard Collingridge will take your breath away.

Reviews

Blackberry Blue is the title story of one of six magical fairy tales in Jamila Gavins inventive new book of the same title. Drawing on the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, these adventurous tales interweave the traditional with the culturally diverse, to give them a more modern flavour.

With royal balls, enchanted forests, magic fish and evil witches a-plenty, each story introduces us to unusual characters in some very surprising locations: meet Blackberry Blue, born in a bramble patch,with skin as black as midnight; ride with Abu, a boy on a city bus, who must rescue his sister Leyla from The Purple Lady who captures children in her limousine; follow Chi as he outwits his wicked stepfathers greedy son Lu to reclaim his rightful inheritance from The Golden Carp; applaud Emeka the Pathfinder as he defeats a wicked sorcerer who morphs from tiger to dragon to writhing snake; follow Oddboy with skin as dark as India, his eyes as black as Africa whose fiddle playing is just too enviable to bear; run away with The Night Princess as she leads you from The Tower of the Winds, which spiralled upwards into the Milky Way, into a journey past the Taj |Mahal and the Great Wall of China.

Each story illustrates a moral in favour of kindness and justice over deceit and greed. The evocative pencil illustrations by Richard Collingridge are detailed and subtle.

While the imaginative range of these stories is evident, a clear narrative drive is less so. In the end, Blackberry Blue feels more like a hotchpotch of cross fertilisations than purposeful story telling.