Favourite Historical Fiction of 2016 for Young Readers

This article is from the Irish Times last December but I neglected to post it so here we go. Last December the newspaper's were full of lists of best books of the year but they were for the most part all about books for adults. I was kindly asked my author friend E. R. Murray to contribute some thoughts on my favourite children's books from 2016 as were a variety of children's authors and booksellers. Of course being me I focused on the books that presented history to children, because obviously history is my thing. You can see the article in full at the link down below. Here however is my contribution. 

Lisa Redmond

For younger readers The Moon Spun Round is a collection of Yeats poetry, folktales and childhood writing stunningly illustrated by Shona Shirley MacDonald and collected by Noreen Doody while Kate Pankhurst’s Fantastically Great Women who Changed the World is fabulous fun and full of facts, a great introduction to women in history. Fans of history aged 9 and upwards will adore the moving and wonderfully written Kings of the Boyne by Nicola Pierce and Arrivals by Brian Gallagher about Irish emigrants in Canada may be his best book yet while Caroline Busher’s debut The Ghosts of Magnificent Children is an assured blend of history and the gothic.

Young adult fantasy fans should track down Emily June Street’s The Velocipede Races, a steampunk adventure set in an alternate 19th century, and Passenger by Alexandra Bracken, a time travel fantasy, while Catherine Johnson’s Blade and Bone pits a young black doctor against racial prejudice and the danger of the French Revolution.

Lisa Redmond is senior bookseller at Waterstone’s

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/our-favourite-children-s-and-ya-books-of-2016-1.2906266

Romance in Fiction

As it is Valentine's Day I felt I should write a little about romance especially as I will be writing about serial killers later. Generally I'm in favour of romance in novels but I'm not a fan of novels which are just 'will they won't they' stories and I can't stand romance that feels unconvincing. I prefer when the romance seems to happen amongst the chaos of everything else in the story. Obviously the writer knows what they are doing but it's much more enjoyable for the me if the romance is part of the story not the purpose of the story. A good example of this is one of my favourite book series Outlander in which 20th Century nurse Claire Randall accidently travels back to the 18th Century and is forced to seek protection from an English Army Captain by allying herself with a Scottish highlander James Fraser and she finds herself falling in love with him.
However I specifically wanted to talk about Romance in Young Adult fiction. Firstly because it's especially important that Young Adult fiction is more than just romance and because it's important for readers to see romance portrayed realistically and sensitively.
I was asked my thoughts on this very topic by Irish writer Claire Hennessy for an article which appears in today's Irish Times online. You can check it out HERE

I mentioned Eleanor and Park as a good example of Young Adult romance and My good friend Maera Black of https://inkandpaperhearts.wordpress.com/ mentioned Graceling and the relationship between Katsa and Po, which is a real favourite of mine. I would also like to mention Resonance by Celine Kiernan as there are a number of beautifully portrayed relationships but Tina and Joe are particularly well done as they are tested to their absolute limits and not found wanting.

"The title characters in Rowell’s Eleanor and Park similarly work well for readers. Children’s bookseller Lisa Redmond describes them as “a wonderful couple: awkward and embarrassed at first but you really root for them. Their shared interest in music gives them a connection and a way of communicating without words.”