Craig Smith

Reviewing is an odd business. One receives a seemingly random selection of books. The first task, after reading them, is to find a common denominator, some ‘glue’ to hold the review together. This time, the glue was easier to find than is sometimes the case. They are all picture books aimed at kindergarten or early to middle primary school, so if you want ideas about what to give your amazingly sophisticated twelve-year-old nephew, read no further. More seriously, to varying degrees they are all about longings and dreams. In Wishbone, Henry wishes he could have a dog, and the story recounts how his wish eventually comes true. Daisy All-Sorts actually is a dog, but she feels her life will only be complete if she can have liquorice all-sorts every day. Silverskin is about an albino python snake that spends most of the book wishing she looked more normal. A Day in the Life of Me describes a truly amazing day, but did it really happen or was it a dream? Similarly, Fish for Breakfast treads the borderline between waking and dreaming.

Rachel Flynn’s Sacked! is for the eight-to ten-year-old market, the same audience that J.K.  Rowling’s Harry Potter books are tapping. It’s an interesting stage when everything from cereal packets to Dad’s car manual demands to be read.

Sacked! explores a clever absurdity with tongue-in-cheek, where the adult is likely to see the joke more than the child.