Tag: Bloomsbury

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 20th Anniversary Edition: Ravenclaw

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raven-hb-20Title: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 20th Anniversary Edition: Ravenclaw

Author: JK Rowling

Genre: Fantasy, Children’s Literature

Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia

Published: June 2017 (20th Anniversary Editions)

Format: Paperback/Hardcover

Pages: 352

Price: Paperback: $16.99, Hardback: $27.99

Synopsis: Celebrate 20 years of Harry Potter magic with four special editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw … Twenty years ago these magical words and many more flowed from a young writer’s pen, an orphan called Harry Potter was freed from the cupboard under the stairs – and a global phenomenon started. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has been read and loved by every new generation since. To mark the 20th anniversary of first publication, Bloomsbury is publishing four House Editions of J.K. Rowling’s modern classic. These stunning editions will each feature the individual house crest on the jacket and line illustrations exclusive to that house, by Kate Greenaway Medal winner Levi Pinfold. Exciting new extra content will include fact files and profiles of favourite characters, and each book will have sprayed edges in the house colours. Available for a limited period only, these highly collectable editions will be a must-have for all Harry Potter fans in 2017.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

~*~

raven-20Most of us know the story, we’ve read the series more times than we can count and seen each movie multiple times, and would probably blitz it in a Harry Potter trivia quiz. We know Hogwarts just as well as our own homes, know Harry, Ron, Hermione and the rest of the Weasley clan, as well as the teachers as Hogwarts like old friends, and we know that in the end, all will be well. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter, and to celebrate this occassion, Bloomsbury have re-released the first book in house colours in hard cover and paperback. The hard cover book has a black slip cover, with the house crest in the respective colour – so blue for Ravenclaw, with blue and bronze strip sprayed edges on the pages. The paperback of Ravenclaw is blue with black imagery and bronze text and blue edges. Each is exquisite, and the other houses are done in the same way with their respective liveries and colours.

Before the story starts, we are treated to additional information about the founder of Ravenclaw, Rowena Ravenclaw, information about the livery – a raven, in the centre, and flanked by an owl and another raven, with a swan and a fox atop the livery on either side of a sharp arrow. This, along with other illustrations, have been completed by Levi Pinfold, and give a delightful insight into what the founder of Ravenclaw looks like, which enhances the additional information about her and the house, which includes information on the house ghost, The Grey Lady, and notable students, such as Luna Lovegood, Moaning Myrtle and Gilderoy Lockhart, perhaps the most inept Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Hogwarts ever had, as well as head of house, Charms Professor, Filius Flitwick.

Each respective house edition has these same features in relation to Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Slytherin.

hp20_230In Harry’s world, we are treated to characters that will stay with us, and that will be well loved and treasured. With each character growing over the series, it will be interesting to see how Bloomsbury tops each subsequent 20th anniversary after this one, whether it will be books or events held across the world.

Between these informative sections, is the original story, still the same, still magical, and still welcoming. The characters haven’t changed, ensuring that readers of all ages, new and old, will come to the series finding the same thing, and being able to share the same story in whatever way they come to enjoy it. The additions of Levi Pinfold’s illustrations and the house information enhance the experience, and make for a delightful and colourful collection if you choose to get each house edition for your collection. It is a story that will live on, and the magic doesn’t die as you read and read it again. I discover something new with each read, and I thoroughly enjoy reading my Ravenclaw edition.

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Choose your house and enjoy, and if you can, head to Harry Potter 20th Anniversary celebrations near you!

It’s almost here…the 20th Anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

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In just one month, on the 26th of June, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will turn twenty. In June 1997, the world was introduced to a skinny, bespectacled boy with wild black hair and green eyes that reminded everyone of his mother, and an orphan, living with vile relatives –Vernon, Petunia and their spoiled brat of a son, Dudley, when he discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard, and that his parents died at the hands of one of the most evil wizards around – Voldemort, and that he too should have died that night – but he lived – becoming famous in the wizarding world even before he sets foot on the grounds of Hogwarts.

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The Harry Potter books are often credited with engaging a new generation of children with reading – this is my generation, but the books have gone beyond that – to the next generation and adults, those who raised my generation, and adults now my age, sharing the stories with new readers.

Slide show of the 20th anniversary covers:

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Harry Potter was an idea born on a train journey, and from that tiny seed in JK Rowling’s mind in the 1990s. has become the worldwide phenomenon it is today in 2017. Since publication, the series has sold over 450 million copies worldwide in 79 languages. To mark the twentieth anniversary at the end of June, Bloomsbury is releasing house editions of the first book – in paperback and hardcover.

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Each house will have a specially designed crest on the front – black on red, blue, yellow or green for the paperbacks with coloured edges, and coloured imprints on black hard cover backgrounds with striped sprayed edges. Kate Greenaway Medal Winner, Levi Pinfold, who also illustrated Songs from Somewhere Else, and will compliment the story, and additional house information given in each edition for each individual house, does these illustrations. These illustrations and facts will be exclusive to the house edition you choose – I am hoping to get a Ravenclaw edition, so hopefully, Luna will be included in these additional facts.

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This year also sees the release of the illustrated edition of The Prisoner of Azkaban in October, so it’s going to be a magic filled year for Harry Potter fans. Gather your friends and take part in the fun, read the books again, have a party or play Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit (Yes it exists, I have it and have won) and see who knows their History of Magic as well as Hermione and Professor Binns.

 

 

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

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Title: Letters to the Lost

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Genre: YA

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 6th April 2017

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, a world-traveling photojournalist. Even after her mother’s death, she leaves letters at her grave. It’s the only way Juliet can cope.

Declan Murphy isn’t the sort of guy you want to cross. In the midst of his court-ordered community service at the local cemetery, he’s trying to escape the demons of his past.

When Declan reads a haunting letter left beside a grave, he can’t resist writing back. Soon, he’s opening up to a perfect stranger, and their connection is immediate. But neither Declan nor Juliet knows that they’re not actually strangers. When life at school interferes with their secret life of letters, sparks will fly as Juliet and Declan discover truths that might tear them apart.

~*~

When Declan Murphy finds a letter on a grave during community service in the graveyard, he is compelled by an invisible force to read it, and respond to the person who wrote the letter.

When Juliet Young finds Delcan’s response to the letter she placed on her mother’s grave, she s incensed that someone has dared to read the words and respond to them as if they know her, as though they had the right to intrude. To Juliet, her privacy has been violated.

And yet, Juliet and Declan find a connection through this anonymous communication. They tell each other things they’ve never told anyone else, and reveal their true selves and feelings throughout the letters and later anonymous emails and messages that they move to. As they grow fond of each other through this method of communication, real life begins to throw them together: at school, at Homecoming, one the dark road with a broken down car, and they begin to form a friendship separate from the letters, not knowing that they are corresponding anonymously online when they face off in person.

Soon, they are thrown together more and more as real life and the letters start to blur together, and a fateful discussion threatens to throw them apart, and secrets are uncovered that Juliet is fearful to share with anyone – except those who helped her find the courage to look at her mother’s cameras, and find out what really happened the day she died.

Letters to the Lost is more than a love story. It is a story of loss, and how everyone deals with it differently, and a story of how the most unlikely friendships can develop in unusual places and come from a similar place and understanding, and slowly, develops into something more. Declan and Juliet have people they can talk to, teachers, friends, but not parents, and those who do try are not always able to understand them the way they understand each other.

I enjoyed Declan and Juliet’s story. It was heartbreaking in many ways, and illustrated the frustrations people feel that come with grief and change, and the shock of truths that lead to what happened, and the burdens that children shouldn’t have to shoulder. They are two people from different walks of life who find a way to understand the world, and the letters and emails interspersed with the prose and the dual perspective – where Declan’s chapters are indicated by him reading Juliet’s letters, and vice versa for Juliet – works well and establishes the characters for the reader, giving them both sides to the story, not just one.

Another interesting read from Bloomsbury for the Young Adult audience.

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Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl

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Title: Royce Rolls
Author: Margaret Stohl
Genre: YA
Publisher: Bloomsbury Australia
Published: 1st May 2017
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Price: $15.99
Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Bentley Royce is the wild-child of a super-glam reality TV dynasty. She has it all – designer clothes, a fancy school and an actual Bentley to drive around in. Her ambitious mom Mercedes has dragged the family from trailer park to Hollywood stardom. But Bentley wants out – she wants to go to college, escape her own storyline, be NORMAL – but Royces don’t do normal (or college).

Rolling with the Royces is running out of ways to keep viewers hooked and suddenly the show is threatened with cancellation. Bentley faces an impossible choice. Without the show, she could live the college dream – but her family will crumble (and is $20million in debt). Bentley Royce has a mission. She must use her brains to save the show; if she saves the show, she can save her family – and she’ll do whatever it takes …

Royce Rolls is a laugh-out-loud funny romp with a twist of mystery – a behind-the-scenes comedy with a brilliant voice, a hilarious and subversive antidote to the Kardashians and TOWIE (which will still work for fans of both!).

~*~

In Royce Rolls, the main character, Bentley Royce, is tired of playing the role of wild child in the reality television show, Rolling with the Royces. She’s tired of having her every waking minute filmed, and tired of being told how to act, and what to wear and humiliated by her sister, Porsche and her mother, Mercedes. After six seasons of the humiliation, Bentley’s only hope for a normal life and college – something that goes against everything Mercedes has instilled in her children and everything the show runners have encouraged for the Bentley character – is for the show to be cancelled. But when the threat of cancellation, her family will be faced with a large debt they’d have no chance of paying off. And so, Bentley must make a choice between family and a life that she has yearned for over many years.

Starting with an incident that shocks the reader, and inevitably, the characters, the novel switches back to the events that led to the tragedy. Each chapter ends or begins with relevant articles that would probably be found on a celebrity gossip site that blow things out of proportion with sensationalist headlines and stories, these do little to reflect the reality Bentley and her family manage to live when the cameras aren’t rolling during hiatus, or those rare hours when they’re studying their characters and Mercedes is probing them to be a person that they aren’t.

Bentley’s only solace is a local library, where she meets fellow library patron, Venice, and for the first time, experiences a real friendship, outside of a scripted “reality” that has been coerced to bring in ratings. She manages to get away at a certain time of day for this time out, and realises through these meetings that there is more than life on the show, and she wants more. Venice is the only person she can be the real Bentley with, not the scripted wild child “Bad Bentley” that everyone expects on the show.

Royce Rolls takes the reality television format and makes a mockery of it, revealing that what viewers see in the shows that populate television screens claiming to be reality television, television of real life, is really scripted and carefully produced and created using real people – acting as characters who are projected as the true selves of those on the screen, as opposed to fictional characters played by actors in television shows that often have much more interesting story lines.

As a rather anti-reality television fan, or at least, a viewer of shows like Masterchef who looks at the way things are edited for story telling purposes, this was an amusing read, and I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it. It shed light on the fallacy of reality television and indicates the power of reality comes from who a person really is, not what the world sees. It establishes the flaws of celebrity as well, and shows that that world is not as perfect as it may seem.

An interesting read for the YA audience, fans of reality television and those who don’t enjoy it. It is an antidote to the saturation of this genre and it uses humour and satire to show what this world is really like in an accessible and fun way.

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Carnivalesque by Neil Jordan

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Title: Carnivalesque

Author: Neil Jordan

Genre: Magical Realism, Fiction, Fantasy

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 1st April 2017

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: It looked like any other carnival, but of course it wasn’t…

 

It had its own little backstreets, its alleyways of hanging bulbs and ghost trains and Punch and Judy stands …

And at the end of one he saw the Hall of Mirrors. There were looping strings of carnival lights leading towards it, and a large sign in mirrored glass reading ‘Burleigh’s Amazing Hall of Mirrors’ and the sign reflected the lights in all sorts of magically distorted ways.

To Andy and his parents, it looks like any other carnival: creaking ghost train, rusty rollercoaster and circus performers. But of course it isn’t.

Drawn to the hall of mirrors, Andy enters and is hypnotised by the many selves staring back at him. Sometime later, one of those selves walks out rejoins his parents – leaving Andy trapped inside the glass, snatched from the tensions of his suburban home and transported to a world where the laws of gravity are meaningless and time performs acrobatic tricks.

And now an identical stranger inhabits Andy’s life, unsettling his mother with a curious blankness, as mysterious events start unfolding in their Irish coastal town…

~*~

Andy’s story begins quite innocuously, with a detour to a carnival that catches his eye on the way to a shopping centre with his parents. They enter, and soon, Andy’s world is turned upside down in the Hall or Mirrors, where he is left behind at the carnival, and someone who looks like him, but is not quite him, leaves with his parents. Andy, now Dany in the carnie world, must come to terms with the life of travelling around and setting up the carnival, discovering it’s secrets with Mona and the others, adjusting to a new life, whilst the Andy impersonator resides with his parents, calls them mother and father, and casts shadows into the family that worry his mother, Eileen, and do not bode well for their futures.

The story is told in alternating chapters, through the eyes of Eileen and Andy/Dany, and sometimes with a couple dedicated to one character. As Dany adjusts to his new life, the new Andy and his unusual ways of speaking, and acting worry Eileen. The dual storyline shows the complexity of the story, and allows the reader to follow the intriguing mystery of how the real Andy’s (Dany) disappearance affects his family, and hints that tragedy may soon befall them.

As Dany journeys with the carnival, he becomes a part of it, though he still remembers his home and longs to return, the carnival offers him a different life, one that he could never have imagined.

Written by Oscar-winning film director (The Crying Game, The Company of Wolves) and novelist, Carnivalesque is his latest creation, and I quite enjoyed it. It has a feel of intrigue and mystery about it, with questions that won’t necessarily be answered, nor some things resolved properly. It fits in nicely with Neil Gaiman’s works in the magical realism and fantasy worlds. A great read for fans of Jordan’s previous work, Gaiman fans or anyone who enjoys fantasy and magical realism.

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We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan and Bran Conaghan

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Title: We Come Apart

Authors: Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan

Genre: YA, Children’s literature, poetry

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 1st March, 2017

Format: Paperback

Pages: 336

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: YA rising stars Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan join forces to break readers’ hearts in this contemporary story of star-cross’d lovers.

Jess would never have looked twice at Nicu if her friends hadn’t left her in the lurch. Nicu is all big eyes and ill-fitting clothes, eager as a puppy, even when they’re picking up litter in the park for community service. He’s so not her type. Appearances matter to Jess. She’s got a lot to hide.

Nicu thinks Jess is beautiful. His dad brought Nicu and his mum here for a better life, but now all they talk about is going back home to find Nicu a wife. The last thing Nicu wants is to get married. He wants to get educated, do better, stay here in England. But his dad’s fists are the most powerful force in Nicu’s life, and in the end, he’ll have to do what his dad wants.

As Nicu and Jess get closer, their secrets come to the surface like bruises. The only safe place they have is with each other. But they can’t be together, forever, and stay safe – can they?

An extraordinary, high-impact, high-emotion collaboration between two Carnegie honoured rising stars of YA.

~*~

We Come Apart is the story of two troubled teens, who find themselves in the same repatriation programme, and are drawn to each other, and way from the bullies that plague Nicu because of who they think he is, and the friends that Jess realises she can’t really trust, and whose troubled home life has left her slipping through the cracks. At first they just watch each other, unsure of how to approach each other. But when they do, a friendship begins to blossom, and they are drawn to each other’s company, sharing how they feel, their fears, and what they wish for. Jess wants to escape her stepfather, Terry, Nicu doesn’t want to go back to Romania and marry the girl his parents have chosen for him. He wants to stay and save Jess. Together, they plan a way to leave their lives for a new life. But tragic events may mean that they are ripped apart forever.

Jess and Nicu’s stories are at first isolated and individual, and they slowly begin to intertwine, and bring the two together. I enjoyed reading their story in verse form, it was not only interesting but a fairly quick read and an absorbing one with an ending I didn’t see coming. Seeing two teenagers who had found themselves in trouble with the police and from vastly different families – who each expectations and in a way, didn’t respect Nicu and Jess for who they were, and their different attitudes and personalities that came through in the poetry were ignored or not respected by those around them other than each other.

This novel shows how well a story can be told through verse, in a dual perspective and shows that the bonds of friendship and those we choose to be around can sometimes be the strongest.

Told in verse, alternating between Nicu and Jess, at first individual poems about what leads them to where they meet, moving into poems of observation, and into poems that mirror each other as they interact. Telling a story in verse is an interesting method. It gets the story across just as effectively, and tells the story through emotions. It allowed for the characters to show the kind of people \ they were and what they came from. It was as much a story of friendship as it was love, and is a great book for the young adult audience.

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Announcement: Cover Reveal for Illustrated Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

hp20_230.jpgSince 2015, one of my favourite series has had illustrated editions released for each book, and this year not only marks the twentieth anniversary, already discussed in a previous post, but aphilosophers illustrated.jpeg new addition to the already released illustrated editions:

To coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Harry Potter, the third title in the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, will be released in an illustrated edition on the third of October 2017. Like the previous two chamber illustratedillustrated editions, Jim Kay has illustrated the story, and brought iconic aspects of the novel, such as the Knight Bus, seen here on the cover, to life. This hardback edition will have a ribbon marker, head and tail bands, illustrated end papers, and has over 115 colour images. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite of the series, and I can’t wait to see the illustrations to accompany the Dementors and the Boggart scenes.Azkaban cover

Like the rest of the illustrated series, it will be published in 21 languages. The illustrated editions began coming out in October 2015, when the illustrated edition of Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone came out, with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2016. Jim Kay’s reimagining of JK Rowling’s work has sold over one million copies worldwide of the first book.

The entire series has now sold over 450 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 79 languages. It was voted as the nation’s (United Kingdom) favourite book in 2013 in a Booktrust poll.

Jim Kay is a Kate Greenaway Medal winner. The front cover depicted here shows the Knight Bus as it picks up Harry when he runs away from Privet Drive at the beginning of book three.

Expect a darker tone and mood to the images as they reflect the change in tone of the writing and story as the series begins to enter darker territory and the threat of Voldemort begins to rise.

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Illustrated edition by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay

Published in hardback on 3rd October 2017

AU$59.99

336pp

Order Harry Potter here: