1) I got a new fax machine today. The old one went from being a friendly sort of fax machine to being slightly temperamental to being a sort of a nightmare which randomly swallowed faxes, jammed, or spewed out fifty blank pages between each actual printed-on page, and just to add to the fun and madness, every line on the page that came out of the fax would be a different size, making proofreading almost impossible. Today brought the new one: it looks intelligent, as if it could hold its own in a conversation with an iMac, and it seems to work brilliantly.
2) There�s a thunderstorm going on. A really good one. I love thunderstorms.
3) I�ve got a book on the kitchen bookshelf called something like Too Many Peppers, Tomatoes, Beans and Eggplants, which is a good thing as, bizarrely, there are too many peppers, tomatoes, zucchini (er, baby marrows in English) and eggplants in the garden. The book is full of recipes. We aren�t using them. Instead, we are making ratatouille using all of those things (except the beans) and some recently-harvested garlic. Ratatouille in mind-mangling quantities. Which means that late at night I can go downstairs and nibble ratatouille. No two ratatouilles ever quite the same. (Yes, it could get old pretty quickly. But for a couple of weeks in September, it's sort of fun.)
4) More ENDLESS NIGHTS pages in e-mail from Miguelanxo Prado. Today the page with Young Death spoiling the party and the pages with Delight hiding under the table came through. This is why I love comics � the thrill of seeing pages straight from an artist, and the way that, every now and again, they�re even better than what you had in your head when you wrote the script.
5) I�m back to 1602 again, after too long dealing with emergencies, and being unable to focus, and it�s starting to crackle.
6) Scarlet�s Walk
7) Currently reading �Are YOU Dave Gorman?� by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace. It�s utterly delightful. Funny, driven, serious silliness that�s more fun than the TV series of the same name, mainly because it's more about the difficulties of finding 54 people named Dave Gorman than the triumphs.
8) And then I get to read M. John Harrison�s new novel LIGHT.
9) And I finished reading Maddy �The Snarkout Boys and The Avocado of Death� tonight. I think it's my favourite Daniel Pinkwater book, but that may be because it was the first. (And I'm pretty sure it was the first book I ever reviewed, for Jo Fletcher in the British Fantasy Society Newsletter.) (Remember, when an Orangutan gets you by the feet, it's all over.)
10) The Lemon tree in a pot by the front door, which we grew from a stick and is heavy with unripe lemons, is back in flower again, and the world smells of lemon blossom and hums with bumble bees. There's not long until first frost, and it'll have to come inside soon. But it's a wonderful end-of-summer moment.
....
Have read Coraline and seen many reviews in newspapers and the like,
but would quite like to see any reviews written by *children* who've
read the book or had it read to them.
Are there any about?
I've received quite a few written ones -- teachers have started reading it to classes, and classes of kids draw pictures and write letters. But I assume you're asking about reviews by kids out there on the web. I've been sent a couple. Offhand I can only find one...
http://www.cool-reads.co.uk/guestreviewpage.asp?Fulltitle=Coraline
But if any kids or teachers send in any other sites with reviews (either at mousecircus.com, the Coraline website, or here) I'll put links up.