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Dancing Through the Shadows

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BfK No. 105 - July 1997

Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from the gift edition of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory illustrated by Quentin Blake and with design and typography by Peter Campbell. The successful collaboration between Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake has played an important part in the popularity of Dahl’s work over the last fifteen years. Blake’s unmistakable artwork truly complements Dahl’s writing. His economical, amiable, illustrative style balances out Dahl’s often expansive language. And the liveliness, humour and pathos of the drawings offer a softer side to Dahl’s sometimes gloriously grotesque, sometimes cruel descriptions of his characters.

Thanks to Penguin Children’s Books for their help in producing this July cover which commemorates the thirty years anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s first UK publication.

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Dancing Through the Shadows

Theresa Tomlinson
(Jonathan Cape Ltd)
112pp, 978-1856817134, RRP £9.99, Hardcover
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Dancing Through the Shadows" on Amazon

A dramatic year in the life of 11-year-old Ellie. 'The Shadows' is the knowledge that Mum has breast cancer. The dancing in a school club provides the therapy. The discovery of an old well on the schools site by an eccentric history teacher, herself a former cancer patient who underwent a mastectomy, leads to some interesting deliberations on the healing powers of fresh water and brings the two plot elements together as the dance club perform at the opening of the site when it is fully excavated. We follow Mum through the operation, the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy but none of it is heavy-handed and the book ends on a positive note. This should find an appreciative audience well up into Year 9.

Reviewer: 
Steve Rosson
3
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