Religion; Women's Rights
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Poetry (cover illustration by Peter Weevers). Edited by Alison Sage (who also edited The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Literature), this sumptuous anthology is loosely divided into four sections corresponding to age starting with nursery rhymes and first poems through to poems for older children and classic poetry. Poems from such modern poets as Roger McGough, Ted Hughes, Wendy Cope and Maya Angelou sit alongside poems by Longfellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley and Shakespeare. The anthology is illustrated in full colour and black and white. Newly commissioned illustrations from, for example, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes and Nicola Bayley are included alongside illustrations by Randolph Caldecott, Jessie Willcox Smith and Kate Greenaway. With such a comprehensive range of poems for 2-11 year olds and upwards, this is a wonderful family book.
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Religion
Illustrated by Christine Roche
Women's Rights
Illustrated by Andrew McIntyre
Two from a growing series which claims to focus 'on the hottest ideas and issues around'. On a first flip-through they are vaguely reminiscent of 'Horrible Histories' and similar series with their jokey line-drawings but the text takes a serious approach. Of the two, Women's Rights is the more engagingly written as it is from a committed standpoint. It begins with a general discussion about how and why girls and boys are treated differently. We then get a rapid history of women's role in society from the days of cave dwellers to the 19th century and then a more considered account of the growth in the demands for female equality finishing with a lengthy section on 'Where do we go from here?'. Despite the index this is more a book to be read from cover to cover than a reference text. The writing is lively and accessible.
Religion, however, revisits the same ground as countless other books and whilst posing many questions does not argue any of them through.
