Title: Fleeced
Author: Julia Wills
Series: N/A
Published: 1 January 2014 by Templar
Length: 400pages
Source: Publisher
Summary : Meet Aries, the wise-cracking ghost-ram of the Golden Fleece!
Aries, the ram of Golden Fleece fame, remains furious at the loss of his beautiful coat - stolen by Jason and the Argonauts centuries ago. So he hatches a plan to return to earth, along with his friend Alex, zookeeper of the Underworld. But instead of arriving in ancient Greece, they teleport slap-bang into the British Museum in modern day London.
Aries and Alex soon discover that the Golden Fleece is in the clutches of evil immortal sorceress Medea - now a world-famous fashion designer. With the help of twelve-year-old human girl Rose, Aries and Alex must foil Medea's wicked plans and save Aries from an eternity of being bald!
A madcap, mythological adventure ewe don't want to miss!
Review: Those of you who know Greek Mythology may have heard about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest to find the Golden Fleece. Everyone remembers Jason, but what about the ram? Aries, the ram from whom the Fleece is stolen, is still upset at the loss of his fleece. When Athena holds a contest in the Underworld for a chance to go up to the real world, Aries and Underworld zookeeper Alex compete and win, sending them up to modern day London. With the help of a human girl, Rose, they try and find the Fleece. It won't be as easy as they hoped. It's in the hands of Medea, the sorceress, who is now a fashion designer, and who has a plan for the next wearer of the clothes made with fleece...
I heard about this at the Templar/Hot Key blogger event thing. They said something along the lines of “I know this is aimed at slightly younger readers but I think you'll enjoy it.” Whoever said that was right.
The idea for this is wonderful. The big name Greek myth book is of course Percy Jackson, and Fleeced presents Greek mythology in a totally different way.
Either Rose or Aries is my favourite character. Not sure which. Rose is a wellbuilt character, and one of the few twelve year olds I don't find really annoying. Aries, well for starters non human main characters are awesome, and I love his thought processes. Medea is a wonderfully put together interpretation of the one from the original myth. Both she and Rose are sharp and clever, and seeing them dance around eachother with wits is great to read. I didn't really like Hazel, because she didn't seem to do much, but everyone else was good.
The plot moves quickly, with a lot of back and forth around the scenes for effective cliffhangers, with commentary remarking that they're moving back and forth around the scenes. It works in a lot of Greek myth elements, and I liked seeing them all have a small part.
This is one of the most fun, and funniest, books I've read all year. My love of Greek Mythology meant I enjoyed all the gags about that, and there's lots of more modern jokes in it too. Then there's the chapter titles, of which about 95% are puns. By the time I got to The Flocky Horror Show, I was absolutely done. Then there's everything to do with
The narrator is one of the most sarcastic ones I've met. They're chatty, and narrate everyhing in a distinct way that made me laugh a lot. Then there's the bit at the end, the scroll providing a handy glossary of creatures and characters in Greek Mythology. Best who's who ever; Medusa's says “anyone who looked at her immediately utrned into stone, which made it very difficult to get agood hairdresser” and Narcissus' says “He stayed by the pool until he died. I know. How silly was that? But, as I said, he was good looking, not smart”.
Final point-my Latin teacher loves the idea of this.
Overall: Strength 4 tea to another book spreading the love for Greek Mythology
Quotes from the Uncorrected Proof. They may change in the final copy.
How comic writer Morris Gleitzman helps children face difficult things
As a comic writer for children and starting my Master’s course soon after the long decline and death of my mother with Alzheimer’s, perhaps it was unsurprising that the topic I chose to research was how humour helps children cope with seriously unfunny issues in their lives, particularly in the work of Morris Gleitzman.
Laughter is important at any age, but how much more can it offer the child reader, already so less empowered to deal with the big stuff than we are, to have that someone between the pages, calling them in and making them laugh about the things that worry them, thereby shrinking those problems and offering the child the sense that they can master their fears, too?
Much has been written about humour and three big theories still dominate. Superiority Theory says we laugh at someone because we feel smarter than them; Incongruity Theory holds that funny is when we are surprised by two contradictory things coming together; Relief Theory maintains that we laugh at the things that scare us.
Whilst none of these theories on its own can explain every instance of what we find funny, I felt that Relief Theory seemed most likely to answer my particular question, not least because a model of children’s humour proposed by Wolfenstein
, with its roots in the same theory, seemed able to neatly explain why, unlike adult’s humour, which tends to remain fixed, children’s humour changes as they grown up.
In short, Wolfenstein linked children’s laughter to fear. Her theory explained why a very young child mastering toilet training finds potty jokes hilarious whilst a slightly older child, grappling with language, revels in puns and riddles that play with words. By laughing at the things that worry them, Wolfenstein maintained, the child gains an affective mastery over them.
So, I wondered, was this also something that happened when they read a humorous book about a difficult situation?
Interestingly, when a child reaches school age, a time when socialisation is much greater, homemade jokes are discarded in favour of ready-made ones. Might this mean that when they are becoming aware of some of life’s more unpleasant realities – such as death, loneliness, divorce – a ready-made fictional character in a book, rather than a joke, allows them to gain control over their own issues?
Morris Gleitzman, a children’s author of more than thirty books, has achieved the remarkable feat of making the most extraordinarily difficult subjects funny. His stories deal with topics as gloomy as parents’ over-ambition for their children, euthanasia, famine and crippling loneliness. In “Two Weeks with the Queen,” Colin’s brother is terminally ill; in “Bumface” Angus’s mother forces him to become a substitute parent for two under-fives. Yet, without a doubt, the books are laugh-out loud funny.
So if the character is allowing the reader the opportunity for the affective mastery that Wolfenstein talks about, how do they do it?
According to the writer John Vorhaus
, despite coming in all shapes and sizes, comic characters have one thing in common: comic distance. This is their out-of-stepness with reality and us. It might be physical - the crazy clothes and red noses that clowns wear, or the fact that The Simpsons are bright yellow. Or it could be an exaggerated trait – Harold Lloyd was accident prone, but it was the exaggeration of that flaw that led him to hand off a civic clock-face a hundred feet above the city. In Gleitzman’s work the comic distance comes from the main character’s attitude: the distance between the reality of a situation and the child’s perception of it. The character’s misguided “Can-do!” determination inevitably leads to things becoming funny.
In Gleitzman’s “Two Weeks with the Queen,” rather than accept the reality of his brother’s plight, Colin decides that the doctor is wrong. A better doctor, he decides, would be able to cure Luke. Such a doctor must obviously be really smart, like the one who looks after the Queen of England. Consequently it’s not long until Colin happens on the “obvious” solution of breaking into
Buckingham Palace (with the help of a few tools from his uncle’s workbox) to have a chat with her.
In “Bumface” Angus is desperate to stop his mum having any more children for him to look after. All he really wants is to be a pirate in the school play and not have to be mum’s “Mr Reliable”. His desperation to “fix” the problem even sends him to the Family Planning Clinic to try and sort supplies for her.
In both these stories, as in the rest of Gleitzman’s oeuvre, it is his astonishing ability to use hilarity to bring home the characters’ plights in a way that no amount of writerly hand-wringing ever could that sets them apart. The characters’ attitudes give the reader license to laugh. But do they give the reader affective mastery too?
Significantly, in both books, the child cannot fix the problem. Colin’s quest leads him to a man whose partner is dying of AIDS and the realisation he must accept Luke’s fate. Angus befriends another child whose parents are pre-determining her path and together they “break free” as children.
And this, I think, is where the true affective mastery lies.
In correspondence with Gleitzman, he told me that he “liked to write humour that helps young readers feel that insoluble problems won’t crush them and celebrates their capacity to never give up on the rest of life”.
In conclusion then, the humour in his books doesn’t seek to give the reader an emotional control over a particular problem in question. His books don’t say, “Laugh at this and it will no longer be a problem”. Much more importantly, it offers them a more sophisticated sort of mastery: the insight - through laughter - that beating every problem isn’t possible, but that choosing to remain optimistic despite them, is.
And I can’t think of a better use of humour, or indeed a more important “mastery”, to help a young person through life. Can you?
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