Good, short little book for kids to expose them to the history of African American scientists and thereby encourage them to get into science themselves. It was written a few decades ago now, so the science itself is a little dated - the last chapter talks, in excited terms, about the wonder and development of floppy disks - but science more than almost any other field relies upon its history. That's how hypotheses are developed and tested! I have an interest in the history of science, so it was good to be exposed to the potted biographies of a number of scientists who are new to me. I've already started looking up information on at least one of them, George Washington Carver, to learn more.

I do think in some places, though, that this is a little dry for a children's book. There are a limited number of photographs, but I would have liked to see more diagrams, for instance, and more visual representations of some of the experiments described. Some kids learn lots by reading, and that's great, but some are more visual learners, and when encouraging kids to get interested in maybe being scientists themselves, it's more useful to cast a wider net, I think.

That being said, books like this are such valuable resources, and I'd love to see an updated version of it - one that includes more women in it, too, as Black Scientists only features one. Encouraging minority kids to get into science is just so enormously important...

Not for me I'm afraid. There's almost a zombie feel to it, but the two men bitten over and over don't seem to transform after being (partially) eaten, so I'm really sure if it's zombies or not. Maybe? The thing is, I'm not giving it a two star rating because I think The Craving is bad, because it isn't. I'm not convinced by the central relationship, but the whole thing is creepy and it is disturbing, and if this were a straight novel, or a short story, I might well rate it higher. It's just when it comes to comics and graphic novels, my reaction to the art pretty much characterises my reaction to the whole, and I bounced straight off the art here. It didn't appeal at all - which is not to say that it won't appeal to other readers. Art is such a personal thing, and a lot of what's here is perhaps too amorphous - and in some places just too unclear - for me to truly appreciate. When Helen was vomiting blood in the kitchen, for instance? I didn't get that that's what she was actually doing until another character described it on a following page. Not always being able to understand the pictures straight away is no doubt appealing to some people, but not to me.

This is more like it! I love horror that's set in historical times, because there's so much awful in history that can be... not exploited, exactly, but used to illustrate just how far humans can let themselves fall. And often, as is the case with the prison guards here, through sheer indifference. Roman, the protagonist, has been sentenced to lengthy imprisonment (in what is presumably a Siberian camp) for slandering Stalin. That insult comprised telling a joke about Stalin at a party, but he was a monstrous bastard - I've written about the Soviet biochemist Lina Stern in the past, who also fell foul of him - with no sense of humour, and violently wrecking lives was a result. Roman is persuaded to try and escape with two other inmates, and they run off into the freezing wilderness... accompanied by a figure of Russian folklore that Roman has been bribing with stolen food. (Starvation is a consistent theme here.)

The idea of leaving a bit of bread out for something turns up in a lot of cultures. I've heard it for fairies and so on, but Roman's, uh, "friend," is not a fairy. Whatever it is, it's effectively only shown in partial light, and the art surrounding this monstrous creature is very, very effective.

I'm sorry, but this is just monstrously dull. I am irked enough by the period racism and the equally period determination of one of the English characters to slaughter every animal that he comes across, for the sheer pleasure of killing, but the soporific triangles! I have been trying to read this book for a couple of weeks now, and I could only do a chapter or so at a time before my eyes began to glaze over. Six scientists measure a meridian in Africa, and while the second half is marginally more active than the first, the interminable detail of measurement in the first half just destroyed any hope of my actually enjoying the book.

Thank goodness it was short, though if I ever need a remedy for insomnia I shall know where to go.

I love that this is so kind! Laurel is a witch, and off to her first year of uni in Wellington. She doesn't know anyone, and her familiar is not allowed in the halls of residence. (Her familiar comes along anyway.) She makes friends and finds a way to make potions in the kitchen and keep her cat out of sight... but there's another cat in the halls, another witch, and Laurel is suddenly less alone than she thought.

It's warm and friendly and everyone is likeable, and the author's prose, as always, is so accomplished and an absolute pleasure to read.

This is set immediately after Return of the Jedi, in that scant days after the Battle of Endor, Luke, Leia and co. are sent off to defend an Imperial world from alien attack. The aliens are basically giant, xenophobic reptiles who plan to forcibly extract mental energy from humans in order to power electronics. That whole part of it isn't terribly convincing, but the real issue is Bakura, which has an Imperial garrison and a population which is ready for uprising. As nearly always, I prefer the political issues, which are more Leia's remit, to the Force stuff which is Luke's. It's not that I don't enjoy the genre side of Star Wars, because I do, but politics is more interesting as far as I'm concerned.

There's one issue here, though, that irks, though admittedly it's a very minor plot thread. Darth Vader does the sparkly death Jedi thing, appearing to Leia and asking for forgiveness, and she (justifiably) tells him to take a running jump. Luke has clearly forgiven him, and he seems to think that Leia should too, but I'm solidly with her on this one. He murdered billions of people in front of her when he destroyed Alderaan, and that's just the tip of the iceberg with him. A ten minute change of heart before he died changes nothing as far as I'm concerned, and I was pleased to see Leia share the same opinion. Except towards the end, there's a comment that she's making peace with Anakin Skywalker, if not Darth Vader. They're the same damn person!!! You don't get to discount responsibility for your own actions just because you put on a creepy mask. Ugh. I haven't read further in this tie-in series yet, but I know by osmosis that Leia eventually has a son she calls Anakin and I just want to shake her, because clearly the rot has started here in Bakura. She had a father - a decent, ethical man in Bail Organa. Why anyone - Luke or author - thinks she should waste even a fraction of a second considering forgiveness for the monstrous Darth Vader is a total fucking mystery to me, and no happy clappy wittering about hate and the Dark Side is going to make me change my mind.

I read and reviewed the four books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The collection rating is an average of the individual ratings, and even then it's rounded up, as the average was 2.5 stars. That's largely down to the last book, but more on that in a minute. The Horse and His Boy, deeply problematic as it is, has always been my favourite of the series, ever since I read it as a kid. Four stars for it. The Magician's Nephew was likeable enough and earned three. The Silver Chair has, for decades, been the Narnia book I always forget about, because although it has nice moments I'm never interested enough to remember its existence, so two stars there. Then we come to it: The Last Battle, which has retained its position as my most hated book ever since I read it as a kid, and nothing I've read in the decades since has knocked it off its nasty pedestal. I can do no better than quote the final paragraph from my original review: "Thirty years later, this dreadful piece of crap still fills me with absolute rage. Mean-spirited, vengeful, death-glorifying, uncompassionate tripe, prettily coated in poisoned sugar."

This is such a great idea for an anthology - one that's focused on vampires of the African Diaspora. As soon as I heard about it I made a mental note of "I want to read that" and now I have. There are some fantastic stories in here, but the anthology as a whole is also rather uneven, I think, as those fantastic stories shared space with a handful of other stories that were unfortunately not up to the same standard. But given I'd prefer to talk about things I love rather than things I don't, let's have some praise for the stand-outs here.

"A Clink of Crystal Glasses Heard" by L.H. Moore is a story about three 12 year old girls growing into their vampiric inheritance and being distinctly unimpressed with it; it's a bit reminiscent of Ginger Snaps in that vampirism is treated as a metaphor for feminism and adolescence. It also reads a bit like the first chapter in a novel, and I'd read that novel. If "Frostbite" by Delizhia D. Jenkins was expanded similarly I'd read that too. Best worldbuilding goes to the excellent "Di Conjuring Nectar of Di Blood" by Kai Leakes, in an alternate history that I'd love to read more of, and best protagonist is the tired, powerful old woman of John Linwood Grant's "Snake Hill Blues." I've never read about a vampire elephant before, so all credit to Miranda J. Riley for coming up with "Rampage," the most original story in the anthology. Another animal focused story was the leopard-centred "No God But Hunger" by Steve Van Samson, which was honestly outstanding and my second favourite here. Top spot, though, goes to the opening story "Desiccant" by Craig Laurance Gidney, which combines environmental racism with microscopic bugs in an awesomely creepy story that I plan on reading again and again.

I visited Dublin some years back; sadly it was only a short visit, and I'd like to go back one day to spend more time there. I certainly didn't get to see even a fraction of the animals that inhabit this city, and I'd like to. (The book's title may refer to "Nature," but there's only a rare page here dedicated to plants. It's a book about the wild animals that live in Dublin, with a strong focus on birds.)

It's a coffee table book, I think, beautifully illustrated with drawings and photographs, which are useful in distinguishing between the various gulls, for instance. There are also quite a few aerial photographs, and looking at urban ecology, I'm always surprised to see just how green cities look from above, with far less concrete from that angle than appears on the ground. Anyway, this book's an attractive, appealing summary of the creatures you can see wandering around the city. It is a summary, though, as you might expect. For in-depth information on the many, many species described here it's best to look for a more specific and detailed guide. Which isn't to say that this isn't a valuable resource. It is, but more for giving a broad overview and getting the attention of people who might not have really noticed what it is that lives around them.

This is a decent little story, and if a little bit bland is at least not as off-putting as some of the other books in this series. It helps immensely that the solution to the mystery, obvious as it is, does not involve Grandfather Alden hoovering up more resources in his attempts to control every business in the land. Instead, the four grandkids are using the summer to get jobs of their own, and I much prefer stories like this, where they're doing for themselves, rather than being given fancy vacations every other week - the very first Boxcar story was all about self-reliance and making do and I miss that. That being said, it's becoming clearer and clearer that the only Boxcar child Warner has any real interest is Benny, which is a bit of a shame as he's the one I like least. The girls - including my favourite, Violet - barely get a look-in, despite the fact that they were the most proactive, both getting more interesting jobs and getting them first, before the boys even thought of job-hunting.

As I (very vaguely) understand it, very soon the Warner books stop and the rest of the series is written by other authors? I'd be interested to see if that leads to a more equitable division of protagonists...