The Beethoven Medal
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Cover Story
On our cover this issue we feature an illustration by Charles Keeping from Beowulf (OUP, 0 19 279770 0, £4.50), a new picture book version for 9-13s of the Anglo-Saxon hero tale. The story is retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland. We are most grateful to Oxford University Press for their help in using this illustration.
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The Beethoven Medal
Pennington and his seventeenth summer has been around for over a decade but he's never been very popular in the schools in which I have taught. This second book, followed subsequently by
Pennington's Heir
, introduces Ruth Hollis into Penn's life. (She was previously heavily into horses in
Pattern of Roses
.) Our hero is working to support himself whilst he continues his music studies in London and tries to prepare for a major piano recital. Ruth proves quite prepared to be his long-suffering drudge, turn his music for him and wait whilst he sweats it out in jail, having hammered a policeman in a fit of temper. Kids who are hooked on Penn will lap it up; others, I am sure will go for more recent, more exciting reads...