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| | | Children's and teens roundup – the best new chapter books | | by Kitty Empire May 31, 2022 | | Marcus Rashford channels Scooby-Doo, more girls solve mysteries, while two historical young Black Britons join forces in theatreland The modern plague of celebrity children’s authors has honourable exemplars. Step forward, child poverty campaigner Marcus Rashford, who follows his hit of 2021, You Are a Champion (voted book of the year at last week’s Nibbies), and his children’s book club with his middle-grade fiction debut. The Beast Beyond the Fence (Macmillan, £6.99), the first of The Breakfast Club Adventurers series, was co-written with Alex Falase-Koya and stars a football-mad, 12-year-old kid called Marcus. His touch has deserted him since his most cherished ball disappeared over the school fence. An uncertain alliance forms at the school breakfast club to solve this and other mysteries. But a terrifying, ectoplasm-oozing beast lurks behind the fence. Continue reading... | | | | | A Sexplanation review – a sparkling look at the inadequacy of sex education | | by Phương Lê May 31, 2022 | | Alex Liu makes for a charismatic guide to the sexual landscape of America, with an engaging curiosity to help demystify the birds and the bees Alex Liu’s documentary has the easy relatability of a YouTube video; the difference is, instead of unboxing some latest haul, Liu attempts to demystify the shame that surrounds sex in America. The journey has a personal starting point: growing up in a Catholic Asian-American household, Liu found it difficult to talk to his parents about sex, or to confide that he is gay, both tumultuous struggles that nearly drove him to kill himself. Still, the film’s tone is not guided by resentment; it sparkles with an engaging curiosity. A conversation with his parents reveals that, when they were teenagers, their access to sex education was even more inadequate than Liu’s. His grandmother did not learn about birth control until college, and his mother was always taught to be a modest Asian girl. Maintaining a balance between scientific reporting and personal anecdotes, A Sexplanation pairs Liu’s interviews with sexperts – including his participation in a study that makes MRI scans of orgasms – with playful stunts. At one point, illustrations of sex organs are erected at a park where passersby are asked to identify different parts of the genitalia. Unsurprisingly, most get their answers wrong. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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