Review: New Doctor Who Activity books

 A trio of new activity books from the Doctor Who stable, and as usual with the officially published titles, they're aimed at the young and the very young.

First off is The Official Doctor Who Quiz Book by Beth Axford. Now Axford already published an Unofficial Doctor Who Quiz Book a few years back (from John Blake books) but now it seems she has gone legit and has a BBC one available. 

From the outset you can see the level at which this has been aimed, with a 'letter from the Doctor' opening proceedings in a flippant and very written down style and explaining that he has lost the TARDIS and his friend Belinda, and that the TARDIS databanks kept getting everything wrong - the information was being messed around with and rewritten ...  So the reader has to accept the mission to answer questions and to find him!

Immediately we get off to a worrying start with the first question asking which Earth Junkyard Susan and the Doctor lived in during the early sixties. The three options are: Totter's Yard, Totting's Junkyard, or Tottie's Yard. The problem is that none of these are actually the answer. The yard didn't have a name! The doors had the name: 'I M Foreman', the words 'Scrap Merchant', and the address: '76, Totter's Lane', written on. 'totter's yard' is just a description of what the place was. In 'Logopolis' the Doctor corrects Adric and says 'a totter's yard' and in 'The Devil's Chord', the Doctor explains: 'In the past, right now, I live in a place called Totter's Lane. 1963, I park the Tardis in a junkyard and live there with my granddaughter, Susan.' 'Totter's Yard' is intended to be the correct answer, even though it isn't. The closest might be 'I M Foreman's Scrap Yard', or 76 Totter's Lane.

Question 4 then brings up the sticky issue of the number of incarnations by asking who the first adversaries he came up against when he regenerated into his second incarnation. So, obviously they are taking the number as the order seen on television, so the answer would be the Daleks ... but of course Hartnell has has been established on screen as NOT being the first incarnation of the Doctor - The Renegade Doctor seems to pre-date him ... and depending on whether you believe the Timeless Child element, or the Morbius Doctors, there may have been many incarnations before Hartnell. 

Question 82 states that Polly Wright was one of the Doctor's companions, but her second name was never revealed on screen. 

The book as a whole tells a story of what has happened to the Doctor and the TARDIS and takes in a dizzying number of times and places with questions coming related to each. As such it's a fun and breezy book which Doctor Who obsessed kids should find fun to work through. I can't assert to the accuracy of the whole thing, and it's a shame that the very first question seems inaccurate, but overall it's not a bad attempt and much better than a dry as dust book of questions which many previous attempts have been.

Next up we have The Official Colouring Book and this does what it says on the cover. It's a collection of lovely black and white pages from the pen of Mike Collins, and covers all manner of imagery from classic to new, from Daleks to Haemovores, from bi-generation to the P'ting, from K9 to Davros and the Cybermen. Sensibly the pages are only printed on one side, so any colour bleedthrough from using felt pens won't spoil the pages.

It's an attractive book, and with the addition of a set of felt tip pens or coloured pencils, should keep the little ones occupied for a fair time.

The final title is one of the strangest I've seen for some time, perhaps since the Doctor Who Pattern Book (a knitting book by Joy Gammon) from 1984. This is AmiguWHOmi, an odd word that plays on the word 'amigurumi', a term for the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small, stuffed, yarn creatures and dolls. This is a Doctor Who crochet book, with instructions as to how to make little crotchet dolls and figures of many characters from Doctor Who.

It kicks off with a sort of 'how to do crochet' chapter which shows with pictures and text how to start crocheting and how to do the stitches needed. This is all Greek to me, sadly, and the remainder of the book includes pictures and detailed instructions as to how to make items like coasters, a fez and bow tie, a Time Vortex blanket, as well as figures of the Doctors, K9, a TARDIS book sleeve and much more besides. I feel you need a certain dedication and skill to be able to make any of these things ... attributes which I don't possess, but then I'm certainly not the target audience here.

The issue is perhaps that it assumes there is an eager market for people who want to make their own crochet figures and so on using the techniques: and perhaps I am wrong and there is! I have seen sellers at various conventions selling things like this, and, indeed I have a bridal pair of crocheted Daleks somewhere, but it seems so specialist and niche that I wonder if the book will find a market. Especially as it is £20 for a full colour 192 page paperback.

And who is Liz Ward? There's no biography of her in the book ... she seems to be a York based UK crochet designer who has been creating original crochet patterns since 2011, and specialising in the amigurumi style. She also has a crochet-based podcast and seems to be something of an expert in the field. So the book has a good pedigree!

The book is nicely designed and illustrated, but for me is more of a curio as to the many ways that Doctor Who can be marketed and promoted. I can't see myself taking up crochet any time soon!

Review: Doctor Who Icons: Shirley Jackson and Fela Kuti

The latest two short novellas in the BBC's Doctor Who Icons series cover possibly two of the most obscure people they could have picked. My earlier complaints about this series remain: there is nothing in the books to explain what they are doing, or the themes they are playing with. I assume that in the days of the internet and Google, they expect readers to do their own research!

Shirley Jackson and the Chaos Box is up first, and Kalynn Bayron has delivered the slightest of tales which involves the fifteenth Doctor unexpectedly turning out to be a massive fan of the writer Shirley Jackson (who I have heard of!), and so taking Ruby to first see her house, and then back in time to meet the lady herself. 

It all revolves around Jackson's story The Lottery, which is explained at some length in the text, and, co-incidentally, there is a strange box in her past which may be the inspiration for the story. The text, however is slight, and, frankly, any horror writer could have been substituted and it would have made no difference. The sci-fi trappings involve a race of aliens who are nice to everyone, and a couple of them who decide that it would be better if everyone was angry and chaotic.

Sadly there's really not much more to say here. It's nicely written and takes place between 'The Devil's Chord' and 'Boom' on television ... and as such I didn't spot the appearance of a Susan Triad clone unless it's very well hidden!

The other title is One Night Only (A Fela Kuti Story) by Tade Thompson, and I had never heard of Fela Kuti and so needed to Google (he was a Nigerian musician and political activist). The story this time features the fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan and the Brigadier faced with an invasion of brain-tapping flying aliens. It's quite a fun little tale, but complex, and Fela Kuti ends up helping the team to solve the problem that is facing them. However as with the Jackson book, it could probably have been any musician.

The two books together I found somewhat unsatisfying. They are both very short (Jackson is 85 pages while Kuti is 94 pages) and the action whizzes past in a flash. Compared with the other Doctor Who series that BBC Children's Books has been running, where the books play homage to other works of literature (Dracula, Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland and so on), these seem to be written for a much younger age group.

Doctor Who's original remit was to entertain and educate, and these two titles certainly do that. Hopefully they are finding readers among the younger set who are then inspired to go and find out more.