Now here’s a story with a difference. Set in a world of sweets, where being able to cook up tasty treats can give you celebrity status unlike anything Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey could ever dream of, Lydia’s Tin Lid Drum is a most extraordinary story. Debut author, Neale Osborne, has a most unusual style of writing that is almost more poetry than prose. With oodles of rhyming, alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia his writing is a Primary School Literacy teacher’s dream come true! Here’s an example taken at random:

And then came the rasp burr ripply crush of flossy pink snow tumbling in torrents. The crater, a great grumbling belly, filled with lashings of ice cream and jelly. The sizzling mill and its guardian crabs buried under an avalanche of floss.

Even with their ears bunged up, the girls felt shock waves rumbling under them. Their sled raced downhill just ahead of this flossy snowslide. Down down to a place of jumbled jelly shapes, moulded hills and pillars of jello in orange and yellow, all riddled with dribbly streams of ice cream.

The entire book is written in this style… and when I say the entire book, it is a bit of a monster in itself at 512 pages long! I can imagine the concept and storyline appealing to younger girls and possibly some boys who like the idea of a land of sweets, however, if I were to make an observation I’d say the story is too long and has too many characters for the audience it appears to be intended for. That said, as a piece of writing to admire… it is one heck of an achievement.

It’s hard for me to say ‘You have to go and get a copy of this’ because I think the market for it is a niche one. However, for those looking for something a bit different to read to a little girl at bedtime, this might be the one for you. There are some great metallic monsters in it too!

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