Artemis, Butler and Mulch had ringside seats for the Circus Maximus. This was one of a new breed of circus where the act lived up to the advertising, and there was no animal involved. The clowns were genuinely funny, the acrobats were little short of miraculous and the dwarfs were little and short.

Eoin Colfer – Artemis Fowl and the Seventh Dwarf

I like reading kids’ fiction when it’s written cleverly, and for me this is certainly the case with Eoin Colfer’s stories. On the surface, Artemis Fowl’s adventures look very light and simple, grotesque nearly, but if you look deeper you’ll find an interesting, clever and so often humorous take on our own world and society.

Writing humorously isn’t easy. I it’s actually quite hard, but Colfer succeeds at it because of his keen eye for human traits and because of his gift with words.

This was an issue of the World Book Day publication. A short story from a renown kids author used to be published every year and offered at a very low price. I say ‘used to’ because I’m not at all sure this is still done.

I own a few these stories and Colfer’s is the best by far … though I have to admit I haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s contribution to this yet.

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