I’ve unexpectedly found myself with a spare 5 mins and so I thought that I’d quickly tell you about a new sci-fi mystery novella published earlier this month. The Starlight Watchmaker tells the story of an android, Hugo, who was abandoned at an elite academy, but who luckily managed to establish himself as a watchmaker…
Catherine Doyle’s first middle grade book, the award-winning The Storm Keeper’s Island, was one of last year’s stand out reads for me, and so I couldn’t wait to read the sequel – The Lost Tide Warriors – which came out earlier this month. While I’m always a tad apprehensive about reading a sequel to a…
I’ve been a bit slow on the blog lately, predominantly due to it being one of the busiest times of the year on the allotment (my other passion aside from reading). However, today’s rain is a double bonus: I don’t need to water all the veggies I’ve recently planted and, as it’s too wet to…
Released at the beginning of the month, The Secret Starling is the debut Middle Grade (age 8-12) book by Judith Eagle. There’s been lots of excitement about it on Twitter, so I was keen to read it as soon as it was released. Clara lives with her mean uncle in a crumbling, old manor house,…
Myths, legends, stories. They are all words for facts that people have forgotten. A stormhound from Odin’s Wild Hunt falling out of the sky and landing in Abergavenny made me smile every time I heard about it. Despite my towering TBR pile, therefore, I picked this up as soon as it was released and it…
‘In the deepest dark, you must be the light’ As some of you will know, Cerrie Burnell has been an author of picture books and young fiction for some time and is a real advocate for inclusion. We were thus expecting good things about her first foray into middle grade fiction – The Girl With…
‘Often the journeys we take inside ourselves are more difficult than the stormiest seas’ The Storm Keeper’s Island by Catherine Doyle is the #PrimarySchoolBookClub read for August, and was also the Waterstone’s Children’s Book for July 2018. Some people might be aware of Catherine Doyle through her Young Adult trilogy, Blood for Blood, but this…
‘Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will. You can be comfortable or courageous – never both at once’ Brightstorm is Vashti Hardy’s debut children’s novel, which was released in March this year in a blaze of critical acclaim. It was no surprise, therefore, that the members of #PrimarySchoolBookClub voted to make it April’s read…