The UK long school break is now in its final stretch, so it won’t be long ’til the blog is back to full power! Just one more reading roundup after this and then normal service will be resumed once the new school year begins (anyone else counting down the days?!). Talking of the new school…
Mixed weather here in the UK at the moment, but I hope that it isn’t spoiling your Summer break. Here’s another quick roundup of books we’ve read and enjoyed over the last couple of weeks. First up is A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll, which is a captivating and empathic read that completely blew…
Is anyone else wondering where the first few of weeks of the holidays have gone? If you’re unlucky enough to be already hearing cries of boredom, hopefully some of these reading recommendations might just do the trick… First up today is Agent Zaiba Investigates: The Missing Diamonds. This is a pacey, ‘whodunnit’ mystery, which is…
This is the second in Saviour Pirotta’s historical junior fiction ‘Wolfsong’ series and just like the first, it’s both a corker of a read and illustrated superbly with Davide Ortu’s distinctive, eye-catching art, which really captures and enhances the mood of the story. In this instalment, Wolf has returned to his village after retrieving the…
If I asked what type of illustrated fiction parents love to hate, I suspect most would say anything fairy or unicorn related due to the overload of glitter, magic kingdoms and flying over rainbows… What if, however, I introduced you to a series that does indeed include unicorns and a magic kingdom, but that’s where…
I’ve been waiting for The Monster in the Lake to come out ever since I read Louie Stowell’s first junior fiction story, The Dragon in the Library, and it’s definitely just as good as the first. Both stories are the sorts of reads I would have loved as a kid, where libraries are magical places,…
Wow, Saviour Pirotta has really knocked it out of the park with his new, historical junior fiction series. The Stolen Spear – the first of 4 stories – is set in late Neolithic times in what we now know as the Orkneys in Scotland. At the end of the Stone Age, people are meant to…
I seem to have focussed on adventure stories recently, and so it’s time for a bit more variety. I read Charlie Changes into a Chicken, the first in a new series by Sam Copeland, a couple of months ago and always meant to blog about it, but for some reason I just didn’t find the…
This is a very quick review as I’m a tad short on time at the moment; however, I wanted to make sure that I recorded my thoughts on this new book by Fleur Hitchcock, an established and accomplished writer whom some of you will know due to her dark thrillers for older children. Clifftoppers: The…
I’ve been quite envious seeing proofs of Louie Stowell’s debut book being reviewed on Twitter, so I was completely thrilled to win a signed copy of The Dragon in the Library in a Nosy Crow competition recently. After a bit of a tussle with my daughter to determine who was going to read it first,…