This lovely junior fiction story, written and illustrated by Jill Murphy (of Worst Witch fame), was recommended to me by a European bookseller earlier in the year. It’s a heartwarming tale of an anxious deerhound pup who goes missing, and his distraught, young owner’s attempts to find him. While lost, the dog is befriended by…
Our Advent story book has been dusted off ready for tonight! While I know there are a few Advent tales out in the wild now, How Winston Delivered Christmas is still our favourite. With 24 and a half beautifully-illustrated chapters, each interspersed with a festive craft, it’s become one of our family traditions to share…
It was Anti-Bullying Week in the UK recently and my children got involved with a few associated school events. It brought to mind this moving (but ultimately hopeful) middle grade story that I read earlier in the year but for some reason didn’t review at the time. The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle tells…
If you liked Bad Nanna then you’ll love Pizazz: the first in a fab new series (for readers aged around 7+), written and illustrated by Sophy Henn. It has bold illustrations and creative, mixed typefaces, coupled with comic-strip layouts interspersed throughout, which make it a real feast for the eyes – brilliant for those readers…
I really like these Barrington Stoke middle grade (UK Key Stage 2+) novellas: written by an array of superb children’s authors, they have a dyslexia-friendly paper stock and typeface, a length of circa 100 pages and are edited to a reading age of 8 with an interest age of up to 12, so they can…
It’s been another slow reading week. I have no idea where the time goes at this time of year – I seem to rush from one thing to the next without actually achieving anything. I have, though, finally managed to read A Chase In Time, which was originally published in 2018, but has been re-released…
It’s been a slow reading week as, like many people in England, I’ve been rushing around trying to get lots of stuff done before the start of Lockdown 2. I hope you are all keeping well. I read this story by Tom Palmer a few weeks ago, and it’s one of those books that I…
Very pleased to be back with one of our favourite heroines this Halloween: Molly Thompson, the tenacious, curious and brave historian. I loved last year’s The Ghouls of Howlfair and this latest story is even better. Just the right amount of spooky to give you all the chills without inciting nightmares, this is a cracking,…
A year ago, my son came home from school complaining that he was having to base his creative writing stories on Cinderella: “Why do I have to write about a girl who’s rescued by a prince? Why can’t she rescue herself?”. I thought this was quite interesting, because here was my (then) 6-year-old son making…
Books can change minds and change worlds… I’ve been doing a bit of blog housekeeping over the last couple of days, and I suddenly realised that for some very strange reason, I hadn’t blogged about this outstanding book series by Anna James. I thus decided to rectify the matter immediately, because who doesn’t want to…