'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Karen McCombie
|title=You, Me and Thing: The Curse of the Jelly Babies
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At the bottom of Ruby's garden there lives a Thing. He's a strange creature, a little like a squirrel (only don't suggest that to him because you'll make him ''very'' angry! But he has wings, and huge bush baby eyes. Ruby and Jackson discover him together and decide to keep his existence secret which is all well and good until the magic starts, and then there's the curse and a bit of a problem with jelly babies!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571272398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steve Roud
|summary=Millicent Margaret Amanda (that's Milly-Molly-Mandy to you and me) lives with Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty (and Toby the dog) in a nice white cottage with a thatched roof. And do you know, she has all sorts of adventures. She goes out into town alone to fetch things for her extended family, she goes to a concert where she even knows one of the performers, she gets invited to parties in the village hall, and she does it all with the company of Little Friend Susan and Billy Blunt.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230754988</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Saviour Pirotta and Mark Robertson
|title=The Giant Book of Giants
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There's a rather large giant's eye starting back at me from the cover of this book...I'm not scared though, because the book promises that the giant contained within is a gentle giant who will guard my room! And he really is contained within since this is a book set which includes a book of giant stories from around the world as well as a huge giant poster (over one metre high!) which is in 3D and contains moving parts!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405260084</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Arnaldur Indridason
|title=Operation Napoleon
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In 1945 a German bomber crashed on a glacier in Iceland. This might not have been quite so extraordinary were it not for the fact that there were both German and American officers on board. Two of the passengers are killed in the crash, one sets off for help and four people remain, trapped in the plane, eventually freezing to death. Just before the end of last century the glacier gave up the plane and the US army began an operation to remove the wreckage as secretly as possible, but two young Icelanders are caught up in what is going on. One contacts his sister but before he can complete the call they are grabbed by the soldiers, brutally attacked and their bodies and snowmobiles dumped in a crevasse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535637</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Caroline Stills and Heath McKenzie
|title=An A to Z of Pirates
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Pirates! There seems to be, in my experience, an age at which almost every small child goes through a pirate phase. My daughter's certainly been there, to the extent that she had a full pirate costume, complete with a knitted parrot and a knitted eye patch (thank you Nanna!) that she'll happily wear around town. So if there's a little pirate in your life this is the sort of book they're going to thoroughly enjoy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921714220</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Zadie Smith
|title=White Teeth
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books sneak up on you. Others are thrown at you from every corner of the media to the extent that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read them, or at least, not yet. Let the furore die down. If they're still around in a few years, your subconscious whispers, maybe we'll go see what all the fuss was about.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241954576</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David McKee
|title=Elmer and Super El
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=In 'Elmer and Super El', Elmer, the patchwork elephant, is out walking when he comes across his friend Super El who is very upset. His clothes have been ripped by a thorn bush and he is scared that all of the other animals will laugh at him because he looks so shabby. Elmer knows that his Aunt Zelda will be able to fix the clothes but how can he help his friend get past all of the animals without being noticed? He has to come up with some ingenious ideas in order to distract the elephants, Lion and Tiger, all of the hippos and the rest of the animals. Luckily, clever Elmer always comes up with a plan and no one ends up laughing at Super El.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393354</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Palmer
|title=Hell Ship
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Some time ago, I read Philip Palmer's debut novel [[Debatable Space by Philip Palmer|Debatable Space]]. Whilst there were aspects of that novel I didn't feel entirely worked, it was a well paced read for the most part and I marked Palmer as a writer to watch. His subsequent novels, [[Red Claw by Philip Palmer|Red Claw]] and [[Version 43 by Philip Palmer|Version 43]], have been well received here at The Bookbag and his fourth, ''Hell Ship'', isn't bad either.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841499447</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Derek Wilson
|title=Calamities and Catastrophes: The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=As Wilson rightly points out, history is generally written by the winners. This book turns the tables by looking at ten of the worst episodes from the point of view of those who were on the losing side, from the sixth to the late twentieth centuries. Starting with the plague and war of 541-2 which accelerated the collapse of the Roman Empire, to the recent Rwandan genocide in which the death toll over just a few months probably exceeded a million, history has had an uncomfortable habit of repeating itself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595457</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frank Furedi
|title=On Tolerance: The Life Style Wars: A Defence of Moral Independence
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Furedi is a Professor of Sociology at a UK university so he'll know his subject matter inside out. The short preface tells us that 'tolerance has been emptied of its moral and intellectual meaning.' This publication's aim is to argue the case for tolerance in society. How its meaning has changed over the centuries until today's rather fuzzy and watered-down meaning. Professor Furedi was spurred on to writing this book because he firmly believes that tolerance has been lost somehow, to be almost invisible in some areas of public and private life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441120106</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Ondaatje
|title=The Cat's Table
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For the first half or so of this book, which sees an 11 year old boy called Michael (or Mynah to his friends) leave his home of Ceylon to travel to school in England, I wasn't really sure if it even had a plot. Focusing on his journey in the 1950's aboard the ship to England, although occasionally leaping forward to his later life where he gives us tantalising glimpses as to what happened to his fellow passengers after the voyage, this originally seems to be nothing more than a series of incredibly well-drawn character sketches. In fairness, I should say that ''nothing more'' is rather harsh in this case – the men, women and children Ondaatje creates, from a supposedly cursed rich man seeking a cure, to a friendly thief, to Michael's beautiful cousin Emily, are so beautifully conjured that I could have lived without a plot perfectly happily. However, we eventually realise there's a little more to this narrative, and that this skilful author has been foreshadowing the events at the novel's climax all along.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093614</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cathy Cassidy
|title=The Chocolate Box Girls: Marshmallow Skye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It doesn't seem like a year since I first met the Tanberry sisters in [[Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy|Cherry Crush]] because they're all very fresh in my mind. The five girls – four of them are called Tanberry and Cherry is their step-sister – are all just preteen or in their early teens, with Honey as the oldest and Coco as the youngest. Honey is still not coping with the fact that her father has left – and is now living in Australia – or with the arrival of Paddy and Cherry. On occasions she's not just difficult – she's ''dreadful''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141384808</amazonuk>
}}