Double Down (Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 11) by Jeff Kinney
There's one thing we learn from this book's October setting – Greg Heffley's best buddy Rowley is a complete scaredy-cat. Everything makes him quake in fright, but it should surely be Greg quivering in the corner with fear, considering what his life brings him. He's begun to think he's in a sequel to The Truman Show, due to the fact everything must all be scripted against him, and life like that doesn't occur naturally. His mum thinks a drive to get him registered as 'Talented and Gifted' at school will help with the family self-esteem, but there are all sorts of things going against everyone, ranging from a disembodied witch's laugh to killer geese marauding around town. Yes, this is certainly a Hallowe'en to be glad to see the other side of… Full review...
The Ultimate Book of Space by Anne-Sophie Baumann, Olivier Latyk and Robb Booker (translator)
Space. For all the huge, empty expanse of it, it's a full and very fiddly thing to experience. The National Space Centre, in the hotbed of cosmology and space science that is Leicester, is chock full of things to touch, grip, pull and move around – and so is this book. It's a right gallimaufry of things that pop up out of the page, with things to turn and pull, and even an astronaut on the end of a curtain wire. Within minutes of opening this book I had undressed an astronaut to find what was under his spacesuit, dropped the dome on an observatory to open up the telescope, and swung a Soyuz supply module around so it could dock at the International Space Station. Educational fun like that can only be a good thing for the budding young scientist. Full review...
The Girl Who Saved Christmas by Matt Haig and Chris Mould
Meet Amelia. She is not the character that invented Christmas, but someone who certainly helped create it – it was her magic, her dreams and her concern that reached across the miles to Father Christmas and got his spirit (and reindeer) up enough for it all to work. But now, things are a lot worse for her – she is stuck in the nightmare job of chimney sweep in Victorian London to help feed and pay for medicine for her dying mother. Elsewhere things are taking a turn for the worse, too – Elfhelm is under threat from a nasty, underground source, and with it being Christmas Eve it looks like the glimmer of light that would normally be Christmas itself is a dim prospect. As it works both ways – Elfhelm helping lift the human world, which in turn inspires the elvish festivity and work – what could be the consequence when both sides begin to lose the most vital aspect of life, the one called hope? Full review...
Incredibuilds: Buckbeak: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson
The general perception is that to become a leading British actor, you need the fillip of Eton or somesuch education. But you don't have to be an actor to make a great film. Gravity for instance has extended scenes where the only thing natural is the performers' faces – everything else, even their bodies, was made in Britain by people using computers. The eight Harry Potter films, also made in the UK, needed a lot of computing power as well, but also a lot of craftsmen with their hands on tools and a keen eye. What better way to start training the young reader into that side of things, than with tasking them with making a, er, hippogriff? Full review...
Incredibuilds: Aragog: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson
Aragog the giant spider, don't you know, took six man years just to build, and weighed a ton. After countless trial models and pieces of visual design work, he could finally be constructed, and he stretched across eighteen feet of the studio floor. Or, conversely, he is about seven inches long and seven wide, and you put him together in a day or two, for the cost of this book-and-gift set and some craft paints. Full review...
Incredibuilds: House-Elves: Deluxe Book and Model Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson
How do you create a house-elf like Dobby? Well, you have a tennis ball on a string, and point actors so they look at it, and say their lines to a pretty-much empty space. You then film Toby Jones doing the elf's lines, and use that sound file and his facial expressions as basis for your CGI creation – the first major character to come from the digital realm in the Harry Potter films. You can throw in a few puppets, and now and again a gifted small person, particularly at the end of film #7… Or, of course, you can get this gift set, and press the wooden parts out, muckle them together – and lo and behold, a six inch tall Dobby for your windowsill. Full review...
Greatest Animal Stories by Michael Morpurgo (Editor)
We all know of Aesop and his animal fables: the hare and the tortoise, the boy who cried wolf or the ant and the grasshopper. In this stunning collection of animal stories, Michael Morpurgo has collated well-known and much-loved animal stories in a beautifully presented book. In the introduction he writes that we often first meet animals in stories before we meet them in real life and this collection is selected from his favourite childhood animal tales. Within his own stories, Morpurgo favours the inclusion of animals as the central character and these are all well received by children. As a primary school teacher, I value the fact that such a well-known author has collected these valuable animal-centred stories which can be used not only to engage children with tales from different cultures but also in providing life lessons. Each is beautifully illustrated and individual in style to each story. Prefacing each tale is a short paragraph giving information on the origin of the story and often a question or two to promote thought and discussion within the story. The stories originate from across the globe: Iceland, Africa, China and North America to name a few. Full review...
Good Dog Bad Dog: Double Identity by Dave Shelton
There has been a killing in Collie-wood, a bustling movie-making city. Two detectives are on the case – Kirk Bergman and Duncan McBoo, however this one's not going to be easy to solve. Throughout Muttropolis there are crafty canines who will stop at nothing to keep the truth locked away. Surely nothing is going to stop these shrewd detectives from solving the case and enjoying a celebratory glass of milk-shake. Full review...
Robyn Silver: The Midnight Chimes by Paula Harrison
The middle child in a family of five children, ten year old Robyn Silver longs for her life to be more exciting. However, she means exciting like owning a pool with a water slide or winning a life-time supply of pizza. She doesn't mean seeing freaky things in the middle of the night or discovering a whole creepy world that most people don't know about. But that is what she gets: the moment she hears the Mortal Clock strike she is able to see the creatures of the Unseen World. Suddenly her life is turned upside down as she begins the secret training of a 'Chime'. Full review...
Marvel Iron Man: The Gauntlet by Eoin Colfer
No superhero story is really complete without a lesson of some kind, and this adventure starts with one too. Tony Stark – a young, teenaged fan of Duran Duran Tony Stark – is taking his latest home invention to his father. It's a perfect drone, able to do no manner of humanitarian things, but the lesson from Howard Stark, the weapons developer and seller, is that toys like that don't help the security of the world. From now on, Tony will be building things that are definitely not cutesy, or do-goody. But, while the gamut of Iron Man suits he has developed since then allow him to have a playful playboy figure in the limelight, especially courtesy of his party DJ variant, the threats continue to rise. And this one seems to come from within… Full review...
Santa Claude by Alex T Smith
Ah Claude! He is such an endearing little dog. He's back on an adventure with Sir Bobblysock and this time it is a Christmas adventure. There are baubles and trees and carols and reindeer and, of course, there's trouble! For who else but Claude would accidentally handcuff Santa to an armchair on Christmas Eve, and then need to deliver all the presents himself? Full review...
Stinkbomb and Ketchup Face-and the Great Kerfuffle Christmas Kidnap by John Dougherty and David Tazzyman
It's Christmas Eve and Father Christmas is missing. Brother and sister Stinkbomb and Ketchup Face wake up in the middle of the night expecting to find a huge pile of presents. Instead they find a huge pile of nothing. They know something must be wrong because they have been good all year long (honestly). The only possible answer is that Father Christmas is in trouble so they have to save him and save Christmas for everyone on the island of Great Kerfuffle. Full review...
The Demon Undertaker by Cameron McAllister
Fourteen-year-old Thomas has already seen much sorrow in his young life –notably the death of his beloved father and the accidental loss of his own hand. His mother hopes to give him a new start by sending him away from Virginia to join his uncle Sir Henry Fielding, chief magistrate of London, but before the boy has even had the chance to greet his new family he is embroiled in a life and death chase through the grimy back streets of the capital in the hopes of rescuing a young noblewoman. All London is agog: what happens to the people who disappear, never to be seen again, and what exactly does the terrible masked fiend in the hearse want them for? Full review...
A Piglet Called Truffle by Helen Peters and Ellie Snowdon
Living on a farm, with her father who works as a farmer and a mother who is a farm-vet, Jasmine has spent all her young life learning how to care for animals. On a visit to a neighbouring farm, Jasmine is excited to see the new baby piglets. Expecting to see eleven piglets, she is stunned to find one extra - a tiny little runt hiding in the corner. Being smaller than her hand, the farmer has no sympathy and expects it to die by the end of the day. Of course, Jasmine can't allow this to happen. The story is then set for a struggle to save the smallest piglet, called Truffle. Full review...
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd and Levi Pinfold
Megan Shepherd has written a stunning tale, which is exquisitely illustrated by the artwork of Levi Pinfold. Secret Horses tells the story of a young girl and her friendship with a magical winged horse. When Emmaline is evacuated from Nottingham during the Second World War, she enters a fantasy world of discovery behind the silvery glass of the mirrors in her new country home at Briar Hill. An old sprawling mansion once owned by a wealthy family, Briar Hill has become a children’s hospital run by Nuns. Emmaline and the other children are struggling to recover from a serious illness and have been quarantined away from their families. To add to their plight, they worry about their fathers away at war and their mothers left at home to face bombing raids and the scarcity of food. Emmaline and her friends are carefully nursed by the Nuns through the harsh and snowy winter of 1941. This is a story of bravery and fortitude, good and evil and how one small child can find light even in the darkest of places. Full review...
Letter to Pluto by Lou Treleaven
Letter to Pluto is a story told through an inter-planetary pen-pal friendship. Set in the year 2317, writing with a pen and sending letters has certainly become a dying art-form. However, Jon’s teacher, Mrs Hall, decides it is important to keep the art of letter writing alive. The only difference is that Jon’s pen-pal lives a long way away. 75 billion km to be precise. On Pluto. At first the idea of writing at all is bad enough, but when Jon finds out that his pen-pal is a girl he nearly quits the programme. Encouraged by his teacher’s bribes of merit awards for his best writing, Jon soon learns that Pluto is not as boring, small and smelly as he first thought. Full review...
The White Fox by Jackie Morris
Sol had never been happy in Seattle. It wasn't just that he was bullied at school: being Inuit he looked different and that always makes you a target. Sol's heart was somewhere else - in the Arctic, where he felt he belonged and where he had grandparents whom he'd not seen for such a long time. Everything changed when his father told him about the white Arctic fox which had been seen on the docks and Sol set about finding the fox - and then feeding it. But what would happen to the fox when it was trapped? And how would Sol handle the situation? Full review...
A Poem for Every Night of the Year by Allie Esiri
Poetry can feel a little intimidating, to children and grown-ups. All those school lessons of dissecting poems in order to ascertain exactly what the poet intended with every word and stylistic form tend to kill the beauty of a well-written poem. This collection is a year-long tour through a vast history of poetry, and gives the reader a new poem to try every night, with everything from Michael Rosen to Shakespeare to Christina Rosetti. Full review...
The Fox and the Ghost King by Michael Morpurgo and Michael Foreman
Considering how bizarre the stories in juvenile literature can sometimes be, it's weird to think that occasionally it's the actual source material that inspired it that is even more unusual. Whoever would really credit writing a book where footballing underdogs, and firm favourites to be relegated, defied odds of 5000 to 1 to win the Premiership? But that's what happened in the 2015/16 season, in a certain town in the East Midlands of England. Despite every worry directed their way, they sustained their fine form long enough to win the league, in a run that some people soon realised had started when said city had had another momentous event, namely holding the proper burial accorded a lost King of England. Like I say, completely unusual and unexpected events – surely too odd to be turned into fiction? Full review...
Murder In Midwinter by Fleur Hitchcock
It's almost Christmas and Maya is happily snapping pictures of the Christmas lights on Regent Street from the top of a bus. Everything seems perfect until she sees the couple arguing and, when the flash goes off, it reveals something unbelievable – the man has a gun in his hands. To make matters worse, the flash makes him look up. Suddenly Maya's a witness and, when a body turns up, she's whisked away from her immediate family to somewhere the police think is safe – her aunt's remote farm in the Welsh mountains. Cut off by the snow, Maya should have nothing to fear. But the police can be wrong. Full review...
Danger Really is Everywhere: School of Danger by David O'Doherty and Chris Judge
There is nothing more dangerous than being a danger specialist. A Docter in Dangerology, no less – like Noel Zone, who has long since taken off his 'L' plates and become fully qualified in a science all of his own invention. If you've been here since the start you should be a Level 3 Pupil of Dangerology, and once our author has ascertained that you're not a werewolf, mummy, giant or Segway-riding vampire, you can read on, and see the life of the good Docter in action. And what action – we're only just beginning to find out what happens on a Danger Patrol, when all calamity happens – and lo and behold, Docter Noel Zone becomes a danger to others… Full review...