White Boots by Noel Streatfeild
Many moons ago, when I was a young girl obsessed with Torvill and Dean and wishing we lived much closer to a skating rink, I discovered Noel Streatfeild's wonderful Shoe stories including this one, White Boots. It soon became one of my favourite re-reads, so it was interesting to come back to the story as a grown up and find that it is still funny and engaging, all these years later, and that it still has the enduring power to make me wish for my own pair of white skating boots too! Full review...
Finding Winnie: The Story of the Real Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall
A little boy called Cole wanted a story. He particularly wanted a true story and it had to be about a bear. It was getting late, but Mummy said that she would do her best. Her story began about a hundred years before Cole was born and it was about a man called Harry Colebourn who lived in Winnipeg. He was a vet and was on his way to Europe to look after the horses of the soldiers fighting in the Great War when he met a trapper with a baby bear: his head might have said that there was nothing he could do, but his heart told him to get hold of the bear and he gave the trapper $20. Winnipeg, as he named the bear, went on the train with Captain Coulbourn and his troop, across the ocean and finally arrived in England. Full review...
The ACB with Honora Lee by Kate de Goldi and Gregory O'Brien
Meet Perry. She's a hen-pecked sort of girl – forever having her grammar corrected by her parents, who love nothing more than packing her off to after-school classes, such as music lessons she has no aptitude for. Her father has one dutiful extra-curricular activity, too – visiting his own mother in her care home, and taking Perry with him. But when one of the classes she is involved with packs up, she decides to spend more time with the old dear – after all, she finds it hard to identify her own kith and kin, has memory problems, and reverts to being a teacher yet cannot even play I Spy correctly. Once in the routine, Perry finds the weird happenings and characters in the home would be ideal ingredients for an ABC book for a school project. Full review...
The Wild Swans by Jackie Morris
The most well known version of the wild swans is probably the one penned by Hans Andersen. This extended retelling by Jackie Morris adds depth, emotional resonance and a number of new twists to the tale. As in most versions, Eliza and her brothers live a happy and privileged life until their father's remarriage brings jealousy, mistrust and trouble in its wake. The brothers are magically changed into wild swans and it is up to brave Eliza to rescue them. Full review...
The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon
If you are of an imaginative disposition, you go to school in an elegant building which used to be a button factory, and your house is full of giraffes, ostriches and badgers - stuffed, of course - then the odds are that you'll end up on some kind of adventure. And if your grandparents happen to be famous explorers who've managed to get themselves lost on an iceberg in Antarctica then your particular mission is pretty well handed to you, wrapped up neatly with a big bow and a label on top saying 'quest starts here'. All you have to do is work out the fine details and set off. Easy-peasy. Full review...
Crowns and Codebreakers by Elen Caldecott
Minnie's not too keen on sharing her already tiny room with her gran when she arrives from Nigeria. However, worries about floor space and how to open the wardrobe door are quickly replaced by more serious concerns. Gran is upset. She picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport and she's convinced it's a bad omen. And it almost seems like she's right when their flat is burgled and the only thing that is taken is the suitcase. The police aren't interested but Minnie and her friends know there must be a reason behind the burglary. There's a mystery and it's up to them to solve it. Full review...
Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein
Meet the finest shooter in the world. No, not one of those hunters, who go to Africa and kill off all the wonderful wildlife there, but Lafcadio. He's a lion, and his real name might have been something more like Ruggrrg or Grummfgff, but one day when a hunter was about to shoot at him (with an unloaded rifle), he ate the hunter and picked the gun up to try out – then carried on shooting until he was the world's best, standing on his head or with paws tied behind his back. His new life gives him a new name, but is that really what he would have wanted as a young lion cub? Full review...
Once Upon a Place by Eoin Colfer (editor)
You know the bit of the blurb on every Artemis Fowl book, where Eoin Colfer had it said about how you pronounce his name? That wasn't the intention of an up-and-coming author to be recognisable; rather, it was pride. Pride in the difference of it, of the Irishness of it. Ireland, it seems to me, is more full than usual of people, things and ideas, and places that are different by dint of their singular nationality – and so many deserve to have pride attached to them. The places might not be the famous ones, but they can be the source of pride, and of stories, which is where this compilation of short works for the young comes in, with the authors invited to select their chosen place and write about it. Full review...
Moone Boy 2: The Fish Detective by Chris O'Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy
Christmas is coming, and Martin Moone's family are on a strict budget. Placed in charge of finding the family a Christmas tree Martin, actually, is more worried about how he'll ever manage to get a Game Boy. He decides to get himself a job but of course, being Martin, he can't get himself the usual paper round. No, Martin Moone becomes a butcher's boy! Full review...
The Seal's Fate (Colour Conker) by Eoin Colfer and Victor Ambrus
Bobby Parrish was reluctant to admit that the seal was cute, even to himself. That sort of thing was for girls and he was here to club the seal. Seals were affecting his father's livelihood as a fisherman and there was a bounty of a £1 for a seal's flipper: in those days that was good money and even one of the girls had collected the cash. Still, somehow he couldn't quite bring himself to attack the defenceless cub, all big, black, round eyes and obviously unworried by his presence. What would the other lads say though? More to the point, what would his father say? Full review...
Clare and Her Captain (Colour Conker) by Michael Morpurgo and Catherine Rayner
Clare didn't enjoy the journey down to Devon. Her parents always argued and it was usually because Mum had lost her way or got caught in a traffic jam and this time she'd done both. It was a little better when they got to Aunt Dora's house, but Aunt Dora wasn't exactly a peacemaker and tended to stick up for Dad against everybody else. The holiday improved when Clare got out for a walk on her own and discovered a stray lamb on the road. She took it to the nearest house and Mr Jones was delighted: Clare had just saved half his flock. Clare got on with the old man - and with his horse, Captain. Full review...
Doctor Who: The Dangerous Book of Monsters by Justin Richards and Dan Green
It's imperative you keep up with The Doctor, in both senses – meaning in case the first thing he tells you to do is Run! and in the sense of following all his various adventures and maintaining knowledge of what's what and who he's faced, enemy-wise. One great way to be enemy wise is to peruse this book, which really is a great present for the young fan – and of course a life-saving manual for when you yourself find sharks in the fog, gas-mask wearing boys sans their mothers or indeed gigantic Cyberking dreadnought spacecraft. Honestly, why this is classed as a fiction title I have no idea… Full review...
Puppy Love (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renee Russell
Things have changed drastically in the world of Nikki Maxwell. Her arch nemesis has suddenly upped sticks and moved school – well, the posher place will only suit her well. Nikki now has a sort of empty feeling, though – nobody is there to make her feel pestered, let down, het up and stressed. Although something is about to do just that and more – the discovery, outside the sanctuary her crush volunteers at, of an abandoned mother dog with her seven puppies. Looking after them until the place even has space for the new arrivals is going to fill her world for the next few days – and the adventure is going to be just as readable as all the other books in this series. Full review...
A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig
Have you ever wondered what Father Christmas was like as boy? How he came to live in the Far North surrounded by elves? Where the idea for giving presents came from? Why he wears a red hat? If you're interested in any of these questions, then 'A Boy Called Christmas' is the perfect book for you. Full review...
The Winter Place by Alexander Yates
Axel and Tess live in rural New York state with a father obsessed with mediaeval reconstructions. They have a knight for a father! This eccentricity is both entertaining and a good thing - because Sam is the only parental figure in their lives. Axel and Tess's mother died when Axel was born. Tess is just moving into oppositional adolescence. She and Sam enjoy sparring over the care of Axel, who has inherited a rare form of muscular dystrophy from his late mother. Axel is, well, an individual child, currently haunted by a mischievous wheelchair only he can see. The pesky thing follows him everywhere. Full review...
The Iron Man by Ted Hughes and Andrew Davidson
Where had he come from? Nobody knows. But's it obvious when the Iron Man came from – it really does smack of the beginnings of the environmental movement in the two decades after WWII. There's the nuclear element to the story, which is certainly there, even if I can never be sure whether that is the title character or the other one that turns up for the second half. But at the same time, there is also the idea that such a book doesn't really need to be analysed, explained away and diminished thusly, when it provides some of the most enjoyable, clear and simple yet highly emotive writing for the young audience, that has made it a classic since its inception. Full review...
Catlantis by Anna Starobinets, Andrzej Klimowski and Jane Bugaeva (translator)
Meet Baguette. Despite the name, he's a cat living in central Moscow, with a human family, on the twelfth floor of a high-rise. His place to perch is somehow between the two panes that make up a high window, half in and half out of the room, watching the world and its birds go by. But there's a part to that world he knows nothing about – the whole mythology of cats and catlife. Cats had possession of their own land, Catlantis, a place suitable for such sacred creatures to exist. Flowers gave them extra lives, up to a maximum of nine, just by you sniffing them. But all that is in the past – and that's where Baguette must go, for the whole future of catdom hangs in the balance of him going back to right wrongs, and find what was long forgotten about both his and everyone else's destiny. And all he wants is the paw of his sweetheart in marriage. You might think you know the lengths to which a cat will go for love, but you won't have read the likes of this… Full review...
Stampy's Lovely Book by Joseph Garrett
If you still think of Stampy as the elephant in The Simpsons, you need to get with it. For one thing, TV is so last century – now it's all about Minecraft and other computer game worlds, and often second-screening between different new media at the same time. So why does this book from a Youtube star of Minecraft tasks, pranks and other activities, remind me of a certain TV programme that used to invite us to turn off and do something more active instead? Full review...
Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead
The book opens with a prologue about an eight year old Bridget Barsamian, who woke up in hospital following a horrific and life threatening traffic accident involving roller skates and New York traffic. Bridget is told by a nurse that she is lucky to be alive and that she must have survived the accident for a reason. Bridget, who has no real memory of the accident, has to miss a year of school and on her return, tells everyone she now wants to be known as Bridge, as, I don't feel like Bridget anymore. Full review...
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, Lucie Arnoux and Misha Hoekstra (translator)
Listen closely! We're about to begin. Once upon a time, the devil created a hellish mirror, which only showed evil, ill intent and ugliness, and which was en route to Heaven to cast a new light on it when it shattered. One of the people affected by the numerous shards was Kai, who abandoned his childhood friend Gerda, and went off with the Snow Queen. Gerda was forlorn and fearing for his life, but soon found her way to start a miraculous journey to find the truth behind his disappearance and behaviour… Full review...
Lockwood and Co: The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud
The adults are baffled (as usual) and only Lockwood, George and Lucy can save London from the murderous ghosts. But it won't be easy: as the smallest agency of licenced psychic investigators in the capital no one is willing to listen to them, and besides, they have their own problems. A new member of the team, secrets that threaten to destroy friendships, and the sheer exhaustion that comes from trying to deal with too many hauntings – it surely can't be long before something has to give? Full review...