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'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''

{{newreview

|author=Mike Revell

|title=Stonebird

|rating=4.5

|genre=Confident Readers

|summary=People keep telling Liam he's the man of the house since his dad walked out on the family and went to live with his girlfriend in Australia, even though that's quite a burden to put on the shoulders of a ten-year-old. He tries his hardest to live up to everyone's expectations, but it's not easy: the family has to move house and school to be nearer Gran, who's suffering from dementia; his mum is falling apart because she simply can't cope with the pain of losing her remaining parent in this way, and his older sister is more interested in her new boyfriend than anything Liam's going through. And that's before the usual new kid in school bullying begins.

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848667175</amazonuk>

}}

{{newreview

|summary=When did you last read a children's book that absolutely flummoxed you in the way it showed or told you something you didn't know? (And please be an adult when you answer that, or else it won't be quite so impressive.) Back in 2001, Quentin Blake wasn't a Knight yet – he hadn't even got his CBE – but he did get allowed to put on his own show at the National Gallery, with other people's pictures that contain oddities, stories, unexpected detail – sparks on canvas and paper that would inspire anyone looking, of whatever age, to piece things together, work things out, ''form a narrative''. The pictures came with no major labelling, no context – just what they held, and some typically scratched Blake characters discussing the images as a lead-in. They were simply hung in alphabetical order, and probably could not have been more different. This then is a picture book of the most literal kind, with 26 stories.

|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847806422</amazonuk>

}}

~~{{newreview~~

~~|author=Danielle Wright (editor) and Mique Moriuchi (illustrator)~~

~~|title=My Village: Rhymes from Around the World~~

~~|rating=4~~

~~|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse~~

|summary=I'm thinking that of all the kinds of books that have ability to surprise, high up on the list are poetry books. You can generally see the style, idea or genre of a novel from the cover, and beyond a few shocks and twists nothing changes. But take poetry on board, and there are surprises on each page – the concentrated form of the literature surely gives the author more chance to bedazzle, to pull the rug over the readers' eyes and to generally give something the audience didn't expect. And so it is with this book, for while [[:Category:Michael Rosen|Michael Rosen's]] introduction spoke to us of nursery rhymes, I had already flicked through and still was not expecting a spread of them. Even when he itemised the various kinds I didn't foresee finding them all on the pages, although that is what I got. Who would have thought that such a small, succinct and varied little volume would have that much capacity to surprise?

~~|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847806279</amazonuk>~~

}}

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