'''Read [[Features|new features]].'''
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{{newreview
|author=Frances Hardinge
|title=Fly by Night
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=The Fractured Realm is a country existing in an uneasy peace. Each province is ruled by the craftsmen guilds which hold ultimate control, an ineffective Duke, and citizens who honour a multitude of demi-gods, 'The Beloved', who haunt them their entire life. This is the world Mosca Mye inhabits. An orphan, Mosca is fostered by her aunt and uncle, who think little of her and use her as a bookkeeper due to her unique, and quite illegal, ability to read and write. She runs away the night she burns their mill to the ground.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330418262</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen O'Shea
|summary=The little shepherd girl is the daughter of a shepherd. She helps her father in the hills, tending the sheep, but only during the day for at night she's told it's too dark and is sent to bed in their house to sleep whilst he watches over the sheep in the hills. But one night she finds it isn't dark at all, and the light from a star is shining so brightly it seems like the whole world is lit up. So she sneaks out of her house and goes into the hills to find her father.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0745962327</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Gibb
|title=Best-loved Classics: Rapunzel
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Educators are, apparently, concerned at the moment at the number of children starting school who don't know any of the old traditional fairy tales, so it's nice to see a new version of Rapunzel that is based on the original story by The Brothers Grimm. This is a lovely book to share and stays closer to the original story than Disney's 'Tangled' film.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007364806</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elena Pasquali and Giuliano Ferri
|title=The Animals' Christmas
|rating=3.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Seeing the title of ''The Animals' Christmas'' I had expected this story to provide perhaps an alternate perspective of the Christmas story. However, although the illustrations have lots of animals throughout, the story itself sticks to the traditional telling, with a couple of animal references seemingly thrown in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0745962491</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Bennett
|title=A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure of the Market Garden, the Arnhem Operation, September 1944
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Operation Market Garden, September 1944 is encapsulated for most people in the Hollywood movie "A Bridge Too Far" which, like most movies, gets some of it right and some of it wrong.
Such anyway is Bennett's assessment. So what is the true story of what one Major Norton called a magnificent disaster, perhaps consciously echoing that judgement on the charge of the Light Brigade in a far earlier conflict "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre"?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193514989X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joanna Nadin
|title=Penny Dreadful is a Complete Catastrophe
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Penny is not really Penny Dreadful. She is Penny Jones. But when her encounters with a rat called Rooney, a cat called Barry and her cousin Georgia May, and her testing of a patent burglar trap and digging for buried treasure all end in catastrophes, is it surprising that she is known as a Disaster Magnet?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409536076</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian Patten and Nicola Bayley
|title=The Big Snuggle-up
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=The story of The BIG Snuggle-up takes place on a very cold snowy day. The storyteller, a small child, tells the reader that because it was so cold he invited a scarecrow in to be a guest in his house. However, living in the scarecrow's sleeve is a little mouse, so the scarecrow asks whether the mouse can come in too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849392080</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Sanderson
|title=Netherwood
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The cover of Netherwood features a bold promise - 'Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey'. The basic features of a reliable 'upstairs/downstairs' saga are all present; the landed gentry enjoying their estate, the staff servicing it and the locals, all relying on the fortunate family for their own income.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547638</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Brooks
|title=Naked
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Lili is a quiet student, not hip or trendy or in demand, and she spends most of her time playing the piano. She's an unlikely candidate for the nascent punk scene but Curtis Ray, the school's charismatic bad boy, doesn't agree. He recruits Lili to his band Naked, and it's not long before Lili gets naked with Curtis in more ways than one. As the band begins to make a name for itself on the burgeoning punk scene, fame-obsessed Curtis gets drawn further and further in and his drug-fuelled behaviour becomes more and more erratic.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141326115</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angie Sage
|title=Septimus Heap: Darke
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The seventh son of a seventh son has magical powers, as we all know. And Septimus is that son, although it took quite a time for him to find it out. Now he's apprenticed to Extraordinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand, she of the short temper and fabulous shoes, and he's about to embark on a horrendously dangerous part of his training, called Darke Week. For this exercise he has chosen to rescue Alther, a ghost who was accidentally Banished (a lot of words start with capital letters in these books) by Marcia, but once again the baddies have other ideas.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408806282</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Clemens Loftus
|title=Ruby Rocksparkle: Her Wildly Incredible Adventure
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Ruby Rocksparkle and her thirteen - yes! thirteen! - siblings are all named after gemstones. Ruby's father is a peasant farmer in the happy little kingdom of Felicitania. Felicitania is ruled by the kingly King Flavian and his beautiful second wife, Queen Morgana. His son, Prince Alano, is busily preparing for the day when he must rule, and the time for him to find a wife is fast approaching. Ruby, a vivid, read-headed beauty, dreams of marrying Prince Alano. If only he could ever marry a commoner - but even Ruby knows that could never be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1452059780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Candia McWilliam
|title=What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=When you know that a biography tackles alcoholism, a mother's early death, feelings of loneliness and worthlessness, culminating in going blind, you expect that this is going to be one of two types of book – the misery memoir, or the positive 'all ends well' tale. 'What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness' is neither. It is a book which is as complex as the life it relates, and as deep.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539535</amazonuk>
}}
