Difference between revisions of "Newest Confident Readers Reviews"

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[[Category:Confident Readers|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Confident Readers]]
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==Confident readers==
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rob Keeley
|author=Jamie Rix
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|title=Childish Spirits: 10th anniversary special edition
|title=The Incredible Luck of Alfie Pluck
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Poor Alfie Pluck. He lives with his two aunts who are grotesquely disgusting, and who call him their Household Drudge. They reminded me of some of Roald Dahl's most appalling creations. Compared to Alfie's aunts, Harry Potter's Dursley relatives are warm and friendly.  Alfie is decidedly down on luck.
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|summary=Around here, we're big fans of children's author Rob Keeley. He's a ball of happy positivity, he understands children, and he writes for their pleasure and enjoyment, not to lecture or hector.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444001019</amazonuk>
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The ''Childish Spirits'' series is one of his greatest achievements. It's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, a stalwart young girl who can cope with anything the spirit world throws at her, and Edward, a spoiled lordling and the first spirit Ellie encounters
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|isbn= 1783064617
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Max Boucherat
|author=Anna Dale
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|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|title=Magical Mischief
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|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Mr Hardbattle runs a dusty old bookshop where magic has moved in. Its smell puts customers off and it regularly causes chaos such as the books rearranging themselves of their own accord. But this bookseller is a nice man who doesn’t want to disturb the magic too much by getting out the vacuum cleaner, and on the whole they get used to each other. Now though, he is facing a huge rent increase. Enter two customers, young Arthur and Miss Quint, who agree to help him find a nice new home for the magic, and to help look after the shop while Mr Hardbattle travels to visit some people who have answered an advert offering the magic a new home.
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|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome.  What could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering.  When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800438</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008666482
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton
|author=Melanie Welsh
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|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
|title=Mistress of the Storm
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|rating=4
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Verity Gallant is the oldest child in her family.  She's rather plain and awkward, feels a bit like a social outcast at school, and stumbles along at home too where her beautiful, blonde, sweet little sister Poppy is obviously the favouriteOne day Verity discovers a mysterious stranger in the library reading a strange book.  He runs away when he sees her, taking the book with him, but Verity chases after him, following him down to the shore where he gets into a boat ready to row awayHe gives the book to her when she challenges him, along with a mysterious round object.  This seemingly innocuous event brings about huge changes in Verity's life.  Having been ignorant about her family's history she begins to research about the gentry, with the help of her friends, and discovers skills and strengths that she never knew she hadJust in time too, for as the mysterious stranger tells her, the storm is coming...
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|summary=Meet Kit.  Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and healer enter specially prepared, century-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the wayUnfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is neededPossibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a teamWhat chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385617666</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839945184
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=James Sherwood Metts
|author=Liz Kessler
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|title=Planet Storyland
|title=Philippa Fisher and the Stone Fairy's Promise
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=In the third book of this enchanting series Liz Kessler manages to show both the delights and the sorrows of friendship: a topic which is eternally popular with young (and not so young) readers. Philippa has travelled with her father and mother to Ravenleigh to spend New Year with her new friend Robyn. But she has only just arrived when disaster strikes. Daisy, her other best friend and fairy godsister (like a fairy godmother but the same age as you), realises Philippa's mother is in danger, and tries to help. But in order to do so she has to break a lot of rules, and a series of catastrophes means Philippa ends up with Daisy in ATC (Above The Clouds), a sector of the fairy world. And the other fairies don't realise who she is ...              
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|summary= Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842559966</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1736128426
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Tom Percival
|author=Jane Smiley
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|title=The Wrong Shoes
|title=Nobody's Horse
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Abby lives on her family's farm in CaliforniaThey specialise in taking horses and ponies which are not at their peak and bringing them on so that they can be sold at a profit.  Abby's father is determined that she won't get attached to any of the horses, because that only increases the pain when they inevitably go, but two are going to make an impact on her that she could not have expected.  The first is a foal whose dam dies when he's a matter of weeks old and he takes Abby's heartThe second has the opposite effect because every time that Abby rides him he's determined to buck her offShe's frightened of him and it's a tribute to Abby that the worst she calls him is Grumpy George.
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|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of waysHe is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accidentThrow into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every directionAnd yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope.  He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571253547</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1398527122
 
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1805141872
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|title=The Teacher Who Knew Too Much
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|author=Rob Keeley
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Confident Readers
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|summary=''Seventeen banks and a jeweller’s have been raided. The police are baffled, but only Ben knows the truth – his Maths teacher, Miss Judson, is really a safecracker! With police and her gangster boyfriend Al on their trail, Miss Judson and Ben go on the run. But Al needs them for one last job...''
  
{{newreview
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Goodness me, that Miss Judson is a terror! How on earth did a nice teacher like her manage to get mixed up with a bad 'un like Al? We'll find out. Luckily for Miss Judson, the pupil who discovers her terrible secret is Ben, the son of a famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some day, and who thinks Miss Judson is worth saving
|author=Neil Gaiman
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}}
|title=Instructions
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Christopher Edge
 +
|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Go through the mysterious door, mind the imp, trust the wolves and answer the ferryman's question carefully. Neil Gaiman takes us on a tour of a fantasy land with a series of instructions for surviving the adventure. You'll discover wonders beyond your wildest dreams, and return home safely, a little older and a little wiser.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408808641</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Barbara Mitchelhill
 
|title=Damian Drooth, Supersleuth: Football Forgery
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Getting to the end of a story, even one which really grips you, can be hard work if you have only just learned to read independently or are at the younger end of the confident readers range. But ''Damian Drooth, Supersleuth: Football Forgery'' is a slim book (60 pages), with lots of pictures, and a decent-sized font. And it is a proper book, too, with an engaging main character, lots of action and a fascinating mystery, so satisfaction is guaranteed.
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|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'.  All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks!  However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine.  But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on?  Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390355</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1839942738
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Adam Stower
|author=Vicki Myron and Brett Witter
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|title=Murray and Bun
|title=Dewey: The True Story of a World-famous Library Cat
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
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|genre=Confident Readers  
|summary=This heart-warming book tells the wonderful true story of a cat called Dewey. His beginnings were very humble and his life could quite probably have been quite short if it had not been for a fortuitous event that occurred one cold winter morning. Vicki Myron, the chief librarian at Spencer Library in Iowa, heard some very strange noises coming from the book drop box that borrowers used in order to return their books when the library was closed. On opening the box she discovered a small, dirty, shivering kitten and her heart melted. As a consequence, the kitten, which was soon to be named Dewey, was adopted and became the official library cat.
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|summary=Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two.  But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847388442</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008561249
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh
|author=Nick Hale
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|title=The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
|title=Sudden Death (Striker)
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|rating=4
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=Jake Bastin, son of famous former footballer Steve, thought his life was difficult enough even before his father enters negotiations to join St Petersburg’s newest football team as manager. But when the agent his dad’s discussing the move with collapses of a suspected heart attack, things get far more complicated – because Jake is convinced he was actually poisoned, and can’t understand why his dad seems happy to go along with a cover up. As the pair move to St Petersburg, the bodies start piling up, and Jake goes from having to fight to control his temper, to fight to save his life. With no way of knowing if he can trust anyone, even his own father, can the youngster stand up to criminals who are happy to kill to get what they want?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405249501</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dominic Barker
 
|title=Adam and the Arkonauts
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Adam is on a mission.  Both he and his father have spent the decade since his mother was kidnapped by an Evil Scientist looking for her, and perfecting their own skills.  They might have got the best clue of all so far - one that has led them to the mysterious, hidden, and downright alarming city of Buenos SuenosThose skills?  Being able to communicate with animalsSince learning to gibber like a spider monkey they can both bark, purr perfectly, and moreIt will take the extraordinary menagerie to survive the unusual city, and try and discover what happened to Adam's mum - and what the Evil Scientist might want by holding her hostage for the same skills in return.
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|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runsEli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the familyA few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beastThis has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880025X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571382231
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Helen Cooper
|author=Jenny Nimmo
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|title=The Taming of the Cat
|title=Charlie Bone and the Red Knight
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|rating=3.5
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Since the loss of his father, Charlie Bone has had to live in the house of horrible Grandmother Bone. But when he discovers he can hear people in pictures talking, a whole new world opens to him. His grandmother and her even more unpleasant sisters insist he should now attend Bloor Academy, a school where he meets other children endowed with magical abilities because they are descendants of the Red King. This King, an African magician, came to the North nine hundred years ago, and left a part of his powers to each his ten children. But several of those children turned to evil, as have their descendants, and Charlie and his friends have to stop them from doing terrible harm to the town. In each of the books in the ''Charlie Bone'' series, he encounters new allies and new enemies, until the whole story culminates in one immense final battle in 'Charlie Bone and the Red Knight'. This book is based on the search for a will, a quest which gradually draws together many of the themes of the series, and ends with the kind of solution which will leave the reader sighing with satisfaction.
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|summary=Once again, mice are pitched against cat.  In this case, principally, we have Brie the mouse, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case you're seeing a connection, they live in a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem to be the names of cheeses. Anyway, Brie is shunned, scorned and, if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don't match the other mice he lives with. They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – he displays it as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it.  And that story-telling will come in handy one night, when he feels all alone and cast out.  It's almost as if there were another character from fable who had had to tell stories to keep themselves alive. This makes Brie the top dog in the mouse community, though, as all the others had the chance to half-inch some cheese while the cat was distracted.  But will the story have the successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405249609</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571376010
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lauren St John
|author=Ruth Thomson and Chloe Thomson
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|title=Finding Wonder
|title=Have You Started Yet?: You and your period: getting the facts straight
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
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|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Every young girl will face her periods starting but it’s the preparation which goes on beforehand which will determine whether or not this is seen as the body developing naturally or a problemBoth are attitudes which are likely to stay through life and it’s obviously better that it’s the firmer rather than the latter‘’Have You Started Yet’’ gives factual information in an informative and reassuring manner and in a form which is easily readable to girls of about nine years old and above.
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|summary=Roo's life has become almost impossibly difficult.  Her mum died when she was young, and now she finds herself awoken in the middle of the night by the police banging on her door to tell her that her dad has dropped dead on his way to the corner shop to buy a lottery ticketWhen asked what other family she has, she can only name her aunt, Joni, who she knows her dad didn't think very highly of.  But she has no one else, and so off she goes to live with her unreliable auntThings continue to get worse for Roo, as when she and Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames!  Poor Roo!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230744907</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571376169
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Adam Baron and Benji Davies
|author=Pete Johnson
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|title=Oscar's Lion
|title=The Vampire Blog
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|rating=3
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The night of his thirteenth birthday, Marcus's parents sit him down for a chat. He fears there'll be some fingernails-on-a-blackboard stuff about the facts of life, he'll fend them off with a wry remark or two, and it'll all be over. After all, how bad could it be? Very bad, is the answer. Very, very, very, very bad. Because this chat isn't about sex at all. It's about fangs and blood cravings, and shape-shifting. Because Marcus is a half-vampire.  
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|summary=We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother is more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple of times before he has to be ready for school. But when he enters his parents' bedroom, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion on their bed, looking sheepish, and admitting that he won't be hungry for another two days. But there are benefits to having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat to the bully that ruined a birthday party for Oscar the other month. And it can shapeshift, so he can take it to school and it can get him out of a problem. And it's wonderful to have around the house – not limiting his biscuit intake, being much more lax about the rules, and so on. OK, it can't work a dimmer switch but it can give Oscar a wonderful time.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0440869358</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0008596751
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Judith Eagle
|author=Anthony Horowitz
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|title=The Stolen Songbird
|title=Legends: Battles and Quests
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Bringing things that are this old to an audience this young cannot be an easy featAnthony Horowitz must be more than ableAn old volume of retold legends and fables from his typewriter in the 1980s has become a series of six books, rejigged on his computer, and presented very nicely by MacmillanThe first to hit the shelves ([[Legends: Beasts and Monsters by Anthony Horowitz|Legends: Beasts and Monsters]]) was a successful gift to us of five stories of olden beasties and baddiesHere we get a full half-dozen, and the quality is just as compelling.
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|summary=Caro's mother, a world-famous whistler, has failed to return home from her recent work trip abroad and is now missingHer other mother, Ronnie, is having to go up North to take care of her sister who is unwellSo who is going to look after Caro?  Sent to stay with Gam, someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated and confused and worriedAll her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics are brought to a halt whilst she is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's house, along with an orphan boy, Albie, who is living there tooBut she soon finds herself caught up in a mystery, as she discovers a painting of a bird hidden away inside her mum's old suitcase, and all across London a fearsome gang called the Snakes are thieving artworks and terrorising people. Is the painting somehow linked to the gang?  And what has happened to Caro's mother?  Is she somehow involved in the mystery too?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510169</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571363148
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Tania Unsworth
|author=Ali Sparkes
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|title=Nowhere Island
|title=Wishful Thinking
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We first meet Kevin covered in sick.  He doesn't travel well, and his day out with his gran in the car isn't going as well as he might wish for.  He doesn't really seriously wish for anything, but a diverting list of things he'd like – a better complexion, a better chance with the school hottie, a Wii, etc – gets dropped into a streamAnd lo and behold, the god of that river, someone called Abandinus, comes to life, thinking he's got a worshipper at last, and might just be prepared to grant some wishes.
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|summary=Meet Gil.  Just twelve, he is so determined to escape the care system – the system that constantly puts him in futureless places that are not homes – and find a home for himself.  He is en route to yet another fosterer, when he jumps into an anonymous car, and lets it ride him to his future.  That future seems to be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag of belongings – but that someone lives with his brother in a camp on an island between the two directions of a motorway, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and seclusionThem, and a mute girl also finding a home there, albeit so much more successfully.  Over a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756117</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1804540080
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Helen Peters
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|title=Friends and Traitors
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|rating=3
 +
|genre=Confident Readers
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|summary=England, WW2.  Two young girls are new at the country pile called Stanbrook.  One is Nancy, destined to be in service all her life it seems, like the female generations before her.  The other is Sidney, a girl from a hoity-toity Sussex boarding school that has been removed there away from bomber flight-pathsThe girls are chalk and cheese, and if we hadn't guessed that then their behaviour with each other over their first encounters would only prove it so.  But something is amiss, and first separately and then in combination they realise the Lord Evesham must be a rum 'un.  Midnight deliveries are received under cover of secrecy, talk is made of meetings with Germans, and not only that, a local Spitfire factory has been attacked.  But surely the girls are wrong, and the upper class could never be so underhand?
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|isbn=1788004647
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jamie Littler
|author=Anthony Horowitz
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|title=Arkspire
|title=Legends: Beasts and Monsters
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When they say there is nothing new under the sun, they might use this book as evidence - but they'd only be half-rightThe legends of the sphinx's riddle, and the capture of the gorgon's head, are as old as the Parthenon hill, but they have never been presented as they have here.  They were published in a similar fashion in the 1980s, with a younger Anthony Horowitz offering a large compendium of folk stories, legends and tales of classical derring-doWith the attention span of the current under-twelve, however, to be considered, his publishers have allowed a sprucing up, and a reformatting - one book has been turned into six, with a brace each year from now til conclusion.
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|summary=Two sisters, Juniper and Elodie, born fifteen minutes apart, are growing to be chalk and cheese.  Juniper is an eager hunter and trader in illicit magic, including relics from prior major wars left out in the BadlandsElodie is intent on getting closer to power in one of the religious districts of Arkspire, perhaps even to become the child in line to inherit the power of the Watcher, the closest to a ruler the district has, and one of the five major victors in said earlier warBeing trained in the magic that only five people can use would definitely change the status of the whole family.  But in finding something oddly magical, Juniper might just be able to gain some power of her own – for good, or for very, very bad…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510150</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0241586143
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=024162343X
|author=Tracey Turner
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|title=Stolen History
|title=Dreadful Fates
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|author=Sathnam Sanghera
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Imagine the delight you get, as a book reviewer, when you chance upon a title that stands out, by filling a nice handy gap in the market you'd never even noticed, and doing it so well you want to alert as many people as possibleThis is such a time, Dreadful Fates is such a book, and as for the gap… This book hits upon the darker corners of all those copious 'highlights of history for the kids' books, touches upon The Darwin Awards compilations of stupid people dying in stupid ways, and merges with those collections of famous last words and epitaphs some of us like flicking through now and again – and does it all for the under-thirteen audience.
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|summary=I was the bad company other people got into at school.  I was disruptive in religious education classes because I disputed the existence of a 'god'.  Where was the proof?  In history lessons, it was probably worse still.  Not too long after the end of WWII, I didn't so much want to learn about the British army's successes (and occasional failures, but we didn't dwell on those) in what came to be called 'the colonies' as want to dispute what right the army had to be there in the first placeLooking back, I still believe I was right - but I regret that I lacked the maturity to approach 'the problem' politely. I wish I'd had Sathnam Sanghera's ''Stolen History''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408124211</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Thiago de Moraes
|author=Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould
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|title=Old Gods New Tricks
|title=The Funfair of Fear! - A Measle Stubbs Adventure
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There is one thing Measle could really be called afraid ofNot the usual teenage things, like having a bath, noHe's lived through being inches high and stuck in a nightmarish train-set diorama with an evil cockroach and worse for company, and as a result, he's going to be afraid of a wrathmonk – a warlock turned bad – such as the one who put him there.  So you'll pity him when it becomes obvious a gathering of wrathmonks are forming, to get their revenge on Measle's newly-found familyBut what are wrathmonks in turn afraid of, I hear you ask?  That's right a garden gnome.
+
|summary=Meet TrixieForever getting into scrapes, larks and adventures involving flooding the school aircon with fart powder, she could almost be thought a young goddess of nuisanceBut just when she's being told that by her one-last-chance-giving headteacher, the world changes.  Suddenly, practically everything electronic stops working – a power-out, even of electric cars, hits not just the town the school's in but the entire planet (apart from mobile phones, and all that powers the Internet, just for our convenience's sake)Trixie, luckily, realises what has happened – the ancient Gods have taken the power of power from us.  And so she begins her epic quest, to gather all the people that can steal it back namely the characters from myth that have past form in stealing from the Gods, ie the semi-deities, giants, half-gods and so on known as the tricksters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729713</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=178845295X
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Hannah Gold and Levi Pinfold
|author=Chris Mould
+
|title=Finding Bear
|title=The Werewolf and the Ibis (Something Wickedly Weird)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The 'Something Wickedly Weird' series is a splendid mix of Gothic horror and cartoon-style fun. The scrawny young hero, young Stanley Buggles, who lives in a 'darkened industrial town', as the first page tells us, is plunged into an adventure from the moment he arrives (all alone, as tradition dictates) at Crampton Rock. He has inherited his great-uncle's mansion, a vast old pile on an island linked to the mainland by a long winding footbridge. The right atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobic unease is created immediately, especially when we learn that letters are only collected from the island once a fortnight. Whatever is on this island, Stanley will have to deal with it alone.
+
|summary=[[The Last Bear by Hannah Gold|Last time]], April had been on Bear Island, a lot further north than many people would venture, and finding a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with a polar bear – that she called Bear. Back home, things on the domestic and family front are a bit advanced, but not perfect for her, and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the islands Bear was last left on. For a bear doing very Bear-y things has been shot and wounded.  Desperate to make sure he's OK, she and her father return to the Arctic and hope that in a world of very white and very dangerous things, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and that the friendship can continue.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931027</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0008582017
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Simon Fox
|author=Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould
+
|title=Deadlock
|title=The Train Set of Terror: A Measle Stubbs Adventure
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You will feel sympathy for Measle from the very start of this book.  Not only is he an orphan, and stuck friendless in a horridly dingy house on the wrong side of the train tracks, but he shares his life with its main torment - his guardian, Basil Tramplebone.  Basil makes no effort to improve Measle or his lot - he does not educate him, keeps Measle and his inheritance a great distance apart, and feeds him slopMeasle would even like to have a bath now and again - but not in the putrid brown and green gunk coming from the taps.  The only thing that redeems Basil at all is that he owns the world's best train set, one Measle would love to get to know a lot better.  Unfortunately for Measle, he's about to get that wish granted...
+
|summary=Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the runThey get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729705</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1839944420
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Cath Howe
|author=Cathy Cassidy
+
|title=My Life on Fire
|title=Love, Peace and Chocolate (Pocket Money Puffins)
+
|rating=5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jess and Kady have been best friends since they were three years old and now they're in year eight at Parkway Community SchoolThey're on the edge of puberty but things have been a bit slow on the boyfriend front – not that either of them is looking to rush things, particularly as there isn't a single Y8 boy who can make their eyes light upThey've a good, solid friendship which means a lot to both of them and they both think that nothing can come between the girlsUnfortunately they hadn't taken the arrival of Jack Somers into account.
+
|summary=Ren's family home is destroyed in a fire.  She, her parents, and her little brother lose everything.  She doesn't have any of her clothes, or any of her special little knick-knacks from her cupboard, and now she is living at her grandmother's house where they can't touch anything, or do anything, or even eat the foods they normally eatWhen she goes back to school she discovers that the class are doing a special art project, creating boxes of their lives, to display things that are important to them and show who they are as a personBut Ren has nothing to put in a box, and so she finds herself starting to steal thingsSmall things, things that people might not really miss, not when they have so much already. But what will happen to her if someone finds out what she is doing?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014133021X</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1839942835
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author= Rob Keeley
|author=Natasha Narayan
+
|title= The Boy Who Disappeared and Other Stories
|title=The Maharajah's Monkey: A Kit Salter Adventure
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Kit Salter has a nose for adventure.  Somehow she always finds trouble, or it finds her, and this latest episode is no exception as she finds herself travelling from the home comforts of Oxford all the way to India, then on to the freezing mountains of Tibet.  What has happened to Monsieur Champlon?  Has he abandoned poor Aunt Hilda?  Why is the mysterious monkey leaving threatening messages for Kit?  And what does it all have to do with the Maharajah?  Kit and her friends set off on a fantastic journey to investigate.
+
|summary= Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is back with a return to the short story format! The Boy Who Disappeared treats us to eleven new tales, each as fun to read as his previous offerings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847245293</amazonuk>
+
|isbn= B0BVW69N1G
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Laura Noakes
|author=Richard Denning
+
|title=Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star
|title=The Last Seal
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=In 1380 the warlock Stephen Blake released the demon Dantalion from the Abyss, only for his nemesis Cornelius Silver to banish him straight away. Dantalion has nursed his wounds for nearly 300 years – and in 1666, descendants of the original pair clash as he
 
aims to return to the world, and burn down London by starting the Great Fire. While the fire rages around London, and Dantalion’s followers try to break the seals which hold him in the Abyss, four unlikely heroes join forces to stop them from being destroyed – and to save the world.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956483550</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Platt
 
|title=Would You Believe...in Mexico people picnic at granny's grave?!
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Well if there’s one important aspect of families, it is that books are includedIt is evident from the details, trivia and facts here that you don’t need a father, a mother, or siblingsYou might even have several spreads of half- and step-siblings, and copious parents here, there and everywhere.  You might get to have a nanny, a cohort of family helpers, but one thing I would thrust on anybody would be a collection of books at home – and yes, books such as these tidy 48 pages would be among them.
+
|summary=Meet Number One.  Or rather, Cosima Unfortunate.  Or rather, just Cos to her friendsThe practice in the home she lives in is for the girls to just be named by the number they correspond to in the ledger, and they're all Unfortunates – young people with disabilities, uncommon mentalities or suchlike that Victorian society frowns greatly uponBut Cosima bears the tag as a surname because nothing else seems to be known about where she came from, as the first ever inmate, and unique in having no known family in the outside worldDuring a daring escapade to steal some posh cakes from the kitchen one afternoon, she discovers a plan involving said outside world – a devilish Lord Fitzroy seems to want to adopt all the girls for his Institute.  But why, and what does that body entail?  And could it possibly bring Cos closer to the past she has so little link with?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119856</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0008579059
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Platt
 
|title=Would You Believe...bed testers get paid to sleep?!
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=It is quite certain the reader of this book will not be a bed tester, however broad the smile it carries as it suggests anyone can get the employment they dream afterNeither will she or he be a vital scribe for some ancient civilisation, a slave, a drudge, or a worker in a Communist collective farm.  But it is definitely an eye-opener how all that and so much more can be considered by just 48 tidy pages.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119864</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Alice M Ross
|author=Richard Platt
+
|title=The Nowhere Thief
|title=Would You Believe...Vatican City is a country?!
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=Cities don’t just spring up around us.  They have taken thousands of years of civilisation to form, however surprising that might appear at times.  Conversely, there are some who are just a few hundreds of years old that have been empty for centuries, and others that have been planned over a drawing board and become a capital city in a decade-long instant.  All are within these tidy 48 pages.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119708</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Platt
 
|title=Would You Believe...two cyclists invented the aeroplane?!
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=Where can you find a welter of trivia and facts about transport from the ages, from the first use of Shanks’s pony, to the latest holidays to the edge of space?  What has so much detail it can fit in the reasons for Mark Twain’s pen-name?  Where can the adult browsing their child’s non-fiction library find a 'Glamorous Glennis' going 'kinda screwy' and see how it refers to the breaking of the sound barrier?  In these tidy 48 pages, for one.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119694</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Morris Gleitzman
 
|title=Now
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=We first met Felix in ''Once''. He thought he was the luckiest child in the orphanage, since he was the only one whose parents weren't dead. Sadly, he was wrong about that. We followed his story in ''Then'', in which he and his dear friend Zelda are on the run from the Nazis at the height of the Holocaust and its terrifying Final Solution. In Now, we catch up with Felix many years later. He's built a good life as a surgeon in Australia, and is now frustratingly retired, unable to operate because of his shaky hands. He's looking after his granddaughter, Zelda's namesake, whose parents are doctors volunteering in Darfur. 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014132998X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Carl McInerney
 
|title=The Funniest Football Joke Book Ever
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Who scored the most goals in the Greek Mythology League? The centaur forward. Badoom boom tshhhh. It's a football joke book, packed to the gills with all sorts of cheesiness and silliness. Funniest ever? Perhaps not, but it's not too bad.
+
|summary=At last there is new stock in the impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and her mother run in a seaside town. Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it. She also knows she should be free from worries about being found out, because she has the ability to leave this world, and use an unworldly portal of kaleidoscope colours to enter other worlds, where the sea levels are rising dramatically and the buildings are generally empty of humans and ripe for plunder. With eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything to actually generate custom at the shop?  Well yes, is the answer, but the fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849391114</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1839943769
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jenna Burtenshaw
 
|title=Wintercraft
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|summary=The wardens raid villages and cities for people competent to fight in the war, a war nobody knows anything about other than if you’re sent to fight you don’t come back. The last time they raided Morvane was ten years ago, taking Kate’s parents with them. Kate is taken in by her uncle, Artemis, and grows up in the book shop with him and her friend, Edgar. But now the wardens are back, and looking for more people to fight. However, they are also looking for the Skilled – a dying breed of people who can see through the veil of life and death. They want to build an army of the dead.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755370961</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Natasha Farrant
|author=Sarah Prineas
+
|title=The Rescue of Ravenwood
|title=The Magic Thief: Found
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When we last saw Conn, he had blown up his wizard master's house, was exiled from the city of Wellmet, and lost his locus magicalus (it's like a magic wand, just it's a stone). He's been unable to do magic ever since, which is rough because he needs his powers now more than ever. A terrible evil is blazing a trail towards Wellmet, intent on destroying the city, and Conn's only hope to defeat it is to somehow get a new locus magicalus. He sets out on a quest to find one, but the journey is long and dangerous, and time is running out.
+
|summary=This story is another excellent adventure from the author of ''Voyage of the Sparrowhawk''.  Ravenwood is an old house, in the North of England, where Bea and Raffy have been living for most of their lives.  They are part of a complex, extended family arrangement, as Bea is there with her Uncle Leo, and Raffy is there with his mum, and they are living together as a family. They have grown up swimming in the cove, roaming through the trees, completely at one with all of the nature around the house and loving every inch of the place.  But now the house is under threat, as Leo is under pressure from his other two brothers to sell the property to a developer as it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. The children find themselves worrying not only about where they're going to live, but if they'll even be together, and if Ravenwood itself will be torn down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161917</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0571348785
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson
|author=Paul Cookson
+
|title=Secret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street
|title=The World At Our Feet
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=With the World Cup just around the corner, football is on everyone's lips. Paul Cookson, Poet in Residence at the [http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/ National Football Museum], has compiled the best football poems for young children.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>033051086X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=David Almond
 
|title=The Boy Who Climbed Into The Moon
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Paul lives in the basement of a large tower block. He's feeling lonely and out of sorts, so he feigns a headache and stomach ache and has a day off school. Spending his day wisely, he gets to know the eccentric people who inhabit the building, as well as embracing his own eccentric idea that the moon is actually a hole in the sky.
+
|summary=Jayden's nose is forever in a book, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes and unicorns of the world, for example.  Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that might be out there. The problem, as their mothers see it, is that they are never 'out there' themselves, exploring the outside world of Hackney, London.  But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-minded, educational purpose, and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existed.  For many of those mythological creatures are real, including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footage. The crew of the boat, including a living gargoyle, are tasked with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join in.  Dare they side with Leila, the woman on board, and her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, and become saviours of the unseen?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406314579</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0241573483
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B09XWSXSKY
|author=Carlos Ruiz Zafon
+
|title=Maestro Orpheus and the World Clock
|title=The Prince of Mist
+
|author=Robert Penee and Joanne Grodzinski
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=During World War Two, Max's father decides to move the whole family to a seaside retreat he knows of - a wooden house far away from the city he's grown his family up inNobody seems too keen on the idea, neither of Max's sisters, his mother, nor he - and Max is gifted a pocket watch by his loving, talented mechanic cum engineer cum watchmaker of a father, enscribed as "Max's Time Machine".  But the house they move to, and its surroundings, are full of more successful time machines - a stash of early home videos, a public clock that runs backwards, a sunken shipwreck, a yard full of statues of a stone circus...  And let's not forget the mysterious, spider-eating cat that joins in with proceedings.
+
|summary=Frederick (or Fred, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleep.  A tune, rather like the ticking of a clock was playing over and over in his mind.  It happened every time he came to visit his grandfatherHe hadn't really wanted to come; after all, he's ten now and all those old clocks don't appeal to him anymore.
 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297856421</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
''Who needs old clocks anyway?  All they do is tell the time. And time isn't good for anything...''
|author=James Rollins
 
|title=Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=The prologue to this splendid book recounts a terrifying chase, the discovery of fabulous Mayan artifacts, and a shadowy enemy. And that gripping scene sets the tone for the rest of the book. After the strange disappearance of their parents, who were on an archeological dig on the Mountain of Bones, Jake Ransom and his sister Kady are sent a parcel containing two halves of a Mayan coin, their mother's sketchbook and their father's notebook. There is no indication what these things mean or what to do with them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444000616</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
And that was why he was looking at the clock beside the bedIt was nearly twelve o'clock but at midnight the clock chimed only six timesThere was nothing for it but to go and find grandad - but where was he?  And why had all the clocks stopped at twelve o'clock?
|author=Andy Stanton
 
|title=Mr Gum and the Cherry Tree
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary="Woe, woe, woe, and a bottle of glum" declares a character in this story, and you would to if you shared the sensibilities of Polly, her friend Alan Taylor (the ridiculously named gingerbread man who serves as electrified schoolmaster to some ex-goblins), or any right minded personThe problem is that all the right minded people have switched to being wrong mindedFor the old granny they call Old Granny has declared the Old Times back, and taken the entire village population (except for a magician who vanishes from the story) to a sacred glade in a nearby wood, where a tree spirit of Old is trying to enslave them.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405252189</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Nigel Baines
|author=Gregory Hughes
+
|title=A Tricky Kind of Magic
|title=Unhooking the Moon
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Emerging Readers
|summary=The Rat and Bob are prairie children. Winnipeg is a land ''so flat you can watch your dog run away for three days''. When their father dies and they're orphaned, they are determined to avoid a children's home at all costs and embark upon a road trip to New York City, in search of their long-lost uncle. Bob is pretty much the hanger-on - he knows that the Rat is a special kid who would never make it in an institution and so he puts his fears aside to follow his singular sister.
+
|summary=Cooper loves to perform magic tricks. His father was a magician, and named Cooper after the great Tommy Cooper. But sadly Cooper's father died suddenly, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who to be, or how to be. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking to him, he ''really'' doesn't know what's going on anymore!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849162956</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1444960261
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sophie McKenzie
 
|title=Time Train to the Blitz
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=The summer holidays is a time for relaxing, playing in the sun, and getting bored – precisely what Joe and Scarlett are doing when we encounter them at the beginning of this thrilling book. It is hardly surprising then, that when the two children see a ghostly train racing towards them in the woods, they take a risk and step inside. The train itself is strange, but when they find clothes laid out in the single compartment with their own names marked on them, Joe starts to get really worried. His sister Scarlett, however, is more curious – or more reckless – and she immediately begins to try on the blue dress which has been left for her. And then Joe's phone starts to count down from an hour . . .
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0746097530</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Cookery Reviews]]
|author=Eleanor Updale
 
|title=Johnny Swanson
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary='Strength in What Remains' is the inspirational account of Deogratias, a man who has fled from the genocide and civil war in Burundi (just south of the equator in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda). He escapes to New York, out of fear and want of a safer life; only his new found American life isn't quite what it promised.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385616422</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 08:02, 9 June 2024


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Review of

Childish Spirits: 10th anniversary special edition by Rob Keeley

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Around here, we're big fans of children's author Rob Keeley. He's a ball of happy positivity, he understands children, and he writes for their pleasure and enjoyment, not to lecture or hector.

The Childish Spirits series is one of his greatest achievements. It's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, a stalwart young girl who can cope with anything the spirit world throws at her, and Edward, a spoiled lordling and the first spirit Ellie encounters Full Review

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Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

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Review of

Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial by Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Meet Kit. Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and healer enter specially prepared, century-old, magical mazes, and race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and the points they grant you along the way. Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a new trio of questors is needed. Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. What chance does this friendless, muscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he possibly hope to succeed? Full Review

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Review of

Planet Storyland by James Sherwood Metts

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, new ways to spend time, along came an awful pandemic. Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. Full Review

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Review of

The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival

5star.jpg Confident Readers

Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Full Review

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Review of

The Teacher Who Knew Too Much by Rob Keeley

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

Seventeen banks and a jeweller’s have been raided. The police are baffled, but only Ben knows the truth – his Maths teacher, Miss Judson, is really a safecracker! With police and her gangster boyfriend Al on their trail, Miss Judson and Ben go on the run. But Al needs them for one last job...

Goodness me, that Miss Judson is a terror! How on earth did a nice teacher like her manage to get mixed up with a bad 'un like Al? We'll find out. Luckily for Miss Judson, the pupil who discovers her terrible secret is Ben, the son of a famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some day, and who thinks Miss Judson is worth saving Full Review

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Review of

Black Hole Cinema Club by Christopher Edge

4star.jpg Confident Readers

Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives? Full Review

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Review of

Murray and Bun by Adam Stower

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do… Full Review

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Review of

The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts by Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh

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Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the family. A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran. Full Review

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Review of

The Taming of the Cat by Helen Cooper

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Once again, mice are pitched against cat. In this case, principally, we have Brie the mouse, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case you're seeing a connection, they live in a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem to be the names of cheeses. Anyway, Brie is shunned, scorned and, if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don't match the other mice he lives with. They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – he displays it as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it. And that story-telling will come in handy one night, when he feels all alone and cast out. It's almost as if there were another character from fable who had had to tell stories to keep themselves alive. This makes Brie the top dog in the mouse community, though, as all the others had the chance to half-inch some cheese while the cat was distracted. But will the story have the successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out? Full Review

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Review of

Finding Wonder by Lauren St John

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Roo's life has become almost impossibly difficult. Her mum died when she was young, and now she finds herself awoken in the middle of the night by the police banging on her door to tell her that her dad has dropped dead on his way to the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket. When asked what other family she has, she can only name her aunt, Joni, who she knows her dad didn't think very highly of. But she has no one else, and so off she goes to live with her unreliable aunt. Things continue to get worse for Roo, as when she and Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it breaks down in the middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo! Full Review

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Review of

Oscar's Lion by Adam Baron and Benji Davies

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We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother is more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple of times before he has to be ready for school. But when he enters his parents' bedroom, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion on their bed, looking sheepish, and admitting that he won't be hungry for another two days. But there are benefits to having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat to the bully that ruined a birthday party for Oscar the other month. And it can shapeshift, so he can take it to school and it can get him out of a problem. And it's wonderful to have around the house – not limiting his biscuit intake, being much more lax about the rules, and so on. OK, it can't work a dimmer switch but it can give Oscar a wonderful time. Full Review

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Review of

The Stolen Songbird by Judith Eagle

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Caro's mother, a world-famous whistler, has failed to return home from her recent work trip abroad and is now missing. Her other mother, Ronnie, is having to go up North to take care of her sister who is unwell. So who is going to look after Caro? Sent to stay with Gam, someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated and confused and worried. All her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics are brought to a halt whilst she is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's house, along with an orphan boy, Albie, who is living there too. But she soon finds herself caught up in a mystery, as she discovers a painting of a bird hidden away inside her mum's old suitcase, and all across London a fearsome gang called the Snakes are thieving artworks and terrorising people. Is the painting somehow linked to the gang? And what has happened to Caro's mother? Is she somehow involved in the mystery too? Full Review

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Review of

Nowhere Island by Tania Unsworth

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Meet Gil. Just twelve, he is so determined to escape the care system – the system that constantly puts him in futureless places that are not homes – and find a home for himself. He is en route to yet another fosterer, when he jumps into an anonymous car, and lets it ride him to his future. That future seems to be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag of belongings – but that someone lives with his brother in a camp on an island between the two directions of a motorway, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and seclusion. Them, and a mute girl also finding a home there, albeit so much more successfully. Over a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work… Full Review

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Review of

Friends and Traitors by Helen Peters

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England, WW2. Two young girls are new at the country pile called Stanbrook. One is Nancy, destined to be in service all her life it seems, like the female generations before her. The other is Sidney, a girl from a hoity-toity Sussex boarding school that has been removed there away from bomber flight-paths. The girls are chalk and cheese, and if we hadn't guessed that then their behaviour with each other over their first encounters would only prove it so. But something is amiss, and first separately and then in combination they realise the Lord Evesham must be a rum 'un. Midnight deliveries are received under cover of secrecy, talk is made of meetings with Germans, and not only that, a local Spitfire factory has been attacked. But surely the girls are wrong, and the upper class could never be so underhand? Full Review

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Review of

Arkspire by Jamie Littler

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Two sisters, Juniper and Elodie, born fifteen minutes apart, are growing to be chalk and cheese. Juniper is an eager hunter and trader in illicit magic, including relics from prior major wars left out in the Badlands. Elodie is intent on getting closer to power in one of the religious districts of Arkspire, perhaps even to become the child in line to inherit the power of the Watcher, the closest to a ruler the district has, and one of the five major victors in said earlier war. Being trained in the magic that only five people can use would definitely change the status of the whole family. But in finding something oddly magical, Juniper might just be able to gain some power of her own – for good, or for very, very bad… Full Review

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Review of

Stolen History by Sathnam Sanghera

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I was the bad company other people got into at school. I was disruptive in religious education classes because I disputed the existence of a 'god'. Where was the proof? In history lessons, it was probably worse still. Not too long after the end of WWII, I didn't so much want to learn about the British army's successes (and occasional failures, but we didn't dwell on those) in what came to be called 'the colonies' as want to dispute what right the army had to be there in the first place. Looking back, I still believe I was right - but I regret that I lacked the maturity to approach 'the problem' politely. I wish I'd had Sathnam Sanghera's Stolen History. Full Review

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Review of

Old Gods New Tricks by Thiago de Moraes

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Meet Trixie. Forever getting into scrapes, larks and adventures involving flooding the school aircon with fart powder, she could almost be thought a young goddess of nuisance. But just when she's being told that by her one-last-chance-giving headteacher, the world changes. Suddenly, practically everything electronic stops working – a power-out, even of electric cars, hits not just the town the school's in but the entire planet (apart from mobile phones, and all that powers the Internet, just for our convenience's sake). Trixie, luckily, realises what has happened – the ancient Gods have taken the power of power from us. And so she begins her epic quest, to gather all the people that can steal it back – namely the characters from myth that have past form in stealing from the Gods, ie the semi-deities, giants, half-gods and so on known as the tricksters. Full Review

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Review of

Finding Bear by Hannah Gold and Levi Pinfold

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Last time, April had been on Bear Island, a lot further north than many people would venture, and finding a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with a polar bear – that she called Bear. Back home, things on the domestic and family front are a bit advanced, but not perfect for her, and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the islands Bear was last left on. For a bear doing very Bear-y things has been shot and wounded. Desperate to make sure he's OK, she and her father return to the Arctic and hope that in a world of very white and very dangerous things, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and that the friendship can continue. Full Review

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Review of

Deadlock by Simon Fox

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Late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the run. They get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions. Full Review

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Review of

My Life on Fire by Cath Howe

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Ren's family home is destroyed in a fire. She, her parents, and her little brother lose everything. She doesn't have any of her clothes, or any of her special little knick-knacks from her cupboard, and now she is living at her grandmother's house where they can't touch anything, or do anything, or even eat the foods they normally eat. When she goes back to school she discovers that the class are doing a special art project, creating boxes of their lives, to display things that are important to them and show who they are as a person. But Ren has nothing to put in a box, and so she finds herself starting to steal things. Small things, things that people might not really miss, not when they have so much already. But what will happen to her if someone finds out what she is doing? Full Review

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Review of

The Boy Who Disappeared and Other Stories by Rob Keeley

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Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is back with a return to the short story format! The Boy Who Disappeared treats us to eleven new tales, each as fun to read as his previous offerings. Full Review

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Review of

Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star by Laura Noakes

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Meet Number One. Or rather, Cosima Unfortunate. Or rather, just Cos to her friends. The practice in the home she lives in is for the girls to just be named by the number they correspond to in the ledger, and they're all Unfortunates – young people with disabilities, uncommon mentalities or suchlike that Victorian society frowns greatly upon. But Cosima bears the tag as a surname because nothing else seems to be known about where she came from, as the first ever inmate, and unique in having no known family in the outside world. During a daring escapade to steal some posh cakes from the kitchen one afternoon, she discovers a plan involving said outside world – a devilish Lord Fitzroy seems to want to adopt all the girls for his Institute. But why, and what does that body entail? And could it possibly bring Cos closer to the past she has so little link with? Full Review

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Review of

The Nowhere Thief by Alice M Ross

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At last there is new stock in the impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and her mother run in a seaside town. Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it. She also knows she should be free from worries about being found out, because she has the ability to leave this world, and use an unworldly portal of kaleidoscope colours to enter other worlds, where the sea levels are rising dramatically and the buildings are generally empty of humans and ripe for plunder. With eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything to actually generate custom at the shop? Well yes, is the answer, but the fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions… Full Review

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Review of

The Rescue of Ravenwood by Natasha Farrant

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This story is another excellent adventure from the author of Voyage of the Sparrowhawk. Ravenwood is an old house, in the North of England, where Bea and Raffy have been living for most of their lives. They are part of a complex, extended family arrangement, as Bea is there with her Uncle Leo, and Raffy is there with his mum, and they are living together as a family. They have grown up swimming in the cove, roaming through the trees, completely at one with all of the nature around the house and loving every inch of the place. But now the house is under threat, as Leo is under pressure from his other two brothers to sell the property to a developer as it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. The children find themselves worrying not only about where they're going to live, but if they'll even be together, and if Ravenwood itself will be torn down. Full Review

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Review of

Secret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street by Robin Birch and Jobe Anderson

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Jayden's nose is forever in a book, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes and unicorns of the world, for example. Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that might be out there. The problem, as their mothers see it, is that they are never 'out there' themselves, exploring the outside world of Hackney, London. But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-minded, educational purpose, and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existed. For many of those mythological creatures are real, including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footage. The crew of the boat, including a living gargoyle, are tasked with saving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join in. Dare they side with Leila, the woman on board, and her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, and become saviours of the unseen? Full Review

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Review of

Maestro Orpheus and the World Clock by Robert Penee and Joanne Grodzinski

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Frederick (or Fred, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleep. A tune, rather like the ticking of a clock was playing over and over in his mind. It happened every time he came to visit his grandfather. He hadn't really wanted to come; after all, he's ten now and all those old clocks don't appeal to him anymore.

Who needs old clocks anyway? All they do is tell the time. And time isn't good for anything...

And that was why he was looking at the clock beside the bed. It was nearly twelve o'clock but at midnight the clock chimed only six times. There was nothing for it but to go and find grandad - but where was he? And why had all the clocks stopped at twelve o'clock? Full Review

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Review of

A Tricky Kind of Magic by Nigel Baines

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Cooper loves to perform magic tricks. His father was a magician, and named Cooper after the great Tommy Cooper. But sadly Cooper's father died suddenly, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who to be, or how to be. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking to him, he really doesn't know what's going on anymore! Full Review

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