Book Reviews From The Bookbag
The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak? by Alison Green and Adam Stower
You might be wondering why anyone would want to stack anything on the back of a yak, but the answer is simple. In this adorable tale, Captain Quack and the Yak (you’ve guessed it, this is a rhyming one) deliver post to the top of a mountain. Along the way the Yak likes to play, and, well, deviate from the track, and no matter how hard he tries, Captain Quack cannot control him. Uh oh. One day, the Yak ends up with a rather more interesting load than his usual parcels and boxes and sacks. Full review...
Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown
There’s something special about tigers. And there’s definitely something special about Mr Tiger. He’s the star of Peter Brown’s picture book, ‘Mr Tiger Goes Wild’. This distinctive book takes the themes of fitting in and being true to who you are, and explores them through the character of one animal who challenges the status quo and dares to be different. Full review...
Global Modernity and Other Essays by Tom Rubens
It’s been difficult to write this review. The book’s eclectic nature, with subject matter ranging from Nietzsche to the English Police Force, makes it difficult to summarise and secondly, I’m no academic and philosophy is just HARD Full review...
Bob Books First by Bobby Lynn Maslen and John Maslen
As a home educator, this simple set of books is one of the most essential educational items I own. I've ended up buying 4 sets, as one was given away to a family in desperate straights, one was water damaged, and most recently a few books out of the last set have disappeared. It is the one thing I just can not manage without, so even though I'm sure they'll turn up eventually, I simply can not wait and ordered a fourth set. I have literally invested hundreds of pounds in phonics programmes, and I have some wonderful resources, but as simple as these books are, they are the one set I can not manage without. They break everything down into such simple terms that even the youngest child can easily get a grasp of how to use phonics to decode new words. It is not even necessary for the child to know their alphabet first, although I would recommend waiting until the child not only knows their alphabet, but also can recognise basic shapes and patterns, knows text is read from left to right, and can recognise a couple of words in print, such as their own name. It is possible to teach a very young child, even as young as two or three to read a few of these books, but it really is best to achieve some degree of reading readiness first. Full review...
Ripley's Believe It or Not! 2014 by Robert Leroy Ripley
I don't normally do annuals. I'm afraid too many of the silly cartoon variety put me off the genre, but this is something completely different. It seems a shame to even call it an annual. Instead I would call this an interactive encyclopaedia of the bizarre, unusual, twisted and absolutely delightful facts that challenge you to 'Believe it or not!' Full review...
Under A Silent Moon by Elizabeth Haynes
On the morning of the first of November 2012 the police were called to a cottage just outside a small English village. A popular, attractive young woman had been found dead and murder was suspected. Was it a coincidence that there was then a report of an apparent suicide of a woman who lived close by? Her car had rolled down into a quarry. For DCI Louisa Smith this was her first major incident and it was complicated when she found that the DI on her team was Andy Hamilton. She'd been in a relationship with him and it lasted until she discovered that he was married. Hamilton hadn't given up on her though - he was still convinced that she would come back to him. Not that he planned on it breaking up his marriage, of course. Full review...
One World Together by Catherine Anholt and Laurence Anholt
A child (from an unknown country) is gallivanting throughout the world looking for a friend. He stops in Brazil and meets Paulo. He would be a good friend. Then he’s off to Morocco where he meets Mohamed. He would be a good friend too. You can see where this is going. From country to country we travel, constantly meeting exciting and interesting new children and learning about their lives. They would all be great friends for our little narrator, but who should he choose? Spoiler alert: he realises you don’t have to have just one friend, and in fact all the children of the world can be friends. Awwww. Full review...
The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton and Shirley Hughes (Illustrator)
Since her mother’s death Annaple Kitson, the oldest child in the family, looks after her father, brothers and sister. The family are none too happy about this arrangement since Annaple is a dreadful cook and nags her younger siblings about tidiness, cleanliness and doing things in a proper manner. Annaple dreams of romance and being swept of her feet by a dashing suitor and as Christmas approaches her father, when asked what he would like for a present, rather rashly, says, 'A husband for your sister.' Unfortunately Annaple’s sweetheart, the wealthy Francis Vere, does not match her romantic expectations so the children plan to help Francis win their sister’s hand in marriage. Francis agrees to their plan with enthusiasm and as the days pass the Kitson family home becomes the setting for an amusing and chaotic version of the carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.' Full review...
Couture Prairie And Flea Market Treasures by Rachel Ashwell
Shabby Chic has always appealed to me: it fits neatly with my views on recycling, upcycling and generally refusing to replace anything which still looks good and has life left in it. Rachel Ashwell takes this to a whole new level, but her most glorious moment must have been when - on her regular yearly visit to the flea markets of Round Top in Texas - she decided on a whim to buy The Outpost at Cedar Creek and she turned this into The Prairie, a group of buildings which would house her retail store and a B&B which exhibited some of her most treasured finds. As she said herself, her cowboy boots, jeans and love of poetry in country music had come home. Full review...
Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years ago by Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold
Think of it as time travel. Three professional historians have travelled back some five hundred years to put what they've learned into practice. On a monastery farm they've experienced what it was really like in rural Tudor England. It's a book to accompany the BBC television series but it's still a rich and rewarding experience if - like me - you missed the show. There's a wealth of experience between the three authors and they write about what they each know best and it's all supplemented by some sumptuous photographs of Bayleaf Farm in west Sussex and the surrounding farmland. Full review...
Young Knights: Pendragon by Julia Golding
What's the best place to hide a bunch of unruly and somewhat excitable pixies on earth? How about the Notting Hill Carnival? Mischief and mayhem abound in a highly amusing scene as a group of changelings, stolen and taken to Avalon over centuries by the Fey, flee with their magical friends from the murderous clutches of Oberon and Morgan and make their way to twenty-first century Britain. In fact this second instalment of the gripping tale about the re-forming of the Round Table abounds with hilarious scenes (Fey royalty on an intercity train, anyone?) but it also has generous helpings of peril, exploits and thrills. Full review...
High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain by Simon Heffer
Between 1840 and 1880 British life and society underwent a gradual but major change. Young adults in the latter year would have seen a very different country from that in which an earlier generation came to maturity. The land in which poverty, disease, squalor and injustice were endemic, and in which the Chartists had agitated for fairer rights for all, had been largely transformed by the modernising factors of social upheaval and industrial change. Full review...
The Con Men: A History of Financial Fraud and the Lessons You Can Learn by Leo Gough
Most people will recognise the now-infamous Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford as crooks who swindled thousands of investors of their hard-earned savings but at one time these individuals had gained stellar reputations in the financial world. In fact Madoff was a former chairman of NASDAQ (originally the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations - now the second-largest stock market comparing to official stock exchanges by market capitalization in the world) and well respected. He’s currently serving 150 in prison for running a 65 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, whilst Stanford was sentenced to 110 years for the same offence. How did they get away with it? This book will tell you how. Full review...
Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) by Anne Cassidy
Just before Christmas, Josh's uncle Stuart falls from a cliff in an horrific accident. Determined to help, Josh, Rose and friend Skeggsie head up to Newcastle for the festive season. Things are awkward between the three. Josh is becoming increasingly paranoid and is convinced they are being followed. Rose is becoming more and more withdrawn, fixating on the deaths she has witnessed. And Skeggsie is resentful at being forever embroiled in other people's problems when he has challenges of his own. Full review...
The First Third Wish (Little Gems) by Ian Beck
This is a lovely story of a lost wish. Cobweb has bungled her very first assignment, losing the third wish meant for a kindly woodcutter. She managed to replace it with a spare, but her job will not be complete until the missing wish is found and returned. It seems a lost wish is very dangerous indeed as it gives the finder an unlimited supply of wishes - and not all people are careful what they wish for. As luck would have it though, the wish has found its way just to the place where it most needed, where it will result in a true happily ever after, not only for the young man who finds it, but for many others as well. Full review...
Bronze Gods by A A Aguire
One of the many reasons I love fantasy is discovering the new worlds that the authors have created. Where is the world? What kind creatures inhabit it? What are the customs, et cetera, et cetera. Steampunk novels are especially fascinating and steampunk mixed with fantasy is the double hit. Throw in some murder most frighteningly horrid and we have the makings of a really good time. Full review...
What a Wonderful World by Marcus Chown
We all wonder about the Big Stuff at one time or another. How does the brain work? How does electricity actually get into our homes and power stuff? Who thought it was sensible to have a soft cheese, a Ferengi and an elementary particle all share the same name? Because that’s not at all confusing. Rather than just think about these things, Marcus Chown has decided to examine and explore them, and share his research. Or, as the subtitle puts it, this is 'One man’s attempt to explain the big stuff'. Full review...
My Friend's a Gris-Kwok (Little Gems) by Malorie Blackman and Andy Rowland
When Mike discovers that his best friend Alex is a Gris Kwok or shape shifter it looks like they are in for some real fun. Not only can Alex change into any creature he wants, he can change anyone touching him as well. There are only three hitches. The first is that Alex can only change three times a day. The second is that his sister has the same powers. The third is that Alex is babysitting and if you think babysitting ordinary siblings is difficult just wait until you see all the mischief a shape shifting toddler can get into. Full review...
Tales from the Dead of Night: Thirteen Classic Ghost Stories by Cecily Gayford (editor)
This collection of classic ghost stories covers all kinds of chilling tales. There are physical ghosts, emotional ghosts, ghosts that are never seen but merely sensed, and even the odd entity that just seems ghostly, even though it might be an ordinary everyday thing - but still makes you feel as if you’ve, well, seen a ghost. Each story is preceded with some information on the author. The stories are from are from several different periods and the settings range from winter nights in England to sultry summers in India. This combines to make for an excellent overview of all kinds of spooky sagas. Full review...
Blackberry Blue and Other Fairy Tales by Jamila Gavin
We never tire of fairy tales, do we? We dream of being carried off into one. We read them over and over. We love the old ones but they do need renewing and retelling every now and again. That's what makes them timeless. And in Blackberry Blue and Other Fairy Tales, the wonderful Jamila Gavin gives us her own take on wicked witches, enchanted forests, talking animals and heroes and heroines who triumph against adversity. Full review...
Alphabet (My First Bob Books) by Sue Hendra and John R Maslen
BOB Books are designed to teach children to read through phonics. I do own several different phonics programmes, and this is one of the best. I feel it is comparable to Hooked On Phonics at a fraction of the price. Another advantage to these books is that you do not need to buy the whole programme in one go. You can buy each set as you need it, and most sets will take at least one term to complete. Full review...
The Secret Kingdom: Leopards' Gold by Jenny Nimmo
Many years after the conclusion to Stones of Ravenglass, Timoken the Red King and his wife have settled down and live with their nine children in a castle which wizards Llyr and Eri turn invisible whenever danger approaches. When the castle bellman disappears and blood is found, though, the children realise that the danger could come from inside the majestic castle. Can brothers Petrello and Tolomeo solve the mystery of the disappearance and protect their family? Full review...
The Castle in the Field (Little Gems) by Michael Morpurgo and Faye Hansen
I think all children love dens. It is almost a primal instinct for children, to find, construct and hide away in huts, dens, tents, or any other place that gives them that sense of their own private place, away from the world. Michael Morpurgo has captured the magic of a secret den perfectly in this story of three friends who find an abandoned WW2 Pillbox and make it into their own private castle. The children are not really meant to be in the pillbox. It is on private property, but they don't really have any place else to go. Two of the children are not allowed to go home until their parents finish work and the third will not leave his best friend out in the weather alone. At first the pillbox is just shelter from a storm, but it soon becomes an embodiment of all the wonder of childhood as the children transform it into a wonderful private retreat. But how long will they be able to keep their special hideout a secret? This is a lovely story with a heart warming theme of friendship, a confrontation with bullies, and the inevitable pangs of growing up. Full review...
Horrid Henry's Royal Riot (Horrid Henry Early Reader) by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross
Horrid Henry has always been popular in our house. Horrid Henry's Early's Readers will always hold a special place in my heart as the books that gave my son the confidence to break into chapter books. The Early Readers have thicker pages, less text per page, more illustrations and the illustrations are in colour. But in many cases they are the exact same stories found in the older children's chapter books. Once my son gained confidence with the early readers, he was able to move up the chapter books, and then the whole world of reading was opened up to him. Full review...
Briony Hatch by Ginny Skinner and Penelope Skinner
Meet Briony Hatch. She's a fourteen year old schoolgirl, with a few too many curves for the trendy set, and want-away hair, who is fixated on the ghost who acts as romantic male lead in her favourite series of fantasy books, about a beautiful, feisty female, swashbuckling exorcist. But when the books finish, just at the same time as her parents divorce, it looks like the beginning of the end. Mum and Briony settle into the abandoned bungalow belonging to the latter's great-uncle and aunt, only for the girl to find a horrid malaise come over her. Has the books' conclusion done so much damage as to leave her wishing to retire from life, or can she find the ghost of a hope somewhere? Full review...
Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls
Olivia is trapped, in a world somewhat of her own making. She is living a life of endless switching from a set of foster parents, to would-be adoptive parents, to care homes. Whenever she fetches up with nice adults, she worries too much about making mistakes, being too violent, clumsy, needy, noisy, spiteful – and prefers then to go the whole hog and make them despair of ever liking her, of losing all kind of sympathy with her. That way she can relax, knowing the truth, knowing the hatred is there – just as it was when her alcoholic mother was abusing and abandoning her and her baby siblings. Olivia is eleven. But in this one new house, with Jim, and his children, and the fostered young-mother-of-a-babe-in-arms, something is different. Something is definitely older than Olivia, and certainly more evil, and most assuredly better at getting its own way… Full review...
The Case of the Love Commandos (Vish Puri Mysteries) by Tarquin Hall
Ram and Tulsi fell in love but their different castes meant that Tulsi's family were completely against their marrying, with Tulsi's father locking her up and saying that he would hunt down Ram. The Love Commandos - a group formed to help mixed-caste couples - came to their aid, but when they liberated Tulsi, Ram was snatched from his hiding place. For Vish Puri, India's 'Most Private Investigator', it was proving to be a difficult month. He'd failed to retrieve some stolen jewels, a pickpocket had removed his wallet (and he had to depend his Mummy-ji to retrieve it) and this case just made everything worse. He could see the problem - but Vish wasn't that convinced about love matches. Then he found that his arch rival, Hari Kumar, was also trying to find Ram - but for whom? Full review...
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
When he was a young boy William Bellman committed one cruel act - he used his catapult to kill a rook. He didn't believe he could do it - believed until the moment that the rook fell that it would fly away before the stone hit - but the rook was dead. It can't be said that the killing worried William and as he grew it seemed that he was a fortunate man. His work satisfied him. He loved his wife and his children, but then tragedy struck and the visits from the stranger in black began. William - now 'Bellman' to most of those who knew him - had a solution. He worked harder, obsessively and he founded a business which was decidedly macabre. And that business was Bellman and Black. Full review...
