I’ve had this book buried in my electronic TBR for the longest time and for some strange reason, it called out to me yesterday and I’m truly glad it did. Set in Austria towards the end of WW2, it tells the story of a Jewish boy and Roma girl who risk their lives transporting Lipizzaner…
My daughter and I have been on the road a fair bit recently, so audio books have been keeping us company in the car. Judging by the fact that Anna didn’t speak for an entire 2.5-hour journey (a full-blown miracle), I’d say she was totally captivated by this ghostly time-slip adventure. Evie, a typical teenager…
Did you know that the collective noun for a group of pugs is a grumble, the giant squid has a brain shaped like a doughnut, and that employees in India’s fisheries dept HQ work in a building shaped like a giant fish? If these sorts of interesting facts float your boat, then this book is…
My first book of 2023 and it’s a corker. Like my last read (or ‘listen’, considering it was an audio book 😁), this is a magical, wintery tale, but whereas The Ice Children was based in the present, this is set during the Great Frost of 1683. After losing her twin brother 4 years earlier,…
Well, it’s fair to say that reading has pretty much fallen by the wayside for me this year, for a variety of reasons but mostly because either my head hasn’t been in the right place or time has been short. I have been trying, though, to plug the gap with podcasts and audio stories, with…
I’m back to sitting in the car park on a Saturday morning while my daughter is at drama club, which means an hour of quality reading time in the peace and quiet – hurrah! Today’s story is Polly Pecorino: The Girl Who Rescues Animals, which is both written and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark. Polly…
This is one of my most favourite contemporary adventure stories and so I’m not quite sure why I haven’t shared this before! Ever since Tom’s accident, he has struggled to walk. but he has a secret escape: Skylark, his drone. Through this technology, he can fly above his Lake District home, exploring the world from…
A beautiful day here in South Lincolnshire and a beautiful book to accompany it! Birdsong is the latest addition to the brilliant Barrington Stoke super-readable novella series, principally designed to help dyslexic and reluctant readers develop a love of reading, but also great for readers who enjoy shorter stories. It tells the story of Annie,…
What a fantastic middle grade read this is. It was one of those stories where I didn’t quite know what to expect. I started it one evening expecting to read a few chapters before bed and then before I knew it, it was late into the night and I was turning the last page! I…
A beautiful morning here in South Lincolnshire, with such a lovely book keeping me company. The Book Cat is based on real-life cat, Morgan, a stray who set up home at Faber and Faber during WW2 as resident mouser and door cat. In this story, Morgan embodies the Blitz spirit, helping those felines less fortunate…