Regular visitors to the blog will know that fantasy isn’t a genre I naturally gravitate towards; however, I’d heard so many good things about North Child on #bookstagram that I decided to give it a read. Despite her mother’s protestations to the contrary, Rose was born facing North, which according to local lore means that…
I do like to see a well-used book… My 6-year-old is hugely into spy stuff at the moment and this fab Usborne Official Spy’s Handbook, brilliantly illustrated by Colin King, is his bible: it contains all the essential info a good spy needs to know, from dead drops to secret codes, spy rings to decoding…
My son and I have had such a laugh sharing this over the weekend. Polar Bear has lost his underwear (or has he?!) and heads off with his friend, Mouse, to find his pants, discovering many differing styles along the way. My favourites were Cat’s ‘I❤️?’ pair, whereas Hugo was particularly amused by Bunny’s carrot…
While I pre-ordered this last year as I was so desperate to read it, for some very strange reason it then became buried within my To Be Read pile and has only just surfaced. After now reading it, I am absolutely kicking myself for letting it go unread for so long – do not make…
I always get a little bit excited when the postie delivers my new Lisa Thompson book every January – there’s something about her stories that makes me want to drop what I’m doing and just dive straight in. Unfortunately, this year the kids went back to school later than usual so I had to bide…
Billed as a mystery for 10 – 14 year olds, I spotted this as I browsed through Kindle Unlimited and it peaked my interest. Mallow has a secret: she suffers from alopecia. Unfortunately, it looks as though someone has found out and is sending her creepy messages using a chat app. With her Dad working…
Happy New Year! I’ve had to take a break from blogging and social media as life got completely in the way for a while. However, my reading mojo is back with a bang (or is that a bump in the night?) with this fabulously spooky middle grade debut novel by Nick Tomlinson. Young historian Molly…
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t often read fantasy stories because I’m one of those strange people who struggles to suspend belief. However, Kieran Larwood’s Five Realms series has been recommended to me so many times that I decided to give the first in the series a shot, and I have to say that I…
Wow, Saviour Pirotta has really knocked it out of the park with his new, historical junior fiction series. The Stolen Spear – the first of 4 stories – is set in late Neolithic times in what we now know as the Orkneys in Scotland. At the end of the Stone Age, people are meant to…
Regular visitors to the blog will know that we are big fans of Maverick Arts Publishing’s Early Readers as they have had such a big impact on Hugo’s reading journey. Maverick has really invested in its reading scheme over the past 18 months or so and now has over 100 in the range. Up until…