Schools & Libraries Book Reviews

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  • Shadow Chaser

    Shadow Chaser

    Name: Kristen Hopwood
    10 July 2021;

    Genre: Adventure

    Shadow Chaser starts with an introduction to the story and then instructions for how to play. There is a 'log book' that you need to fill in each time you play to keep track of items, life points and items you have collected. You can download copies from the Usborne website, w...

  • A Glasshouse of Stars

    A Glasshouse of Stars

    Name: Louisa Farrow
    09 July 2021;

    Genre: Representation & Inclusion

    A Glasshouse of Stars is the story of Meixing arriving in the New Land with her family to begin a New Life. Everything is different and scary: their new house, school and even her parents' behaviour. When disaster strikes, life becomes scarier still and yet Meixing finds frien...

  • Mystery of the Night Watchers

    Mystery of the Night Watchers

    Name: Beverley Somerset
    08 July 2021;

    Genre: Mystery & Detective

    It is 1910, and the forthcoming arrival of Halley's Comet is causing excitement and fear around the world. 12-year-old Nancy and her younger sister Violet have their lives suddenly turned upside down when their mother takes them off to Suffolk to visit a grandfather they had always thought was...

  • Me and the Robbersons

    Me and the Robbersons

    Name: Kelly Buxton
    08 July 2021;

    Genre: Funny Stories

    An absolute riot of a book that will make you laugh from cover to cover! 12-year-old Maisie is locked in the car with her annoying older sister, Primrose, on the way to Grandma's. It's the summer holidays and it seems set to drag on and on. Maisie longs for adventure and never suspects that sh...

  • The Time Traveller and the Tiger

    Name: Kelly Buxton
    08 July 2021;

    Genre: Environment & Nature

    Imagine starting into a flower that only flowers once in its lifetime one moment and stumbling back in time before you were even born the next. Well for Elsie that is exactly what happens while she is visiting her Uncle John, who she has never met, to while away the long summer holidays....

  • The Time Traveller and the Tiger

    Name: Jacqueline Harris
    08 July 2021;

    Genre: Environment & Nature

    Elsie has to stay with her Great Uncle John, who lived in India when he was younger. He talks about the terrible thing he regrets doing when he was still a child. Elsie is catapulted back through time to India in the 1940s; can she put that mistake right? Or is it wrong to try and change time?...

  • My Big Mouth

    My Big Mouth

    Name: Jennifer Caddick
    01 July 2021;

    Genre: Friends and family

    The funny and poignant story is about 10 year old Jay, trying to deal with the emotional turmoil created by the unexpected and unexplained event of his dad leaving the family home. Jay is confused and feeling helpless and abandoned when (on making up an excuse for not doing his homework) it se...

  • The House on the Edge

    The House on the Edge

    Name: Jacqueline Harris
    01 July 2021;

    Genre: Friends and family

    Faith lives in a house on the edge of the cliff. There are cracks in the house and cracks in the family. Her father has left, and her mother is no longer functioning properly, clearly deep in depression. Faith looks after her mother, her brother Noah, and the house. She is not managing very we...

  • The Incredible Talking Machine

    The Incredible Talking Machine

    Name: Linda Canning
    01 July 2021;

    Genre: Magical Realism

    The Incredible Talking Machine has all the elements of a truly fantastic children's book: it has great characters (protagonists to root for and villains to detest), it's entirely unpredictable, it's the perfect level of creepy and it has the undercurrent of an unsolved mystery. I thoroughly en...

  • The House on the Edge

    The House on the Edge

    Name: Jane Rew
    30 June 2021;

    Genre: Friends and family

    This isn't just an adventure story involving three children - Faith, her younger brother Noah, and Sam - on the run, on the lookout for treasure, hope, a secure home. Nor is it a simple story of ghosts - as if ghosts were real anyway! Nor yet is it just about shattered families and friendships...