Latest Reviews
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Charlie Merricks Misfits in Fouls, friends and My World Cup
Name: Melanie Chadwick
30 April 2014;Genre: Real life
Full of action, both on and off the pitch, this book is bang on target. Charlie Merrick's bunch of misfit friends love football, but they're just not very good at it. Their team, North Star Galaxy, are desperately fighting the battle against relegation in the under 12s league. Their chances do...
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Evie Brooks is Marooned in Manhattan
Name: Melanie Chadwick
29 April 2014;Genre: Adventure
I liked the way the book hooks you in by starting with an action-packed scene from near the end of the book where Evie is stuck in a rubbish shoot trying to escape security guards. The rest of the book builds up to that moment and explains why she gets into such a predicament. Evie's mum has di...
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Stars in Jars
Name: Alison Young
28 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
The lovely, rhythmic opening poem ('Sky-High' p. 9) in this collection gives the book its title: William's rocket trip to the moon and beyond sees him returning with a 'trail of stars' that he brings home to keep them 'safe in jars'. It's an appropriate metaphor for the poems in this book as they...
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Oi Frog!
Name: L Voisey
24 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
If you've not yet had the pleasure of Oi Frog, then do try to seek out a copy. Oi Frog is a great story for reading aloud and early readers will also be able to manage it. As well as being a tongue-in-cheek look at phonics (frogs sit on logs; woe betide the frog that wants to sit on something mor...
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My Funny Family's Got Talent
Name: Lucy Russell
19 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
Mattie is part of a large and chaotic family, where money is in short supply but love and affection certainly is not. This story continues the ups and downs of daily life with Mattie deciding to organise a 'Royal Variety Performance' for her mum's birthday. As she goes about recruiting acts and t...
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A Room Full of Chocolate
Name: Mikeala Morgans
12 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
Grace's dad has moved out and her mum needs to go to hospital. Try as she might to convince her mum to let her stay, she is sent to live on a farm in Yorkshire with her temperamental estranged Grandfather. She quickly meets and forms a strong bond with the free spirited Megan, her pig - Claude...
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Half Bad
Name: Melanie Chadwick
12 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
Although most humans dont even know of their existence, White Witches and Black Witches are at war with each other within modern society. Nathan is persecuted at school, has his movements restricted and is constantly watched because he is a Half Code; half White and half Black. He is 14 when he...
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The Everest Files
Name: Melanie Chadwick
10 March 2014;Genre: Adventure
Ryan, a gap year student, is delivering medical supplies to a remote village in the Himalayas when he stumbles upon a mystery. He meets Shreeya, a young Sherpa girlwhose boyfriend Kami was employed on an Everest expedition but who never returned; all she has is reports that he is neither alive n...
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My Name is Parvana
Name: Tracy Hart
23 February 2014;Genre: Adventure
Through the experiences of a young girl, 15-year-old Parvana (Deborah Ellis has introduced her previously in The Breadwinner, Pavana's Journey and Mud City), the reader learns what life is like for the people, particularly women, of Afghanistan. Suspicion surrounds a land that has been divided...
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Blackberry Blue
Name: Charlotte Eilenberg
18 February 2014;Genre: Adventure
Blackberry Blue is the title story of one of six magical fairy tales in Jamila Gavins inventive new book of the same title. Drawing on the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, these adventurous tales interweave the traditional with the culturally diverse, to give them a more modern flavour...
