Schools & Libraries Book Reviews

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...

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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....

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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?...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Name: Nicola Jenkin
30 June 2021;

Genre: Friends and family

How to be Me is a beautiful book. Cath Howe has perfectly captured just how important the creative arts are can be. Whether that be in finding self-confidence, making friends, or dealing with trauma. Lucas is feeling very alone. After the death of his mother, his father...

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Name: Rhiannon Cook
30 June 2021;

Genre: Myths & Legends

Simi has always lived in Lagos, a bustling city full of noise and people, so it comes as a huge shock when she is sent to stay with a Grandmother she has never met, in the remote village of Ajao, a quiet place unconnected to modern Nigeria. An air of secrecy shrouds Simi's family life and her...

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Name: Jane Rew
20 June 2021;

Genre: Representation & Inclusion

I like the colour scheme: shades of fluorescent orange and monotone. I like the bold design: the use of placards for headings, the inclusion of a Contents page, Introduction, Note to Reader, and concluding Thanks. I like the humour, evident in the choice of examples covered and in the illustra...

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