Schools & Libraries Book Reviews

Name: Sue Wilsher
18 August 2023;

Genre: Family & Home

Adam Sinclair lives in a lovely house. He has a huge treehouse to himself, a private tutor, plenty to eat and loving parents who dote on him. However, since his recovery from Leukaemia, his overprotective mother wants to keep him safely at home so he is not able to make friends or return to th...

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Name: Jacqueline Harris
18 August 2023;

Genre: Historical Fiction

Winifred Weatherby is a not so ordinary school girl who suddenly finds herself catapulted into the world of spies. These spies are all young ladies, set up to provide support for Queen Victoria. A mysterious person called The Magpie is causing mischief and possibly putting royal lives in dange...

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Name: Julie Broadbent
17 August 2023;

Genre: Representation & Inclusion

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is an author, a social activist, an engineer and a broadcaster. After visiting young people in schools, she asked them what they wanted to know about racism and social injustice. Stand Up and Speak Out Against Racism is the result of the conversations that...

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Name: Donna Ritchie
17 August 2023;

Genre: Historical Fiction

1940 is where the prologue to The Stolen Songbird begins, where we meet a boy and a girl (no names mentioned - which made it a mysterious beginning). Then a jump to 1959, where we meet a rabbit. The way the author describes this rabbit led me to believe that he had a very impo...

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Name: Elen
17 August 2023;

Genre: Mental Health & Wellbeing

The Bear Behind is a fun and comforting picture book for any child who is nervous about starting school, or any other new experiences. For little Ivor, his nervousness about starting school is very real - so when he turns around and spots a great big purple bear behind...

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Name: Louisa Farrow
16 August 2023;

Genre: Family & Home

Lina’s family went to America five years ago, but she stayed behind with her grandmother - until now! At last she’s going to join them! When she arrives, life in America is quite different from the way she imagined it (from watching The Simpsons and from her mother’s letters). At school, it’s...

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Name: Amanda Shipton
14 August 2023;

Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels

In Peanut, Butter & Crackers: River Rescue, the pets are off to the great outdoors in their human's camper van. Everything is going fine until Butter, the indoor cat, realises that their human has not brought a litter tray! There must be one in the forest, right, how else...

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Name: Linda Brown
14 August 2023;

Genre: Fantasy

The Third Daughter is the first book in a new series that explores sisterhood, deception, control, magic and power with a background of a slow burning sapphic romance. For many years the citizens of Velle have waited for their New Maiden to return. The prophecy states s...

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Name: Linda Brown
11 August 2023;

Genre: Fantasy

Bonesmith is the first book in the House of Dead series. This is a dark YA fantasy with a Game of Thrones (White Walkers) feel about it...    When Wren, a bonesmith, is sent to the Border Wall of the Dominions as a punishment, she must find a way to pro...

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Name: Jenny Caddick
11 August 2023;

Genre: Adventure

A clever adventure fantasy with a strange dystopian future at its heart. It is a story so relevant to our current time; themes of climate change and powerful, society controlling technology make the events seem all the more relatable, thought-provoking and easily imagined. The world has...

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