J.L. Morin’s new book is an ‘eco-loving romance’ in which ‘two teens fight to save the universe from polluters.’ In what is billed as a thought-provoking adventure, the two young protagonists inadvertently invent eco-friendly living computers in a world where the human race have allowed corporations to pollute Earth beyond recognition […]
It’s nice to see steampunk moving more into the mainstream, and Nick Cook has used it to create quite a page-turner. Cloud Riders is a story about Dom, who lives in Tornado Alley with his mum at their family diner. His dad, a storm chaser, disappeared after flying into a […]
It’s business as usual for time-travelling Tom Afflick when he comes back to Edinburgh to visit his mum and her boyfriend, Hamish, for part of his summer holidays. Only this time, after he has a small altercation with Hamish at the National Museum of Scotland resulting in yet another bumped […]
Crow Boy by Philip Caveney is an engagingly written time-travel adventure. It is cunningly plotted with an elegant twist involving one of its central figures, the 17th-century Edinburgh plague doctor George Rae. Its 21st–century hero, Tom Afflick, is a ‘sassenach’, an outsider. Originally from Manchester, he has been brought to […]
The second book in the Animal Stories series by Barefoot Books is just like its predecessor: delightful. Based on a story from Korea, Never Trust a Tiger tells of a merchant who, while on his way to market with his bag of spices, frees a tiger trapped in a pit. […]
The first book in the Animal Stories series by Barefoot Books is simply delightful. Reminiscent of Aesop’s The Tortoise and the Hare, The Tortoise’s Gift is a lesson in perseverance and humility from Zambia, retold by Lari Don. It focuses on a group of animals during a hot summer. The […]
The first instalments of the new What do the grown-ups do? series, Joe the Fisherman and Papa the Stockfarmer are educational books aimed at teaching five to ten year olds about the world of work, following the Mackenzie girls as they ask adults questions about their jobs. I’ll start with […]
R.J. Palacio’s debut novel Wonder is billed as the ‘unforgettable, life-affirming’ story of August ‘Auggie’ Pullman, a boy born with Treacher Collins Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder involving severe craniofacial deformities. Told from multiple first-person viewpoints including the protagonist’s, the story covers home-schooled Auggie’s fraught entry into an elite Manhattan […]
