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The Baker by the Sea by Paula White

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 1 Jul 2022

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“The artistry and scope of the images, balanced by spare, understated and poetic language, make this a book to return to again and again, both to relish the delicate beauty of the images and to appreciate the way Paula White captures a sense of community, family and pride in this village where the land meets the sea.” Just Imagine
“Skilled draughtsmanship, mostly in black and white, conjures up evocative scenes from an old Suffolk fishing village… This nostalgic book is about a baker’s son and the contribution made by every individual in a small community.” Sunday Times
“This is a simply lovely book. A great story and wonderful illustrations that evoke a different age where everyone is valued.” 5 star Amazon review

An atmospheric look at an older way of life, and a  reminder that everyone is important, no matter how seemingly small their role.

If you keep walking over the hills and across the fields, you will come to the edge, where the land meets the sea. And on this edge lies a village. This is my home. A young boy watches the grown-ups in his village go about their work. Everyone is busy: the blacksmith, the boat-builder, the baker. But most important of all, he thinks, are the fishermen who bring in the catch. The boy’s father is a baker, but he wants to be a daring fisherman when he grows up, brave enough to sail through stormy seas. He asks his father, “Have you ever been to sea?”

sample spread

Paula White grew up by the sea in Suffolk. She has worked as an artist and textile designer for many years, and was also a lecturer in Visual Studies, teaching drawing and printmaking. In 2018 she graduated from the Children’s Book Illustration MA at the Cambridge School of Art with distinction. The Baker by the Sea was the overall winner of the 2019 Templar Illustration Award for the first version of this book, titled Bread, Buns And Biscuits.

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The Fog Catcher’s Daughter by Marianne McShane ill. Alan Marks

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 20 Jun 2022

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“A haunting, lyrical, original tale that leans into the magic and mystery of the Emerald Isle.”
KIRKUS
“Delicately worked watercolors by Marks (Daring Dozen) capture the dance of land and sea: frothy waves, shrouds of mist, and, with just a hint of menace, the icy, wraith-like fairies themselves. ” Publishers Weekly

 

“There was a girl in Ireland. Eily was her name. She lived with her father the Fog Catcher in a little cottage three fields from the sea.”

Isn’t that a marvellous opening? An original story with the atmosphere of a traditional tale beautifully illustrated by Alan Marks.

A daughter embarks on a perilous journey to rescue her father in this beautiful, eerie, and timeless original folktale. Eily and her father live in Ireland, three fields from the sea, within sight of the enchanted isle of Lisnashee. The fairy folk who live there cause mischief and harm to any who trespass, but once a year at Midsummer, Eily’s father, the Fog Catcher, rows out to collect magic from the fog around the island. His sole protection is a charm tucked in his pocket, and when Eily finds the lost charm in a hedgerow after he departs, she knows at once what she must do. Haunting watercolour paintings evoke the beauty of the Irish coastline in an imaginative coming-of-age tale about honouring the past and taking courage with an open heart.

Follow Irish storyteller Marianne McShane on Instagram:

Rez Dogs by Joseph Bruchac

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2022 Boston Globe–Horn Book Fiction and Poetry Award Honor Book

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“Hidden throughout this moving novel in verse, old stories are discovered like buried treasures.” KIRKUS
“Bruchac , who is Abenaki, pens a spare novel-in-verse that richly addresses an array of subjects, including Wabanaki legends and beliefs, residential schools, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the difficulties of online schooling with insecure Wi-Fi.” Publishers Weekly

Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation. She’s there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There’s a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration.

Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family and community safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn’t go outside to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories. And when Malsum, one of the dogs living on the rez, shows up at their door, Malian’s family knows that he’ll protect them too.

Told in verse inspired by oral storytelling, this novel about the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the ways Malian’s community has cared for one another through plagues of the past, and how they keep caring for one another today.

Find out more about the author, and listen to him read some of his poems, on his website:
https://www.josephbruchac.com 

The Upper World by Femi Fadugba

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 28 Jun 2022
Shortlisted 2022 YA Book Prize
Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Month 5 Sep 2021

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“Fadugba’s debut dazzles, particularly when it comes to dialogue—the London slang flows with ease, adding to the sense of place. Themes of code-switching, found families, and loss resonate strongly as well. The novel includes diagrams and scientific explanations for the physics that drives the story. Much of the cast is Black, including Esso, whose family is from Benin, and Rhia, who is living in foster care. A riveting thriller that creatively incorporates scientific elements. (math and physics information).” KIRKUS 
“A complex book filled with challenging ideas that will keep readers thinking for a long time after putting it down.” Children’s Books Ireland

This epic thriller is soon to be a major Netflix movie starring Academy Award winner Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Black Panther, Judas and the Black Messiah).

Esso is running out of time and into trouble. When he discovers he has the ability to see glimpses of the future, he becomes haunted by a vision of a bullet fired in an alleyway with devastating consequences. A generation later, fifteen-year-old Rhia is desperately searching for answers – and a catastrophic moment from the past holds the key to understanding the parents she never got to meet. Whether on the roads of South London or in the mysterious Upper World, Esso and Rhia’s fates must collide. And when they do, a race against the clock will become a race against time itself . . .

Recommended Guardian feature…

The Secret Life of Butterflies by Roger Vila ill. Rena Ortega

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 27 Jun 2022

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A beautifully illustrated book on the fascinating lives of these delicate creatures.

Butterflies existed long before humans and even fluttered among the dinosaurs, but what do you really know about them? The Secret Life of Butterflies follows this fascinating insect through its four different stages of life – from egg, to caterpillar, to pupa and to its final form as a fully grown butterfly. You’ll find out how to tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth, and discover what they eat, what they do extreme temperatures, and what we can do to save them from extinction.

See also The Secret Life of Whales, an ACHUKA Book of the Day in April 2021.

Rena Ortega is an illustrator and graphic designer from Barcelona, based in Galicia. She paints in watercolour, especially for natural world illustration projects and also draws digitally with an Ipad. In her work she seeks to raise awareness about the beauty of this world and promote the conservation.

Follow her on Instagram and take a look inside the pages of the Spanish edition of this book:

 

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Special Delivery: A Book’s Journey Around the World by Polly Faber ill. Klas Fahlen

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 24 Jun 2022

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A superbly and distinctively illustrated guide following the journey of one book across the globe, from a printing press in a factory far, far away, over land and across the sea, to the hands of a young boy.

With stylish, contemporary artwork from Klas Fahlen and gentle narrative text by Polly Faber, this gorgeous picture book introduces all the people, processes and vehicles involved in delivering the perfect gift! From factory workers and train drivers to container ship captains, post office workers and booksellers, children will be fascinated to find out how the very book they are holding in their hands made its way all around the world! Bonus non-fiction material includes three pages of fantastic fully illustrated special delivery facts to inspire and delight curious readers.

Idol Gossip: A K-Pop Dream Come True by Alexandra Leigh Young

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“This is a fast-paced, captivating inside look at what lies behind the glitz of the K-pop industry. Alice’s road to fame highlights cultural differences, self-discovery, sisterhood, and empathy. The narrative is laced with blog posts that help move the story forward and give background information. Korean dialogue is romanized. An entertaining read unveiling the people behind K-pop glam.  A debut novel about standing out and fitting in, dreaming big and staying true.” KIRKUS

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2007, Alexandra Leigh Young moved to New York City where she ran an audio post-production house called Explosion Robinson. In 2014 she was awarded an artist residency in South Korea in 2014, where she fell in love with a new kind of music: K-pop. After spending a year reporting on South Korea’s music industry, she returned to the US and produced her first podcast episode for Radiolab, called “K-poparazzi”. The episode was the inspiration for this debut novel.

K-pop gets the Gossip Girl treatment when Alice Choy is catapulted into the life of a manufactured popstar at the elite Top10 Entertainment’s Star Academy.

When seventeen-year-old Alice Choy moved from San Francisco to Seoul, she left behind her friends and the regular singing lessons she used to love. Now the only singing she does is karaoke with her little sister in Myeongdong. That is, until she’s spotted by a scout for Top10 Entertainment and invited to attend their Star Academy. But sculpting herself into one-fifth of soon-to-be-launched K-pop group A-List is hard work. It’s rising at dawn for lung-crushing cardio, dancing drills and calorie controlled meals. It’s egos and rivalry and secrets lived outside of the public eye, because if A-list gets on the wrong side of a certain influential blogger and the anti-fans, then Alice’s dreams of being an idol might never materialise.

Alexandra Leigh Young discusses Idol Gossip from Candlewick Press on Vimeo.

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Red Scare: A Graphic Novel by Liam Francis Walsh

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 22 Jun 2022

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Forbidden Planet

“Walsh’s breathtaking action sequences call to mind the crime comics of the great American duo Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, while his characters’ facial expressions and expressive body language will remind you of Hergé’s “The Adventures of Tintin.” The inking of the panels, with its dramatic play of light and shadows, is squarely within the tradition, but a singular creative decision sets Walsh above his influences: his use of color. Instead of adhering to naturalistic coloring, Walsh shifts his color palette within sequences according to the emotional state of his characters. The tension between realistic inking and symbolic coloring is not unlike the tension between text and subtext in well-written dialogue.”
New York Times
“As I paged through a book so thoroughly enmeshed in history and science fiction by turns, I marveled that something this accomplished is just so casually available to kids these days. When I was young you had your Carl Barks at the 7-11, if you were lucky, and the newspaper comic collections at the library. Now we get gripping, thoughtful, historical/science fiction hybrids for kids that have a lot to say to young readers today.” Fuse8

A page-turning sci-fi adventure set in 1953, featuring a clever girl who, against all odds, must outsmart bullies, the FBI, and alien invaders during the height of the communist Red Scare.

sample page

Peggy is scared: She’s struggling to recover from polio and needs crutches to walk, and she and her neighbors are worried about the rumors of Communist spies doing bad things. On top of all that, Peggy has a hard time at school, and gets taunted by her classmates. When she finds a mysterious artifact that gives her the ability to fly, she thinks it’s the solution to all her problems. But if Peggy wants to keep it, she’ll have to overcome bullies, outsmart FBI agents, and escape from some very strange spies!

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Adventures in Time: Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile by Dominic Sandbrook

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 21 Jun 2022

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Already the fifth book in Dominic Sandbrook’s children’s history series. Adventures in Times is a fantastic series written by a historian with a novelistic flair for high incident. In an Author’s Note at the end of this book, he explains that, because little is known about Cleopatra’s early years, and the rest of historical evidence comes mainly from the Romans who naturally had a negative view of her, “this book is a little different from other Adventures in Time… You may be surprised, though, to learn that the really outlandish stories are based on historical evidence.”

This title joins

Cleopatra has always known she was destined to be queen of Egypt. And when she defeats her own brother to win the throne, it is clear that the gods are on her side. Join historian Dominic Sandbrook as we follow the most famous queen of all from Alexandria to Rome, through doomed love affairs and epic battles, to the serpent’s bite which will change the course of history forever…

Release by Lucy Christopher

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ACHUKA Book of the` Day 20 Jun 2022

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This book is published for adults (by Australian indie publisher, Text) but is a sequel to the author’s YA novel Stolen and, as such, can be recommended for readers of that earlier book, and indeed to any YA readers who routinely mix the reading of adult and YA fiction.

Ten years ago (as told in the book Stolen) sixteen-year-old Gemma Toombs was kidnapped from Bangkok Airport by an infatuated drifter, Tyler MacFarlane, who took her to a secret den in the Australian desert. Now her name is Kate Stone and it’s her turn to confront Ty and try to find answers to the questions that have obsessed her since her ordeal. What is the legacy of this coercive relationship? Who holds the cards now? In the confusion of past and present, will Kate remain trapped in a deranged dance of desire and revenge? Or will she regain control and find release?

Both a courtroom drama and a road trip in the searing heat of the West Australian desert, Release is the story of two people confronting each other, each intent on destruction and survival.

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