children's & YA recommendations on the go
Latest instalment of this best-selling infopedia features brand-new amazing animal stories, explorer profiles, and outrageous attractions that children love, plus more of the incredible inventions, awesome games, and fresh challenges they will want to learn all about.
Practical reference material, including fast facts and maps of every country, has been fully updated. Homework help on key topics is sprinkled throughout the book.
A great home-schooling resource.
The gods are abandoning the earth, tempted by other worlds where they can live in peace. Only a few keep an interest in mortals. In their place, darker, more ancient forces are wakening…
Silvius is given a task by a dying centaur. The dark god Python is rising and massing an army of immense power. The only thing that can save the world is the Arrow of Apollo – but it has been split into two. Silvius and his friend Elissa must travel to the land of their sworn enemies, the Achaeans.
“Much to admire, in this intriguing, ambitious, immersive book.” Literary Review
Times Children’s Book of the Week 28 Mar 2020
First published as Hedvig! in Sweden, 2005. Translated from the Swedish in this edition by the publisher, Julia Marshall of Gecko Press.
Here’s what Alex O’Connell had to say, in selecting it as Children’s Book of the Week in The Times:
Hattie is from the Pippi Longstocking school of clever, anti-establishment little girls who have the capacity for misrule until their conscience kicks in, their hearts turn to fondant and they return to the path of righteousness (while avoiding piety.
…
This is really a collection of the funniest dispatches from [Hatttie’s] first school year.
Orphaned as a child, tormented by her guardian and cast out to a harsh boarding school, Jane Eyre has been raised in the shadow of cruelty and isolation. But when she takes a job as governess in Thornfield Hall, where secrets lurk in the attic and strange laughter echoes through the night, Jane meets the elusive Mr Rochester – and her life is irrevocably transformed.
Poignantly and powerfully retold in this stunning edition, Jane Eyre is the tale of a spirited heroine’s search for love, independence and belonging.
Welcome new edition of Doherty’s 2004 novel…
Grace put out her hand, almost touching the mirror. Her image did the same. ‘There’s another world in there.’ ‘We could float in and out of it.’
Deep in a Derbyshire valley live two girls, twins, so alike that even their family can’t tell them apart. But tragedy is waiting. When the valley is sold to be flooded for a huge dam, the villagers are forced to leave their homes. Deep secrets are uncovered. New characters enter their lives and desires, love and grief come to the surface.
Presented as a collection of engaging biographical narratives, We Are Artists reveals how each artist’s unique approach and perspective provided the art world and society at large with a new way of seeing things. It places the spotlight on women painters, sculptors, printmakers, illustrators, designers and craftswomen, who all too often are left out of history and art history books for children.
Told through court testimony, interrogation records and fragmented flashbacks, The Kingdom has the futuristic appeal of Westworld and the twists and turns of a true-crime thriller.
A gripping fantasy thriller that blends Disney-esque fairytale, android scif-fi and courtroom drama to wonderfully disorientating effect. Beneath the flash and sparkle, though, lies a subtle treatise on political and moral corruption.
published 1 Nov 2019
ACHUKA Book of the Day, Mon 21 Oct 2019
Gripping and humorous debut novel from Norway about friendship and family.
Shortlisted for the Italian equivalent of the Carnegie Medal, the Premio Strega in 2018.
The author is also a scriptwriter and puppeteer.
The illustrator is from Oslo. Her book Jungle Machine is published by Gecko Press.
Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norabrech/
A page-turning and immersive YA novel in verse, telling the story of Lily who is mercilessly bullied at school and who turns to boxing in an attempt to fight back; a story of hope and resilience breaking through even the most difficult situations.
A child’s grandfather (‘Umpa’) teaches them to read and to follow the words, out the garden gate and all the way to the sea. Every day is a new adventure. They visit castles in the air, feast with friends and sail away on the rains. But then one day, Umpa isn’t there…
A moving tale from author-illustrator Victoria Turnbull speaks of the power of books to bring people together, and to help us remember loved ones when they’re no longer with us.
Turnbull writes on her website: “I love stories. I have always loved stories. However, it was a long time before I could see myself as a storyteller. I was born in York, in the North of England. My childhood was spent drawing and making things. I got in to writing later in life, on a masters degree in Children’s Book Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. It was there I discovered picture books to be the most wonderful way in which to tell stories.”
In this Books for keeps feature she describes how she “combined my pencil drawings in Photoshop and printed them out onto watercolour paper. I used washes of pigment and linseed oil to build up colour before adding more detail in coloured pencil. I wanted this illustration to have a warm colour palette. My own childhood memories have a yellow colour cast like an old photograph. Yellow is the colour of summer; the colour of my grandfather’s favourite flowers; the colour of hope.”