ACHUKA Children's Books UK

children's & YA recommendations on the go

You are here: Home / Archives for bullying

The Cooking Club Detectives by Ewa Jozefkowicz

By Leave a Comment

Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

“A beautifully observed story about the power of food and friendship” The Bookseller
“Tackling food poverty and online bullying head on, and featuring a puppy called Sausage (I can’t even speak for the genius of it all), I dare to defy anyone who will not instantly fall in love with Erin and her fellow detective buddies.” Onjali Q. Rauf

Meet Erin, her puppy Sausage and friends as they swap recipes and pots for clues and culprits and try to solve the mystery of why their cookery club is closing and save it for everyone. The fourth middle-grade book from Waterstones-shortlisted author Ewa Jozefkowicz about family, friendship and self-discovery, touching on themes of food poverty and online bullying.

Skipton House Community Centre may look ramshackle, but it is soon at the heart of Erin’s life – especially the cooking club. When the building is suddenly threatened with closure, Erin and her new friends, Tanya, Frixos, and Sam, form The Cooking Club Detectives. Can they, and their four-legged assistant, Sausage, uncover who the mystery culprit is and save Skipton?

A beautifully observed 9+ story about the power of food and the importance of community.

Listen to the author speak about her debut [2019] novel, The Mystery Of The Colour Thief

 

Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell & Fiona Wood

By Leave a Comment

Waterstones
Amazon

Three authors. Three appealing and relatable characters. One smart YA novel about a trio of unlikely friends who team up to take down the school cyberbully.

Popular Ady seems cool and confident at school, but at home her family is falling apart. Brainiac Kate wants to pursue her dreams of playing music, even if it jeopardizes her academic scholarship. And swim champ Clem finds herself disenchanted with the sport . . . and falling for a very wrong boy. When these three very different girls are forced to team up in a wellness class, they’re not too pleased. But over time, they bond–and when they’re all targeted by PSST, a website that dishes out malicious gossip and lies, they decide to take a stand, uncover the culprits, and fight back. But can they really fix a broken system?

With each girl’s story told by a different author, as well as intriguing questionnaires from the wellness class included throughout, this empowering novel explores today’s most relevant topics– from cyberbullying and fat shaming to drug abuse and financial stress.

What We’re Scared Of by Keren David

By Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day Wed 27 Jan 2021
[Holocaust Memorial Day]

Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

“I have written an issue book, and although I have furnished it with (I hope) engaging characters and an exciting plot, I do not care about those half as much as I care about the issue I am writing about. 

My book is about antisemitism –  my ‘issue’. It’s about an ancient hatred that murdered my great-grandfather and all his family, including a little girl that my grandmother told me about when I was a child. They’d visited my great-grandfather in Warsaw, in the 1930s, and they were begged to take the girl home with them to Wales. They refused: ‘How could we take her?’ She had no papers to come to Britain,’ my grandmother explained, still haunted decades later by the sure knowledge of that child’s fate.” Keren David

Evie and Lottie are twin sisters, but they couldn’t be more different. Evie’s sharp and funny. Lottie’s a day-dreamer. Evie’s the fighter, Lottie’s the peace-maker. What they do have in common is their Jewishness – even though the family isn’t religious. When their mother gets a high-profile job and is targeted by antisemitic trolls on social media, the girls brush it off at first – but then the threats start getting uglier. . . What We’re Scared Of is a taut thriller, a tale of sibling friendship and rivalry – and a searing look at what happens when you scratch beneath the surface.

“There are many children’s books about the Holocaust (and one famous one that shamefully buries its truth in a ‘fable’), but my book is about modern day antisemitism as well. About hate that flows through the open sewer that social media can become. About nasty girls making snotty, hurtful remarks about their classmates. About tropes and fantasy and denial, conspiracy theories and lies. And bricks through windows, assaults in the street and  attempts to murder Jews in Jewish places.” Keren David

For 10+


 

I Am The Minotaur by Anthony McGowan

By Leave a Comment

Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

Matthew is 14 and is struggling to fit in – something that’s extra hard when you’re taking care of your mum, being bullied at school, and have earned the nickname Stinky Mog because of your poor personal hygiene. On top of all that, he wants to catch the attention of one of the coolest girls in school, Ari. Ari doesn’t walk: she floats, like mist on the water. And she’s as sporty as she is cool.
When Ari’s brand new bike is stolen, Matthew spots his chance to make a good impression by getting it back for her… But will he just end up in even more trouble or is Matthew is about to learn that friendship and heroes can be found in unlikely places?
A gritty and touching story of one teenager’s struggles with bullying and isolation.

Anthony McGowan was awared the Carnegie Medal last year (2020) for Lark.
See also: 
The Truth Of Things
Rook

Stick Boy by Paul Coomey

By Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 4 Jan 2021
Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

It’s tough fitting in when you’re born to stick out!
From the moment Stick Boy and his family move to Little Town, there is way more to worry about than being the new kid. There’s a mysterious plot involving Baron Ben’s new Mega Mall, pop star Jonny Vidwire and the highly suspicious HomeBots that are infiltrating every home in town. Can Stick Boy and his friends uncover the evil plan behind it all before it’s too late?

Follow Paul Coomey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr.coomey/
The book has its own website: https://stickboy.tv

A peak inside:

The Night Bus Hero by Onjali Q. Rauf

By Leave a Comment

New book from the author of The Boy At The Back Of The Class, the 2019 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize winner.

I’ve been getting into trouble for as long I can remember. Usually I don’t mind ‘cos some of my best, most brilliant ideas have come from sitting in detention. But recently it feels like no one believes me about anything – even when I’m telling the truth! And it’s only gotten worse since I played a prank on the old man who lives in the park.
Everyone thinks I’m just a bully. They don’t believe I could be a hero.
But I’m going to prove them all wrong…

Told from the perspective of a bully, this book explores themes of bullying and homelessness, while celebrating kindness, friendship and the potential everyone has to change for the good.

Waterstones
Amazon

The New Girl by Nicola Davies ill. Cathy Fisher

By Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 6 Oct 2020

The new girl is beginning school in a new country. The children in her class are unfriendly towards her – refusing to include her because of her strange lunches, her unfamiliar clothing and her inability to understand their language. The narrator and her classmates become locked in a cycle of cruelty, but when beautiful paper flowers begin to appear in their classroom, something starts to change. Entranced by their beauty, the class come to realise that the new girl is the maker of these lovely things and that, despite the unkindness she has received, she is willing to share her skill in the art of paper folding. 

Follow the illustrator on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyfisherart/

Waterstones
Amazon

ACHUKAreview – The Grubby Feather Gang by Antony Wootten

By Leave a Comment

FeatherGang

This is a great little book – one I’m so grateful to the author for bringing to my attention. It’s essentially self-published, but don’t let that put you off. Apart from an annoyingly long first-line paragraph inset, it’s an exceptionally polished presentation. As a short chapter book about bullying and pacifism, set at the time of the First World War, it presents moral and behaviour conflicts in a manner that makes it eminently accessible for children of primary school age. It would make a very good group read.
The author is a primary school teacher and says (his experience is one I can share from my own time working with this age range), “I believe there are many very capable readers in upper key stage 2 who are put off by longer novels but who do want to read challenging and interesting subject matter.”
The book is presented as the first in a series of “BigShorts” – short novels for strong readers, that Wootten intends publishing and promoting through his website. If subsequent titles are as good as this, ACHUKA will be happy to help promote them.
The writing is clear, visual and uncluttered. The characters are finely delineated – the bully, the victim, the pacifist father, the strict schoolteacher, the friend & accomplice – but all very believable. The conflict between the main character’s parents – his father the conscientious objector, and his mother who has to bear the brunt of fellow women’s resentment that while their husbands are away fighting hers is at home shirking – is one of the best aspects of the book.
Female readers might want George’s friend, Emma, to play a more forthright role in subsequent adventures.
Oh, and there is animal interest, in a cat named Azar.
The formula is a good one.

via The Grubby Feather Gang.

Q & A With Holly Smale

By Leave a Comment

Literature did wonders for my early vocabulary By the age of five, I was writing couplets that featured the word “alas”. I suppose I had a way of speaking that was not always suitable for my age. It made me stand out at school – and not in a good way.

School can be hell I was bullied from the age of seven, and I had to share a classroom with the main bully, my nemesis, for the next nine years. I was made fun of, stabbed with pencils in the back. It was all pretty unpleasant, and made me very anxious, very scared. I didn’t talk about it to anyone, I didn’t ask for help; I just thought that this was what life was. I coped by reading; books were a window to another world.

via Holly Smale: The children’s author on growing up with Keats, back-stabbing bullies, and the awkwardness of modelling – Features – Books – The Independent.

Guardian Review – Dead Ends by Erin Lange

By Leave a Comment

Dead Ends by Erin Lange, reviewed by Annabel Pitcher

Erin Lange’s subject is bullying. In her debut novel, Butter, we were on the side of the victim, a fat boy attempting to eat himself to death on the internet for the grisly viewing pleasure of his peers. In Dead Ends, we are rooting for the bully – hot-headed thug Dane Washington, who kick-starts the action by unapologetically smashing his foot into "some guy’s throat". In Dane’s world, violence is justified if people are "asking for it", the only exception to the rule being girls and "retards".

If you balk at the use of that word, Dead Ends is not the novel for you. Like RJ Palacio, with whom Lange has been compared, she pulls no punches when describing the mistreatment of "freak" Billy D, a teenage boy with Down’s syndrome, who moves into Dane’s street on the wrong side of town (Columbia, Missouri).

via Dead Ends by Erin Lange – review | Books | The Guardian.