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The Light in Everything by Katya Balen ill. Sydney Smith

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 12 Apr 2022
Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week 17 Apr 2022

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“Why did you decide to focus on a blended family in this story?
I think because it’s such a common family structure, and there are so many difficulties and joys that can come with it. How do you throw together two different groups of people in a house and how do you make that work? Lots of children up and down the country and around the world will have experienced it, and some of them will hopefully recognise something of their lives in the book.”
ReadingZone Q&A

Tom is still quiet and timid, even though his dad has been gone for nearly two years now. Zofia is the opposite. Inside her there’s a raging storm that makes her want to fight the whole world until she gets what she wants. And what she wants is for scaredy-cat Tom to get out of her life.

Tom hates loud, unpredictable Zofia just as much, but he’s moving into Zofia’s house. Because his mum and Zofia’s dad are in love… and they’re having a baby. Tom and Zofia both wish the stupid baby had never happened. But then Tom’s mum gets ill, and it begins to look horribly like their wish might come true…

A story of learning to trust, trying to let go and diving into the unknown with hope in your heart. The cover illustration is by Kate Greenaway Medal winner Sydney Smith.

The author  has worked in a variety of special needs schools as a teaching assistant, and more recently co-founded Mainspring Arts – a not-for-profit that provides mentoring and creative opportunities for neurodivergent adults. A previous novel — October, October — was an ACHUKA Book of the Day in September 2020. This video was made by ReadingZone at the time of that books’ publication and in it Katya talks about the kind of characters she likes to write about.

Bathe the Cat by Alice B. McGinty ill. David Roberts

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 10 Feb 2022

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“Cleanly rendered illustrations show the family dutifully following orders while things go hilariously wrong. Roberts’s  precise pencil and watercolor illustrations go beyond the entertaining premise to matter-of-factly portray a family at the intersection of a number of identities.” Horn Book
“The colourful illustrations are an absolute joy, and contain so many wonderful details, from stylish clothing to the fabulous facial expressions of the characters.” BookTrust
“Pencil and watercolor scenes by Roberts  emphasize the increasing goofiness of the family’s repeated efforts to get their mess under control, and light rhymes by McGinty  pair smartly with the amusing concept.” Publishers Weekly
“McGinty’s jaunty, rhyming text makes for a fun read-aloud, but Roberts’ brightly colored, energetic illustrations are the real attraction. The increasingly frantic family, with light to dark skin tones, doing silly tasks from a muddled list will incite giggles. The smart and sneaky puss wins the day.” KIRKUS

 

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This riotous romp of a picture book follows a frantic family as they try to get some chores done-with no help from the family cat, who keeps scrambling the list of chores with hilarious effects. Get ready for a rollicking read-aloud with a truly purrfect ending.

It’s cleaning day, but the family cat will do anything to avoid getting a bath. So instead of mopping the floor or feeding the fish, the family is soon busy rocking the rug, vacuuming the lawn, and sweeping the dishes. Bouncy rhyme carries the story headlong into the growing hilarity, until finally Dad restores some kind of order-but will the cat avoid getting his whiskers wet?

Dad and Papa are the heads of this large and loving biracial family, mirroring illustrator David Robert’s own orientation and providing picture book readers with a positive depiction of LGBTQ+ characters in a fun and funny family story.

Alice McGinty is a prolific author of books for children, and David Roberts is well-known for his work on the popular Questioneers series. Together, their upbeat text and energetic art with pops of neon color make for a standout picture book, just right for gifting and enjoying together at storytime.

Follow David Roberts on Instagram:

A Storm of Sisters – A Pinch of Magic Adventure by Michelle Harrison

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There are secrets hidden beneath the ice . . . bring the magic home in the frosty fourth instalment of the bestselling Pinch of Magic Adventures, from the award-winning Michelle Harrison.

When the Widdershins sisters and Granny are called away in deepest winter to look after cousin Clarissa, it doesn’t take long for adventure – or trouble – to find them. The town of Little Nipping has plenty to explore with its frozen lake and winter market, as well as being haunted by a doomed highwayman, searching for lost treasure. But the legends are true and seeing a ghostly figure one night, the girls realise that Granny is in terrible danger. As an icy storm rages, the race to save her begins – can they reach the treasure before the highwayman claims another soul?

When The World Was Ours by Liz Kessler

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Elsa, Leo and Max have always been best friends, a special team of three. Then the Nazis come.

As a growing darkness descends around them, Leo and Elsa run for their lives, taking two very different paths across Europe. And Max, once their closest friend, now becomes the enemy as he is drawn into the Hitler Youth. Will the friends ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to?

Inspired by a true story, and as powerful as it is heartbreaking, this novel shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.

The Katha Chest by Radhiah Chowdhury ill. Lavanya Naidu

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“The book, suitable for the 3–6-year-old audience (as well as older readers who might use it as inspiration for their own patchwork or memory projects), is one of love, reminiscence and family.” Books + Publishing

Six-year-old Asiya loves to go to Nanu’s house. Best among all of Nanu’s treasures is the big old chest filled with quilts that tell the stories of the women in Asyia’s family.

With gorgeous, fresh and beautifully colourful illustrations inspired by Bangladeshi katha quilts and traditional West Bengali pattachitra panel illustrations, The Katha Chest is a beautifully woven tale about the bonds of love, culture and memory.

Follow the illustrator, who is also an animator, on Instagram:

New Year by Mei Zihan ill. Qin Leng tr. Yan Yan

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 17 Dec 2021

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“Details the deep emotions and ambivalence of a father who is at once proud of his daughter’s achievements and independence, yet wistful over how quickly she has grown up and lives too far away to celebrate Spring Festival with him.” KIRKUS
“Leng’s distinct, delicate ink-and-watercolor illustrations offer scenes from both China and France, with intricate details conjuring each location.” Publishers Weekly
“The book’s cultural themes make it a good addition for any library collection that wishes to enhance its representation of cultural diversity.” Canadian Review of Materials

A moving picture book to read for those missing family far away.

It’s Lunar New Year, a time when families come together for a wonderful feast, and a father longs to be with his daughter — but she lives in another country. As he imagines how his daughter is spending the festivities, he recalls fond memories of time spent with her, feeling a sense of loss and dislocation. While he misses her deeply, he also recognizes her need to move away, grow up, and become herself.

New Year is a compelling portrait of leaving home, finding independence, and loving those who are many miles away. At a time when so many families are unable to gather together, readers will relate to the universal message of missing our loved ones and dreaming of being together again.

Mei Zihan is an author and a professor at Shanghai Normal University.

Qin Leng was born in Shanghai and now lives in Toronto where she works as a designer and illustrator. Her numerous picture books have been nominated for several prizes, including a Governor General’s Literary Award.
Over The Shop was an ACHUKA Book of the Day on 20 Jan 2021.

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Our Beautiful Game by Lou Kuenzler

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 5 Jul 2021

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They can take our ball, but they can never stop the game.

A timely, important and well-researched ‘middle-grade’ historical novel about the growth in women’s football on the home front during WWI. Publication of the novel marks the centenary of the FA’s shameful banning of women’s football in 1921—a ban that remained in place for 50 years.

Who better to tell you more about the book than the author herself:

A hundred years before the Lionesses, Lily Parr, Alice Woods and their teammates were proudly playing their beloved, exciting and skilful game. As men were sent to fight in the war, women and girls took their place in munitions factories. Football became a favourite pastime and, before long, they were creating all-female sides and playing public matches to sell-out crowds, overshadowing the men’s football.

“Absolutely magnificent! A glorious tale of football, friendship, feminism and social history”
EMMA CARROLL

 

The Cooking Club Detectives by Ewa Jozefkowicz

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“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

 

The Swallows’ Flight by Hilary McKay

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 25 May 2021
Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week 23 May 2021
Times Children’s Book of the Week 22 May 2021

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“A beautiful story, touchingly told and utterly without sentimentality. Hilary McKay has a keen ear for sparing dialogue, the banter of families, the awkwardness of saying what needs to be said. You believe completely in these children, their relationship with each other, their role in the family, simply by the way they communicate. What’s more, you care about them. This is a book for all the family to love.” Berlie Doherty
“I never intended to write a sequel. If I had, I wouldn’t have given the characters so many children. I ended up with 26 main characters and a dog! My editor Venetia Gosling drew me a huge family tree, and she told me the story of her granny on a farm in Kent, during the Second World War, the Battle of Britain. She was a very young girl, alone on the farm, and a dogfight was happening, and an airman came out of his plane, and Venetia’s granny ran to rescue him, and he survived. I used that story as the basis of The Swallows’ Flight.” Hilary McKay, Books for Keeps
“McKay refuses to dumb down the history, writing with such clarity and understanding that you can’t fail to be caught up in the cares of her loveable cast.” Alex O’Connell, The Times
“Hilary McKay’s superlative The Skylarks’ War seemed to make the Great War new, winning many hearts and the Costa children’s novel award. This compassionate sequel does the same with the Second World War as it continues the stories of kind-hearted Clarry and those she cares about.” Nicolette Jones, Sunday Times
“Revisit familiar characters from The Skylarks’ War and see how they have grown into themselves, having families and careers of their own in the new Britain after the First World War and before the second commences.” Just Imagine

Four ordinary lives connected by extraordinary circumstances, Hilary McKay’s stunning companion novel to the Costa Award-winning The Skylarks’ War features the next generation of characters as they move from childhood to the threshold of adulthood amid the chaos and conflict of the Second World War.

Erik and Hans admire swallows over the rooftops of Berlin, little thinking that one day they will be flying above England, risking their lives in a war they both detest.

Ruby and Kate, great friends despite their differences, find themselves racing towards a danger that neither of them could possibly have imagined.

Meanwhile Rupert and Clarry work secretly for peace – and a brighter future for them all …

 Read the Books for Keeps interview with the author.

Hilary McKay won the Costa Children’s Book Award for The Skylarks’ War:

 

Moo by Sharon Creech ill. Sarah Horn

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 29 Apr 2021
Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week 11 Apr 2021

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“Creech has a magic touch. She writes simply and directly (in this novel, largely in blank verse), yet her unshowy language is transporting and charged with emotion… It’s delightful, and infused with understanding of young and old might behave and feel.” Nicolette Jones, Sunday Times
“Not only does Creech seamlessly intersperse prose and poetry, but the design manipulates typeface, font, setting, and spacing to paint word-pictures, in some instances creating concrete poetry while in others emphasizing a few words on the page—an accentuation that makes the story come alive and deftly communicates the range of emotions, from humor to sorrow, that the story conveys.” KIRKUS
“Reena’s narrative uses a comfortable combination of prose, poems, and prose poems, while changing fonts, type sizes, and type placement help express emotion, drama, action, and mood. The story zips along yet somehow conveys the slow growth of trust and friendship between young and old, human and bovine. It’s Reena who first suggests they move to Maine, because she’s read three books that made her 
feel “I was there already / in my mind”; Creech’s novel memorably does the same.” Horn Book
“A summer setting, vividly developed characters and liberal use of white space make this book a breezy companion…” Washington Post

[f.p. in US in 2016]
Following a family move to Maine, twelve-year-old Reena has no idea what to expect.  She hopes it’s going to be beaches, blueberries and all the lobster she can eat. She certainly doesn’t expect to suddenly be put in charge of a menagerie of animals, belonging to the irascible Mrs Falala, who not only has a fast-wheeling pig, a secretive snake, but the most ornery cow she ever thought to meet.

A wonderfully funny, moving story of one family’s move to the country, and the challenges they face.