children's & YA recommendations on the go
Gripping stories of myth, folklore and magic:Two step-brothers share one nightmare; red gloves that reach for your throat; a changing room where a stranger asks to swap lives with you; and a ghost in the rain… An expert storyteller weaves nine spells. Fear mixed with wit, heart and magic.
A new Barrington Stoke title from the UK’s master of scary words and illustrations…
When Maya and her classmates are asked to write a creepy story with a winter theme, they come up with some brilliant ideas. Rising floodwaters uncover long-buried bodies and ghostly children take to the ice on a frozen canal. But as each of the stories is read out in class, Maya grows more and more uncomfortable. She features in each of her friends’ creepy tales and they start to feel a little too real. Finally, when a mysterious new girl stands up to read the last story of the day, the light outside dims and it starts to snow. The classroom starts to freeze but everyone is trapped. Can Maya stop the story before the nightmare comes true?
An uproarious grab bag of short fiction, mining and exaggerating the social anxieties that plague us all and twisting them into funny, deeply resonant, and ultimately reassuring psychological thrills.
There’s a story about a mood ring that tells the absolute truth. One about social media followers who literally follow you around. And one about a kid whose wish for a new, improved self is answered when a mysterious box arrives in the mail. There’s also a sprinkling of micro-fiction: a personality test (to find out if you have a personality), a fortune teller (that 100% accurately predicts the future), a letter from the Department of Insecurity, and an interactive Choose Your Own Catastrophe.
Olive is a shy girl who prefers reading about adventures to having them herself. But when a mysterious figure steals all of the books in town, Olive decides to set out straight into an adventure of her own. The thief, meanwhile, doesn’t quite know what to do with the stories he’s stolen. Olive must track down the thief and teach him the joys of reading – and sharing – stories.
“Dark, demanding and delicious.” KIRKUS
from the author of The Hazel Wood…
A highly anticipated collection of twelve deeply creepy pitch-dark stories each with a gorgeously illustrated lino print title page by Nick Hayes. The story ‘The Clockwork Bride’ is worth the cover price alone. The writing throughout the collection is pitch-perfect, a joy to hear in one’s mind; every sentence an invitation to read aloud. We all need range in our reading but alongside books like this much contemporary young feels insipid. Tales From The Hinterland is a book that deserves to have been published in hardback before being available in paperback.
Follow the illustrator on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickhayesillustration/
Follow Melissa Albert on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissaalbertauthor/
This is a splendid piece:
Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan, PJ Lynch, Eoin Colfer, Niamh Sharkey and Siobhán Parkinson on family reading
Warmly recommended, and not just for Eoin Colfer’s humorous description of his 1970s childhood:
I grew up in a dark time, dear reader. A time when there were only two TV channels and an inordinate amount of the programmes on these channels seemed to feature cows being sold or elderly men pounding their knees with spoons. We had heard rumours of the existence of a video game, but that was in America and needed a supercomputer the size of a slurry tank to play it. And if you wanted to enjoy modern music you were forced to drop a metal needle with pinpoint accuracy onto a revolving and fragile plastic disk. Honestly it was easier for Indiana Jones to steal the golden idol than it was for me to listen to Pink Floyd.
Read the whole piece:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-grandma-s-footsteps-how-reading-links-generations-1.3650415
This collection of six stories includes three brand-new tales, all of them lavishly illustrated with art that changes with each turn of the page, culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves.
“My vicar father had a wonderful speaking voice, and I can still remember so clearly how he would read to the five of us at bedtime [Riddell is the middle child]. In my memories of childhood, stories are among the most evocative things – the stories we were first told, that we listened to, tell each other, and then went on to acquire this skill of reading. We had a whole set of the canon of children’s books, so bedtime would be when we heard things like Black Beauty and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.”
In his turn, he read to his three children, now all in their twenties, and his calm outward demeanour doesn’t disguise quite how passionate he feels about urging all parents – and grandparents – to do the same. “No one should under-estimate the power of a bedtime story,” he insists. “It’s almost as illuminating for parents reading as it is for the children listening.”
via Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell on the joy of reading at Christmas.
Published to celebrate 30 years of Willy The Wimp.
The book is straightforward in format. Words on the left, pictures on the right, each one in full-page full-colour glory.
As we move through the book, Willy passes through a set of doors to a fresh adventure, based on ten classic children’s tales and stories, so that not only is this book a celebration of Browne’s own creativity, but a general celebration of story and imagination.
Simply wonderful.
via Willy’s Stories.
AL Kennedy has revealed that she likes to read a children’s book before starting work on her novels:
“Reading children’s stories is a very pure, direct incarnation of story so it’s very inspiring. I will read a children’s story before I start a novel just to remember that’s what it’s about.”
via AL Kennedy: I get my inspiration from children’s books | Herald Scotland.
