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Book of the week
Embassy of the Dead (8-10 Junior/Middle)
Will Mabbitt
I’m a big fan of Will Mabbitt’s Mabel Jones series, funny, clever and frequently gruesome stories full of jokes and larger than life characters. His new series, Embassy of the Dead, is more serious but there’s still a good deal of gruesome humour (the MacGuffin is a box containing a dead man’s finger), and the best characters are the dead ones.
Latest Reviews
The Wild Folk (10-14 Middle/Secondary)
Sylvia Linsteadt
(Usborne Publishing Ltd)
Usborne welcomes readers to Part One of a ‘duology’ with the claim that The Wild Folk has ‘a dash of Ursula Le Guin’ and ‘a generous helping from C.S. Lewis’. Tolkien might also have been cited.
Charlie and Me: 421 Miles from Home (8-10 Junior/Middle)
Mark Lowery
(Piccadilly Press)
In Charlie and Me, Mark Lowery has delivered a very special story. Readers will cry with laughter and sadness in equal measure, as they share in the journey of two children on a mission to rediscover whatever the magic ingredient was that made an old family holiday so special.
Children of Blood and Bone (14+ Secondary/Adult)
Tomi Adeyemi
(Macmillan Children's Books)
In a letter to her reader, Tomi Adeyemi hopes we 'see a glimpse into my Nigerian heritage and the beautiful cultures and people Africa holds”. She wrote her novel “during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men and children being shot by the police'.
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