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Joanne Owen - Editorial Expert

Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales. An early passion for culture, story and folklore led her to read archaeology and anthropology at St John’s, Cambridge, after which she led the UK children’s book team for a major international retailer, going on to market books for Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Walker Books, Nosy Crow and Rough Guides. She now divides her time between writing, travel writing, reviewing and hosting writing workshops.

Joanne is the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the Martha Mayhem series, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Puppet Master, and You Can Write Awesome Stories, a how-to guide to creative writing. She’s also worked on a major community story project for the National Literacy Trust (Story Quest), and a number of travel guides, including The Rough Guide to Responsible Wales and guidebooks to the Caribbean region. In additional, she’s an occasional chair of LoveReading LitFest events, and judge for the 2023 Branford Boase Award.

Latest Features By Joanne Owen

Christmas creations — four festive writing prompts sparked by the season of sparkle!

Witchy words and potent potion poems - writing activities inspired by witches

Word-themed walks on the wild side - taking creative inspiration from enjoying autumn in the great outdoors.

Summer sizzlers for Young Adults – the best YA novels set in summer

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Latest Reviews By Joanne Owen

Jack Noel’s Dadbot, the first in a fresh new graphic novel series, is a jamboree of colourful comedy. Packed with puns, especially those of the butt variety, it’s a super-funny antic-packed adventure that sees a pair of siblings, Josh and Daisy, find themselves with more than they bargained for after they buy a robot for a bargain price from the Booty and the Beast car boot sale. The story kicks off with Josh and Daisy’s parents being more than a little preoccupied with work, which is why their dad doesn&... View Full Review

Based on real-life events that saw Victorian heroine Grace Darling’s bravery at sea celebrated and rewarded (as the author shares in her Afterword, “Grace’s bravery astonished the country. Even Queen Victoria heard about her”), Hilary McKay’s Becoming Grace is an immensely inspirational story. At the age of eight, Grace, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, almost drowned. As a result, she grows up terrified of the sea, though it plays such a big part in her family’s life. As her older siblings leave home, Grace feels the shifting tides of ... View Full Review

“When this started, we were regular seventh graders, living in a regular town in suburban New Jersey, worrying about the regular dumb stuff”. So shares Alice, one of the six kids who stars in Ann and Ben Brashares’ Westfallen — a gripping thriller that sees two sets of 12- year-olds communicate through a radio and wind up sharing a dialogue (and a Mars bar!) between 1944 and 2023. While still reeling with shock (“When the world has shifted on its axis, and you’ve just watched reality turn to gobbledygook, it’s hard to sit down&... View Full Review

What is a normal woman? I absolutely loved the section headers of Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women that declare, and back up, the fact that “normal women are landlords”, “normal women are fighters”, “normal women take power”, “normal women are bullied”, “normal women like sex”, and a whole lot more, from being knights, pirates, breadwinners, criminals, artists and entrepreneurs, to supporting slavery, standing up against slavery, striking and protesting. And so it’s been across centuries, from 1066 when this book picks up sharing lesser-known aspects of women’... View Full Review

Black Star, the second novel in Kwame Alexander’s exceptional The Door of No Return trilogy, moves from 1860s Upper Kwanta in the Asante Kingdom (present-day Ghana) to the 1920s Jim Crow segregation era in the American South. In this dazzling novel- in-verse, Kofi, the central character of The Door of No Return, features as 12-year-old Charley’s grandfather, Nani Kofi. A man who keeps his suitcase by the door ready for when he can return to “his old home, back in Africa” aboard Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line ship. Charley is an ... View Full Review

Penned by Tereza Hepburn, with characterful illustrations by Mike Phillips, Spikey and the Mischief of Magpies, the third book in the Spikey series, tells a heart-warming tale of adventure, friendship and teamwork set around London’s Regent’s Park. Supported by Hedgehog Street — a charitable campaign that’s working to stop the decline in hedgehog numbers through encouraging people to create hedgehog-friendly gardens — it’s been cleverly thought out to have two comprehension levels. First, it’s an engaging adventure story that suits being shared aloud. ... View Full Review

Knutz and Boltz and the Cosmic Code: A STEAM Puzzle Adventure

Tim Collins’ Knutz and Boltz and the Cosmic Code — part of the STEAM Puzzle Adventure series that employs the forward-thinking STEAM approach of using science, technology, engineering, the arts and maths as a means of fostering critical thinking — is itself a brilliant blend of wacky space adventure, graphic novel and brain-boggling puzzles and challenges. Featuring STEAM whizz-kid Knutz and his canine inventor companion, Boltz, this sees the daring duo blast off to a TOP SECRET space station on a mission to save the world from being blasted by a gigantic asteroid. Throughout the high-octane, high-stakes race against ... View Full Review

Radiant with pick-me-up appeal — from its gloriously green cover, to its protagonist being billed as “Froggy, Fearless, and Ready for Adventure!” — Matt Long’s hilarious Croaky: Caverns of the Gemosaurus is an utter (ahem!) gem of a book for newly-confident readers who are mad about funny fiction, and madcap adventures. Second book in a series, this can be enjoyed afresh, thanks to the funny first pages that introduce us to the endearing crazy cast of characters, not least Croaky himself, “an excitable and enthusiastic frog who leaps before he looks”. And ... View Full Review

Celebratory in spirit and compellingly designed — with dazzling full-colour illustrations by Ruth Burrows on every page — Simon James Green’s A Year of Pride and Joy showcases the lives and passions of 52 LGBTQ+ individuals of our times. The overarching vibe here is joy, as set out by the author in an introduction that sees him define joy as something that runs deeper than happiness alone. Rather, joy is something that “gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, sparks pleasure and makes life worth living”. What follows are 52 ... View Full Review

Traversing modern America and Japanese folklore, music, myth and history, Clara Kumagai’s Songs for Ghosts weaves a wondrous story of love, loss and longing. Told through the intertwined narratives of a contemporary Japanese-American teenager and a young Japanese woman’s diary written a century ago, it explores universal themes of heartbreak, identity and displacement with subtle power. The story begins when Adam finds the diary in the attic of the house he shares with his dad, step-mom and little brother Benny. Sore from being dumped by his boyfriend, Adam can’t draw ... View Full Review

Penned by Ben Lerwill and superbly illustrated by Paula Bossio, The World at Night does a dazzling deep dive into the nocturnal wonders of our world. Traversing the globe — from tropical Caribbean oceans and Amazonian rainforests, to the Arabian desert and Antarctica — it’s suffused in an infectious spirit of exploration as it shines a light on marvels of the dark, among them glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, bioluminescent plankton, the Northern Lights, and (a personal favourite!) Bornean bearded pigs that migrate by night. While the topics covered are wonderfully presented — lucid, engaging and richly ... View Full Review

Though billed as romantasy, Cassandra James’ Capitana debut is so much more than that classification suggests. Yes, there are fantastical elements, and simmering frissons of romance through a thrilling adventure that sees a young woman, Ximena, fight pirates in the name of the law. But Capitana is, at its core, a story of intense conflict between family bonds and loyalties to its protagonist’s zealous dedication to her empire. While Ximena is devoted to her ambition to become a cazador — a highly-skilled, fearless seafarer whose mission it is to rid the ... View Full Review