Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Joy Court - Editorial Expert
Joy Court is co – founder of All Around Reading, having previously managed the Schools Library Service in Coventry, where she established the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards and the Literally Coventry Book Festival, as well as being the Reviews Editor of The School Librarian and Chair of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals. She now just concentrates on books and libraries as a freelance consultant while continuing to be an activist with the Youth Libraries Group and sits on the National Executive of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. She has chaired and spoken on panels at festivals and conferences around the UK as well as delivering keynotes and workshops.
She is a Trustee and member of the National Council of the United Kingdom Literacy Association, where she sits on the selection panel for the UKLA Book Awards, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of The English Association and an Honorary Fellow of CILIP. Author of Read to Succeed: strategies to engage children and young people in reading for pleasure (2011) and Reading by Right: successful strategies to ensure every child can read to succeed (2017) FACET.
Helen Rutter writes hugely empathetic stories, often about boys facing particular challenges, but I am entirely in awe of how she has constructed the tale of Fred Timple. It is an interactive story, and readers do have to make decisions and choices about what Fred will do next, but it is a far cry from the choose your own adventures where you are solving puzzles and finding treasure!
The whole book is actually about making choices and about young people having agency in their own lives, about making bad choices and the consequences that can arise, about genuine mistakes, regrets ... View Full Review
Shortlisted for the Carnegie and now the UKLA Book Award with her debut novel Safiyya’s War, Hiba Noor Khan has written another masterclass in historical fiction, this time shining an unflinching and evocative light on a very dark period of history for the Indian subcontinent.
The Partition in 1947 is insufficiently studied or known about and yet it is very much a part of family history for so many in our society and often the reason why families are here at all. With her superb ability to create indelible and credible child characters, that live with you long after ... View Full Review
Although absolutely nothing to do with Easter; featuring bunnies, carrots and growing things makes this the perfect book for Spring projects at home or at school! But it is actually a beautiful fable about friendship.
Whilst we cannot literally grow our friends like Mr Rabbbit unwittingly and then deliberately does, his advice about the need to prepare your ground and show love patience, care and warmth is absolutely spot on.
The multiple award-winning author illustrator has created Mr Rabbit’s world in luscious watercolours, with the most delicate inked lines adding the quirky characterisation that she does so well. ... View Full Review
The first YA novel from an esteemed MG author is always an intriguing prospect and I think Zillah Bethel will surprise her fans with this short but powerful text, which is darkly comic and even a touch macabre. It certainly does not set out to flatter Port Talbot or its characters, but it is utterly convincing both in setting and characterisation.
Port Talbot, as the cover depicts, has a coastline dominated by the steelworks and the book is structured in sections relating to the steelmaking process. This and the opening with its wryly comic list of The Players and Stuff ... View Full Review
In Sonny Gilmour we have another classic Conaghan character who will steal your heart and live long in your memory.
There is nobody who can capture the authentic voice of young people growing up in a working-class community, quite like Brian Conaghan and this new novel is absolutely pitch perfect. Both the banter between family and friends and Sonny’s hilarious internal monologue, are unmistakeably authentic. It is another book that is obviously firmly grounded in his own lived experience growing up in Coatbridge, but it is even more of an Own Voices authentic read this time since our ... View Full Review
This is a tender and beautifully written coming of age story, where Sydney also has to come to terms with life after a heart transplant.
She had almost forgotten how to live as her life gradually closed down and more and more things were taken away from her while she was waiting for a donor. Her friendship group had shrunk to those comrades like Chloe, sharing the waiting list with her. So, the survivor’s guilt that she feels is not just about the fact that somebody died in order for her to live, but also because of those ... View Full Review
The sequel to the Branford Boase longlisted Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm will be leapt upon by anybody who read book one! Like me they will be keen to rejoin the vibrant characters that sprang vividly to life and to find out more about the fascinating Cosmic Realm.
Penelope, Peregrine’s multi-talented mother, is really not keen for Peregrine to return at all, but who could withstand a direct invitation from the goddess Athene? She wants Peregrine to compete in the upcoming Cosmic Games as a front to cover her investigation of a mysterious theft and their suspicion ... View Full Review
It is becoming difficult to find fresh superlatives to describe Anthony McGowan’s writing, but The Beck, his latest accessible novel for Barrington Stoke, is an absolutely pitch perfect delight. Suitable for an audience that will range from mature Year 6’s who love to read about those just a bit older, right through to secondary readers of any age or indeed adult readers, who will get just as much pleasure from it.
Set in a very specific and real location, as the author explains in the foreword, the Leeds of his youth is the inspiration for the ... View Full Review
This beautifully written debut is both heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, giving us a sensitive and nuanced portrait of a young boy coping with grief and huge life changes.
Rhys has a deep love of dogs, which he shared with his mum who sadly dies at the start of the book. Together they would watch a TV show called The Dog Rescuers presented by Rhys' idol Dr Jimmy and on what turns out to be his final visit to his mother’s bedside, Rhys spots a lonely black labrador under her hospital bed and because of Dr Jimmy, ... View Full Review
A brilliantly conceived post-apocalyptic world is the setting for this perfectly pitched middle grade dystopian page turner.
This world is virtually uninhabited after the Flood which took out all the world’s technology, including the humans who were all connected to the central information hive. This is an utterly credible vision of a future where our ever-increasing thirst for technological advancement has proved to be society’s complete undoing.
We follow Jen and Father, scavenging and travelling across the country, seeking refuge and peace and other people. Gradually we learn that Father is not actually a biological relation ... View Full Review
Astonishingly, this intense and compelling thriller is this author’s debut novel, but it is so well crafted and with such thought-provoking themes, that I am sure she will quickly become one to follow with eager anticipation.
In an original, magical realist twist on the thriller genre, the emotionally complex central character, Sariyah, has an uncanny psychic ability to sense what people need. Often these are small things that the recipient doesn't yet know they'll need, but these needs invade her mind, making it difficult to concentrate and any unfulfilled needs give her intense migraines.
How such a ... View Full Review
This debut fantasy and series opener transports us to a richly detailed alternative world where magic is powered by Ink, a precious and expensive liquid, and under strict control. It is also where every ten-year-old looks forward to finding out their fate, which tells them what they are destined to become. They will be Inkbound by a magical tattoo on their hand. But our heroine, Meticulous- Metty- Jones, is horrified to receive a tattoo of a skull, signifying death and murder, held by a gloved hand, signifying magic. She concludes she is destined to be a murderer and resolves to ... View Full Review
-262x400.jpg)
