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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.
The story of two unrelated children, July and Jamie, who meet by chance in Waterloo Station, is told with great warmth and empathy, but with genuine authenticity too and tackling some difficult themes like drug use and homelessness.
The children come from very different backgrounds, but both are running. One is running away from problems and the other is running to a possible solution. Through the dual narrative we gradually fill in the details of their back story.
July has recently returned from foster care to live with her young mum, a recovering addict who struggles to hold down a ... View Full Review
What a debut! 400 pages packed with everything a fantasy fan will love. Really well thought through world building with a new mythical creature to love - there are no dragons here!
There is a fascinating, well-developed cast of characters with developing romantic connections, including the classic rivals to lovers trope. There is loyalty, betrayal, adventure, danger, death and mystery. It may sound as if too much is going on, but the author keeps as tight a hold on her story, as does Kelyn Varra on her beloved phoenix Savita. Kel is trying to keep her family’s farm and ... View Full Review
The deadpan humour and simple but, oh-so-expressive illustrations with their bold, black outlines, mark this out as another John Agee classic. But I cannot help but wonder if there is a little in joke thrown in for us adults? Can you think of another George and Lennie (sic) with one being gigantically bigger than the other, just like our bear and rabbit friends here? Of Mice and Men anyone? Maybe just a coincidence? But it gave me an added smile!
This George and Lenny are best friends and always together, but Lenny begins to wonder what being alone would be ... View Full Review
This is the ninth in the highly successful Big Bright Feelings series, which has become such a mainstay of PSHE collections in schools and highly rated by parents for helping young children come to terms with their feelings and indeed for helping parents to understand their children.
The illustrations are as subtle and beautifully expressive as ever and the nuanced text does a really good job of capturing what it is like to feel shy with all those telling details of feeling self-conscious, with hot cheeks, and definitely not feeling confident about speaking up.
At the start we see a ... View Full Review
School stories have been a popular genre ever since Blyton’s Chalet School, via Harry Potter to what is known in YA fantasy circles as Dark Academia and this is a prime example of everything that fans require.
It has rivalries, alliances, romantic relationships and a difficult challenge to win an ultimate prize, where all the main characters must compete against each other. But Blackwood Academy has a unique setting – a boarding school where all the pupils are dead! It is located on the fringes of the afterlife and students are learning magical skills to enable them to ... View Full Review
As our lively pig-tailed guide tells us – it is called The Tour when you have to show a new kid around your school, and she is going to show us what to do in case we ever get that VERY IMPORTANT job! (There is a brilliant use of font size, colour and capitalisation to capture tone, volume and emphasis – all of which make it fabulous to read aloud).
Naturally the tour has to start with the toilets ‘Everybody in the world needs to know where they are’ How true! But our guide urges us to make ... View Full Review
This is an extraordinary debut - a dystopian thriller which will really get readers thinking about some big issues. Not just a climate changed future, but about medical ethics and what a life is worth.
Written in short punchy chapters, in a mix of prose and poetry, it is a fast paced and gripping read that is narrated by two sisters, Calico and Asha. The story opens with Calico, painfully regaining consciousness and we soon realise that she has been cryogenically preserved after death and is now restored to life. But it is not at as she had been led ... View Full Review
This standalone feline adventure will have huge appeal to animal lovers, and it makes a refreshing change that cats rather than dogs are centre stage.
Historically, cats have been subject to persecution, for example when they were associated with witches and blamed for the Black Death and in our time, they were under threat during the Covid pandemic. In the climate changed future, birdlife has declined and again cats are blamed.
The story is entirely told from the cat’s perspective, with the cat in question told by his mama that he is descended from the Egyptian God Bastet ... View Full Review
French author and artist designer Didier Cornille invites children to accompany him on a tour of the world’s greatest cities and with its clear and simple text and beautifully constructed graphic illustrations, this is a very attractive invitation. He first describes how cities have developed and the problems that they face, and then subsequent chapters offer current examples of how pioneering cities around the world have tackled such issues as overcrowding, pollution, heavy traffic, and poverty and tells us the story of the passionate people who came up with the ideas. There are fascinating examples of really innovative ... View Full Review
This charming picture book is an Eats, Shoots and Leaves for children who are beginning to learn the meaning and usage of the four main punctuation marks. Here the author has invented them as characters in their own right and they come to the rescue of Red Hoodie, who has written a story about her and her Gran and a wolf, but it has all gone wrong!
The punctuation characters spring into action to help her story make sense. But she doesn’t know who they are and so the full stop, the exclamation mark ‘an excitable ... View Full Review
One always has a frisson of anxiety when about to embark on a sequel, or in this case prequel, to a much loved and admired book. Will this live up to the excellent When the Sky Falls? But really, I was foolish to worry! With Phil Earle you are in very safe hands, and I have to say he has absolutely excelled himself with this powerful, evocative historical adventure.
The opening chapter is a masterclass in how to hook a reader; we are deep in the jungle, with ruthless hunters wanting to capture a gorilla and then horrified by the ... View Full Review
Part of a successful series of books written by the author, who is an experienced specialist in PSHE and SRE education, this provides a child friendly introduction to mental and emotional health and will prove its value within both home and school contexts. The publisher describes the series as ‘helping grown-ups have difficult conversations with little people’ and this is exactly what this book does. The lively and amusing illustrations help to engage the reader and the scenarios provide prompts for discussion and the explanations are perfectly pitched and yet in enough depth to provide many a useful ... View Full Review
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