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.
Review to come - but in the meantime, catch some exclusive insights into the second book in the Peregrine Quinn series as the author Ash Bond talks to LoveReading4Schools editorial expert Joy Court, ably assisted by a young reading Ambassador Bethany.
Join LoveReading4Kids Editorial Expert Joy Court and young reading ambassador Bethany, in conversation with author Ash Bond as they discuss her brilliant mythological, high-tech fantasy series Peregrine Quinn.
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
Another gloriously enjoyable historical adventure from Judith Eagle, which skilfully transports the reader to a vividly evoked setting of London in the 1930’s with brilliant historical detail, so that we can get thoroughly immersed in the atmosphere of Theatreland and the Jazz Age.
From its Dickensian opening, with a foundling baby rescued from the River Thames and a generous benefactor, unaware that he is being spied upon in a sinister fashion, our imagination is gripped. The baby, Toby, grows up to take over the running of the tiny Wren Theatre in Soho, when his benefactor retired to Ireland.
Toby ... View Full Review
This remarkable debut and series opener is set in an alternate 1923 where dragons and humans coexist after a Peace Agreement ended their war, but the human regime is authoritarian, with strict class divisions and a rebellion is brewing.
Vivien Featherswallow, our narrator fluent in “three human languages and six dragon tongues”, plans to follow the rules, secure an internship as a Draconic Translator and make sure her sister never has to risk growing up third class. However, everything changes when her parents get arrested for being in the resistance and with her sister missing, she is forcibly recruited ... View Full Review
A fantastic start to what is obviously going to be a brilliant new series from a bestselling and award-winning author, this was literally unputdownable!
A fast moving and actioned packed time travel adventure that also revels in loads of historical and geographical detail (in this case of Ancient and modern Egypt) that will fascinate and inform as well as entertain. It is also so refreshing to see an adventure where the relationship between parent and child is so positive and where the parent does not have to ‘disappear’ but is very much a partner.
Sim’s martial ... View Full Review
This is so much more than the love story proclaimed by the title, it is also a remarkable work of historical fiction and a valuable addition to the canon of World War One novels and from an author that we are more used to producing fantasy, dystopia or crime stories. But it is certainly a compelling, lyrical, tender and important queer love story because it depicts so vividly the added dangers that forbidden love brought to the trauma of warfare and life in the trenches.
The story is told by 19 year old Lieutenant Stephen Wraxall and set in the summer ... View Full Review
Any fantasy in which libraries and librarians have a major role is going to be a hit with me, but there is so much more to enjoy in this blockbuster start to a new series by debut author Ash Bond!
Firstly, we have brilliant world building, where the Terran Realm is life as we know it, but it sits alongside the Cosmic Realm, home to the Immortals. Famous libraries in the Terran Realm ( like the Bodlean Library in Oxford where the story starts) house portals to the Cosmic Realm.
Each portal is guarded by an immortal librarian. There is a ... View Full Review
Debra the Zebra is possibly the cutest zebra you will ever see, with her huge inquisitive eyes and cheeky grin. Her stripes are set off beautifully against a vivid African savannah landscape brought to life by award-winning illustrator Nila Aye.
Smriti Halls once again demonstrates her fluency in rhyming picturebook texts that are simply a joy to read aloud. Debra, like any small child will be, is so proud of herself for learning to count and she gleefully demonstrates her skill by counting from one – the sun - all the way through to ten blades of grass. She asks ... View Full Review
