By Don Brown (Clarion Books, imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, this format 2025)
Continue reading “83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary | Graphic Novel Review”Could Mariupol, and Ukraine, survive? As Russian rockets threatened the city, Ukrainians resisted, and with a heroic combination of sacrifice and bravery, the besieged city endured…for months. But it all came at a steep cost.
By Sharna Jackson (pub. Puffin Books, 2024)
Continue reading “The Nine Night Mystery | Book Review”I’m at our neighbour Rachel’s house in her room. I just dropped a paintbrush she asked me for on her floor, and she didn’t do or say anything when it rolled under the bed.
Not because she’s asleep or lazy.
But because she’s dead.
Rachel Kohl. Dead in her bed.
By Julian Sedgwick and Chie Kutsuwada (published by Guppy Books, 2023)
Continue reading “100 Tales from the Tokyo Ghost Café | Book Review”“You think you can decide what is real and what is imaginary, what is alive and what is dead. But who is to decide who is alive and who is merely dreamed into existence? I listen to you lot argue about whether ghosts or fox spirits exist, and you forget to check how real you are.”
By Nicola Davies (published by Firefly Press)
The sounds of hard breathing and the scrunch of footfalls enclose them as they run. There are shouts behind, voices yelling orders, more shots. Harlon gives Xeno and Ash a stream of small orders and encouragements to stop them thinking.
In Harlon’s head, her ma’s voice speaks.
When you are in danger, the most dangerous thing is to wish you weren’t. Accept the reality of danger, then you can survive it.
Climb, she tells herself. Get away.
Continue reading “The Song That Sings Us | Book Review for Older Readers”
By Marcus Sedgwick (published by Barrington Stoke, 2023)
Continue reading “Ravencave | Book Review”Eight hundred people, eight hundred families, just like ours, without enough money coming in, with no way of knowing how to survive.
I wonder how many of those eight hundred families are dealing with it by going on holiday and wandering over the empty Yorkshire hills, going to spread their granny’s ashes on the landscape.
A landscape full of ghosts, Mum says, though she hasn’t seen one.
And strangely, it turns out it’s not her who sees a ghost first.
It’s me.
By Manon Steffan Ros (published by Firefly Press, 2022)
Continue reading “The Blue Book of Nebo | Young Adult Book Review”‘The Blue Book of Nebo,’ I smiled, taking the book from her. The pages were blank and wide, like a new day.
‘Eh?’ asked Mam.
‘Like The Black Book of Carmarthen, or The Red Book of Hergest. That’s how they did it in the olden days.’ I’d read about them in a book of Welsh history. ‘Important books that said something about our history. And now is a part of history, isn’t it?’
By J.P. Rose (published by Andersen Press)
Continue reading “The Haunting of Tyrese Walker | Young Adult Book Review”They began to walk back down the track but Tyrese glanced over his shoulder towards the trees on the mountainside. Even though it was hot and humid, he shivered, his skin tingling. Why couldn’t he shake off the feeling that something or…someone was watching him?
