Poppy Pym and the Pharoah’s Curse by Laura Wood is the winner of the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for new children’s writing, and it’s an excellent debut with a brilliant character in the eponymous Ms Pym who promises many more exciting adventures. Poppy Pym is an orphan, abandoned as a baby and brought up by the… Read More
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The Black Lotus by Kieran Fanning introduces three kids with extraordinary abilities. Brazilian Ghost can turn himself invisible; Irish Cormac can run incredibly quickly; and American Kate can communicate with animals. The mysterious one-eyed Makoto turns up and recruits each one of them, a bit like the mysterious one-eyed Nick Fury turned up to recruit… Read More
The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow by Katherine Woodfine is a splendid period adventure, set in London not long before the First World War. Sophie Taylor is facing a new beginning. Orphaned and impoverished, she’s about to start her new job at Simpson’s, the brand-new luxury department store that’s opening in Piccadilly. (Simpson’s is a… Read More
The Thieves of Ostia is the first in Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries series. The greatest mystery of this book is: how on Earth did it take me so long to read it? Historical fiction? Great! Child detectives? Right up my street. Set in Ancient Rome? I studied Classics at university, for goodness’ sake! It would… Read More
This is what would happen to me. Guaranteed. If an alien visited Earth and granted superpowers to one person, I’d just have stepped outside, or gone to make a sandwich, or (like Luke in My Brother is a Superhero by David Solomons) needed to go for a wee. Luke knows everything there is to know… Read More
The D’Evil Diaries by Tatum Flynn does exactly what it says on the tin – these are the diaries of Jinx D’Evil, the 666th son of Lucifer the fallen angel, ruler of Hell. In many respects, he’s a normal 12-year-old boy – he struggles with his lessons, misses his absent mum, idolises his big brother,… Read More
My Headteacher is a Vampire Rat! by Pamela Butchart is the hilarious story of Izzy and her friends Jodi, Maisie and Zach, whose overactive imaginations get them into all sorts of trouble. There are strange goings-on at the school. Classrooms are shut with mysterious notices, rumours of rat infestations abound, the headteacher has disappeared, and… Read More
A Devil Under the Skin is the third thriller from Anya Lipska starring police officer Natalie Kershaw and Polish private eye Janusz Kiszka. I’m a big fan of this series – see my list of my favourite books in 2014 which included Where the Devil Can’t Go and Death Can’t Take a Joke, the first two… Read More
Fingal’s Ghost, by Kathleen Fidler, is a wartime adventure in which plucky children foil a German spy plot involving a submarine. My forthcoming book, The Wreck of the Argyll, is a wartime adventure in which plucky children foil a German spy plot involving a submarine. But, honest, I read Fingal’s Ghost just recently, long after I’d… Read More
Magic is hard. There’s so much magic in fantasy that sometimes it’s used to define fantasy (although that’s an oversimplification) but the fact remains – Magic is hard. There are many books where the magic just doesn’t hang together, or where the reader is bogged down in the minutiae of the cleverly-worked-out magic system that the… Read More