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Read It - extra
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Readers recommend . . .
‘Nancy Drew’ stories by Carolyn Keene, ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ series by Cressida Cowell, ‘The Rose’ series by Holly Webb, Ingo by Helen Dunmore, and ‘The Adventure’ series by Enid Blyton.
Natasha Pennington
‘Famous Five’ series by Enid Blyton. They are really good, but they are quite scary sometimes. I recommend them to children 8-12. ‘Animal Ark’ series by Lucy Daniels. I recommend them to children aged 6-10. The ‘Swallows and Amazons’ books by Arthur Ransome are fabulous. I recommend them to children aged 9-15.
Imogen Philip, age almost 11
Recommended for ages 11-13:
The ‘Warrior Cats’ series by Erin Hunter, ‘Guardians of Ga’hoole’ series by Kathryn Lasky, ‘The 13 Secrets’ series by Michelle Harrison, and ‘The Greenwich Chronicles’ series by Val Tyler.
Maya Gunn, age 12
Recommended for ages 8-10:
‘Dolphin Tale’ screenplay by Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi, ‘Moomins’ series by Tove Jansson, Diving Adventure and Amazon Adventure by Willard Price, and the Percy Jackson series.
Anya Gunn, age 8
I recommend the ‘Skulduggery Pleasant’ books by Derek Landy. They’re about sorcerers who can do things like make fire appear in their palm, collapse a tunnel, make it rain and blast a tree down just by moving the air. (The moving air part only applies to the last one.) I couldn’t tell you the specific genre, but it’s something like fantasy, detective, action-adventure and comedy rolled into one. The books are quite long though, so be prepared for some hefty reading.
Eoin O’Kelly
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Divided City
by Theresa Breslin
Published by Doubleday Children’s books
An awesome read for all those brave-hearted 10 to 14 year olds. This book is amazing. Once you start to read it, it drags you in like dust into a vacuum cleaner. This book has a few frightening moments, so only read it if you have with you a pillow to hide behind. A developing friendship between two boys, takes you to the boundaries of sectarianism. Schoolboys Graham (Protestant) and Joe (Catholic) are both Glaswegian football lovers. As their friendship matures, so does the story – and there is much more to the story than just football . . .
Reviewed by Jonathan Chalmers, age 10
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Minnow on the Say
by Philippa Pearce
Published by Oxford University Press
This book is about a boy called David who finds an old canoe bobbing up and down on the Say (a river) at the bottom of his garden, he wishes he could keep her, and names her The Minnow. Unfortunately his father says he cannot keep her as she belongs to somebody else, so David rows along the Say to try and find the owner. In doing this he finds a new friend, Adam, but gets caught up in a hunt for treasure, which one of Adam’s ancestors had hidden. But time starts to run out, as Adam and his aunt are running out of money and may have to sell everything they own and go to live in Bristol with relatives, leaving David, and everything they ever knew.
This is a very adventurous but realistic book and I think would be suitable for ages 8-11, and is great for anybody who likes mysteries, or mystery solving.
Reviewed by Laura Harvey, age 10
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Attack of the Lizard King (‘Dinosaur Cove’ series)
by Rex Stone
Published by Oxford University Press
I have just read the first Dinosaur Cove book, Attack of the Lizard King. The books are about two boys called Jamie and Tom, who live by the sea in a place where you can find hundreds of fossils. They find some footprints and follow them into a cave, which takes them to the dinosaur world.
In dinosaur world they meet a little dinosaur called Wanna. This is short for Wannanosaurus. He is a little herbivore who they make friends with. Wanna likes to eat smelly ginkgo fruit and he helps Jamie and Tom to hide from T-Rex. They have a big adventure and see two T-Rexes fighting and one T-Rex bites the other’s neck.
Jamie has a little hand-held computer called a fossil finder, which tells him what the fossils they find are and what plants and animals they see in Dino World .
The books are really exciting. The letters on the front are really cool, because they look and feel like scaly skin. The pictures are in black and white and have lots of detail and there are fact files which tell you about the main characters, Jamie, Tom, Wanna and T-Rex.
See if you notice how the little pictures of the dinosaurs next to the page numbers change. I think this is really clever. They start as skeletons and when the story is in Dinosaur world they are real dinosaurs and at the end they are skeletons again.
The books are split into periods: the first books are in the cretaceous period and there are more stories in the Jurassic period. I am looking forward to reading the next book Charge of the Three-Horned Monster. I want to collect all the Dinosaur Cove books.
Reviewed by Charlie Johnson age 6
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The Alchemyst (‘The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel’ series)
by Michael Scott
Published by Doubleday
This is an amazing series that I would recommend to everybody aged 10+. The adventure starts off with the first book The Alchemyst, where Josh and Sophie, twins living in San Francisco, find out that magic is real and they themselves are the ‘twins of legends’ with powers of their own. Scott keeps you guessing all the time and there are some amazing twists in the story. Who is Nicholas Flamel really? And will the twins stand with him or the evil Doctor John Dee who is trying to take over the world? Magic, mythology and danger are combined in this series. There are four other books out now and the sixth one is coming out next summer. I hope everybody who reads them will enjoy them as much as I do.
Reviewed by Ellen McHugh
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First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts
by Lari Don
Published by Floris Books
This book is so exciting and magical that you just can’t
put it down! It is about a girl called Helen who is led without warning
on a magical, thrilling, breathtaking, emotional journey. This includes
midnight adventures at Stonehenge and falling off a dragon 1,000 feet
from the ground! Enough for you? Because it’s enough for Helen, but
there’s no going back now. Are a selkie girl, fairy, dragon, a centaur
and Helen enough to stop a giant bull, on two feet with horns sharper
than a knife and his army of fabled beasts? Why do they need to be
stopped? Because they are trying to destroy the book that controls the
world. This book is fast paced and full of imagery, which makes you feel
that you are in the story. 10/10. You can never put this book down, I
tell you. It’s excellent and I highly recommend it to girls and boys
aged 8-14.
Reviewed by Agnieszka Kolaczynska, age 8 |
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Blood Captain
by Justin Somper
Published by Simon and Schuster
I have recently read Blood Captain from the ‘Vampirates’
series and it was brilliant. It is about a boy called Connor and his
sister, Grace, who join a pirate ship after their mum and dad die. Grace
joins with a vampirite ship but then gets sent to the vampire academy
to heal her friend, Lorcan who was blinded trying to save her (vampires
can’t go out in the sun). While Connor abandons his ship after his first
kill and then spends days trying to get to the academy. He then joins a
ship with his old enemy, new friend Cheng Li. The captain of the
vampirate ship turns out to be someone unexpected! I hope I haven’t told
you too much!
Reviewed by Rory Cockshaw |
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Hetty Feather
by Jacqueline Wilson
Published by Doubleday Children’s Books
This book is amazing! Hetty Feather is practically Tracy
Beaker only she is a feisty little Victorian. It is a gripping and
exciting story as she is locked up in the attic for a day and a night,
and (yes there’s more) runs away, and gets waylaid into the life of
Sissy and her dying sister, Lil, and almost gets carried away by a
strange man. A brilliant read for all the family (except babies of
course). I couldn’t get my nose out of it.
Reviewed by Rosa Miller
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