This book is amazingly enthralling! Its the story of how the animals who live in Farthing Wood survive when humans start chopping down the trees of Farthing Wood, and on top of the animals homes on the verge of being destroyed, a drought comes and all available streams and lakes dry up. So, the threatened animals decide to leave their homeland and begin on a long tiresome journey of trekking to White Deer Park, a nature reserve. But every step the party takes leades them closer to a fountain of danger and adventure! This book is rather like a puppet, when the puppet lifts its arm up to wave, the book leads you into its dark cover of enchantment, when the puppet takes a step things start to get a bit better, but when the foot comes down again, things go back to the concrete hard normal. When the puppet opens its mouth to speak, you are swallowed up into the capturing pages of the book. I am loving reading this book, as I can use my dictionary to find out a lot of new words! My edition of this book has a front cover that is beautiful, just like the words inside!
Month: February 2013
The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens
The Emerald Atlas:The Books of Beginning 1
I am amazed at the creativity and description John Stephens has used when writing this book! It is about three siblings , Kate, Michael and Emma, who have been tossed about from orphanage to orphanage when their parents left them. When the malicious Miss Crumley sends them to Cambridge Falls, the three children find themselves running back and forth in time through an old photo album. Soon the young explorers embark on an adventure meeting dwarfs and escaping from the sly Countess and her Howlers, an exploration that will save the world and never be forgotten. If you want to read a fantasy adventure book then all you will do before you finish this book is turn the pages of it! If you want to read more John Stephens then the sequel to The Emerald Atlas is called The Fire Chronicle: The Books of Beginning 2
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The Girl Who Could Fly by Vicktoria Forester
This book is really amazing! It is well set and, most of all it has a fantastic story twist. It all begins when Piper is born, with the unusual ability to start floating above her cot! As Piper gets older, she can’t seem to stop flying. One morning a call from the USA comes, with a Dr Hellion on the phone, asking about taking Piper to a special school where everyone else there has special abilities. Piper agrees to go, and adventure erupts from everywhere. If you enjoy adventure books about girls, then you may be worshipping Vicktoria Forester, the author of this book for your whole life to come!
The Star Of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
I am really enjoying this book. I have read it before but the plot is so wide and every thing that happens is so unexpected that I feel the urge to read this book over and over again. All of the characters have an interesting backstory, especially the Eggharts great aunt, her life was so romantic and filled with performing. If you want an unusual backstory then you should try reading my review on A Wrinkle In Time. This book is a bit like a growing tree, all the little problems are the roots, and the leaves and trunk are formed by the build up, climax and resolution. The story begins when Ellie and Sigrid climb up a mountain on their day off from working with some peculiar but interesting professors. Ellie goes into a church to rest her feet but instead finds a baby, Annika. Annika is brought back to the professors home and well cared for. When Annika’s long lost mother comes, Annika is led from one different life to another and another. I highly reccomend this book for any one above the age of seven. This book can make you feel lots of different emotions, so be sure not to keep to much confidence in one character, because the next moment you could be hating him or her! If you want to read more Eva Ibbotson books, then Journey To The River Sea or The Dragonfly Pool are really amazing.
The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis
This is about a family with two children and two parents. Jimmie is the oldest of the two kids, and he hasn’t been growing for a long time. Deza Malone, Jimmie’s younger sister is very intelligent but has incredibly bad problems with her teeth, but as the Great Depression has hit Gary, where the Malones live, neither of the parents can afford to get a doctor or dentist appointment. On Deza’s birthday Jimmie brings her a crisp, fresh, crunchy, large apple pie. But, his parents guess that he has stolen it. When the father goes on a fishing trip to Lake Michigan, he comes out of the hospital with stitches and a lisp, plus his front teeth are knocked out. This book has a lot of facts like; The Grand Rapids is geogically located 100 miles northeast of Gary. Or that Flint is geogically located sixty miles northwest of Detroit. Did you know that Saignaw is geogically located twenty miles north of Flint. A praise in this book that I really liked is ”Hoping is such hard work. It tires you out and you never seem to get any kind of reward. Hoping feels like you are a balloon with a pinhole slowly leaking air.” This book is very enjoyable and I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle
A Wrinkle in Time (Puffin Modern Classics)
This bundle of words is about a group of children, two of which have to rescue their father from the fifth hemisphere( the fifth hemisphere is up.) There is a monster which is named It. YES, its name is It! It hypnotises you into doing exactly the same thing as everyone else, in unison. This is quite an original book, with the normal worries about school, and the ones about monsters, all colliding and crashing into each other. The characters, Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Which, especially Mrs Whatsit are all exeedingly funny and unusual. I think Charles Wallace, the youngest of the three children is my favourite. He is so young but understanding. I think the author could have added a bit more description of fear in. I LOVED how the characters were so vivid and unusual
Lizzie’s Wish by Adele Geras
Lizzie’s Wish (Historical House)
This bunch of sentences is about a girl called Lizzie, whose big ambition is to become a gardener. Lizzie is sent away to live with her Uncle’s family when her evil stepfather, Mr Bright declares that Lizzie’s mother needs peace as she is pregnant. Lizzie tries to be brave and she sends a daily letter to her mother, but when the return letters stop coming, Lizzie finds herself on a rescue mission with Uncle William who fought in the Crimean war. The description of the book on the blurb was “A compelling story of one girls determination to defy the stifling conventions of Victorian life.”
Liar And Spy by Rebecca Stead
This collection of pages is about a boy called Georges( the s is silent) named after Georges Seurat. Georges father loses his job so Georges’ family has to move into a new flat. When Georges and his father find a crumpled note stuck to their door saying spy meeting- TODAY.Georges dad writes back saying “what time?” As the time appears, Georges curiosity gets the better of him. He finds the spy meeting containing Safer and his sister Candy. Soon Georges finds himself breaking into the unseen but supposedly mysterious Mr X’s flat in the dead of night. When Georges finds out the whole thing is a lie, he is furious. The book ends with Georges’ mother very sick in hospital but getting better. This book doesn’t have a very wide plot but personally I really enjoyed it.
The Haunting Of Charity Delafield by Ian Beck
The Haunting of Charity Delafield
This is about a girl called Charity who is shut into the grim confinement of her father’s house. When Charity stumbles into the forbidden west wing, she finds her dead mother’s diary and a book of fairy tales. She lives the fairy tales, which I found pretty extraordinary. When Charity tries to read the words in the diary, they become dust and drift away. With the help of a chimney sweep’s boy, Silas, he and Charity find the words from the diary up a chimney. Soon Charity and Silas uncover the mystery of where Charity’s mother, Ariella, is hidden in the immense house. This is a both funny and exciting book, bound to superglue your eyes to its pages.
Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr
A teenager in the Second World War, Anna’s life is hard enough. Money is scarce and Anna’s beloved family is classified as enemy aliens. That makes getting jobs an incredibly hard trial. So when Anna’s mother loses her job, life is just a matter of Anna coming home from her art classes and her mother telling her, before she even had the chance to ask ‘not this time’. In this collection of thoughtfully written sentences, I wondered whether Anna will ever lead a proper teenage love life, as there is a lot of description of the air raid sirens and food rationing. In the end Anna falls in love with her drawing teacher, John Cotmore. Personally I think that there could have been more time allocated to this section of Anna’s refugee life, after all, this is really the only part of the young teenagers life that is normal. It is funny how Anna and her older brother Max don’t express much fear at the air raids, only in one particular one. Bombs On Aunt Dainty is a sequel to When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, the first book in the series by Judith Kerr. Judith Kerr has also written the book The Tiger Who Came to Tea
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