I’m home. Coronavirus. Twisted ankle.My instinct is to sit with my laptop and work all day, but I know I will be exhausted if I do that. So, what can I do? I’m afraid of running out of books (yes, really) and I ration them, until I remember that I have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. […]
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
What a truly delightful story! In the shadow of Fruitless Mountain live Minli and her family. Everything in her village seems grey and dull, except Minli, who sparkles with life. That sparkle is, perhaps, the result of Ba’s stories. Night after night, he tells her stories about dragons, the Never-Ending Mountain and the Old Man […]
Annexed
I was not planning to write a review of Annexed because of all the questions it raised in me about historical fiction. The Diary of a Young Girl, with its optimism and intimacy, made the Annexe come alive to all of us. I read it years ago and was left feeling hollow because vivacious Anne Frank, who died perhaps equally […]
Broken Soup
Unlike most other books that I pick up, the cover of Broken Soup did not attract me. But I’ve read and loved two other books by Jenny Valentine (The Ant Colony and Fire Colour One), so I borrowed this one – and, once more, I loved how the story was told. Rowan’s family falls apart when her brother Jack dies. […]
Listen to the Moon
I keep saying that with Michael Morpurgo, you can’t go wrong. Once more, with Listen to the Moon, I realised the truth of that. Had it been almost any other writer, I would have been daunted by the thickness of the book and the idea of beginning to read it when I know I’m busy. But Michael Morpurgo? […]
Ink
More often than not, fantasy serves as an allegory of the world we live in. Sometimes, the allegory is clearer than at other times, and I suppose part of that is cultural. For instance, when I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time, I didn’t know enough to make the obvious connections. With Ink, it was different. […]
Secrets of a Sun King
The first book I read by Emma Carroll was The Girl Who Walked on Air, and I loved it enough for it to have been one of the top ten middle-grade books I read in 2018. As a child, I devoured Galliano’s Circus and I picked up the book with nothing in mind other than the fun of exploring another, different […]
Books I Read in January 2020
I wrote already about the three hOle books I read, as well as about The Lilliputians. But there’s so much more, as always, especially as I was travelling! Instead of doing one post per book, here’s a list of books I read and loved. Neel on Wheels Neel on Wheels is a lovely picture book written by Lavanya […]
The Lilliputians
Street-smart Tilly ropes Poesy in to audition for the Lilliputians, a children’s theatre group that is to travel to America. Poesy qualifies, only to discover that the world of acting and singing is rather different from everything she had dreamed it would be. For one, it seems that everyone cannot be friends with everyone else. […]
Three hOle Books
Who doesn’t love a hole in a book? I love the idea of the hole, and I do wish it were possible to make the holes part of every illustration! I’m sure the illustrator would probably find that rather restrictive, but even so, I delighted in each picture that used the hole in some way. […]
The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop
Ooh! That’s Polly! Let me wave out to her!Oops. I’m at an auction and I just ended up buying a horse for a thousand pounds. No, I’m not quoting, but this is the lovely premise of a heart-warming story of a racehorse who refuses to gallop. Ten-year-old Charlie Bass loves horses, but she has only […]
After Tomorrow
Flawed narrators make me squirm. When I read a story from the point of view of a character who does not make the right decisions, I often don’t know whether to read on. Fictional friends are important to me as a reader. I read to befriend the characters. What if the protagonist doesn’t seem like […]
The Island at the End of Everything
Amihan lives with her nanay on Culion, the island at the end of everything. Unlike most of the others – who came by boat to this beautiful, lush green island with blue skies – Ami was born on the island, an island of lepers. Except that they don’t use the word ‘leper’ on Culion; instead, […]
The Boundless
The Boundless starts slowly; I almost did not read it. But that’s what made me realise once again how important reviews are: I read on only because Katherine Rundell was quoted as having said, ‘WHAT A BOOK!’ And though there were parts I skimmed over, and parts that irked me (like the tiny peculiar sentence in […]
Pig Heart Boy
Cameron’s heart is weak. He does not know how long he has to live. But there’s a doctor who believes that a heart transplant from a pig will give him a chance. And Cameron decides to take the chance. Pig Heart Boy is an incredible story, overwhelming me with all the ideas it encompasses. Life and death, […]
Making Millions
Nicholas wants to go for a masterclass, but his parents refuse to shell out the money he would need. What do real friends do when a friend is in need? Even though Cass thinks that yet another class is strange, this masterclass is what her friend Nicholas wants. So, of course, Cass and the Bubble […]
Radhika Takes the Plunge
A little over a year ago, I read the picture book Clumsy! by Ken Spillman and I enjoyed it. It is a sweet, heart-warming story about a girl who is often called ‘clumsy’, ‘careless’, ‘butterfingers’. That becomes her identity until her grandmother gives her a box of paints. I loved the simplicity of the story; […]
A Place Called Perfect
I was a bit apprehensive about reading a book that promised to be ‘Perfectly Creepy’. I’m not a big fan of creepy stories. But I loved the cover and the title intrigued me, so I picked it up and started reading. And before I knew it, I had finished the book. A Place Called Perfect is the story […]
The 1,000-Year-Old Boy
“References to historical dates, places and words in old languages are accurate only in the sense of being ‘not very’. Ross Welford in his Author’s Note to The 1,000-Year-Old Boy Isn’t that a promising note to an imaginative story? The 1,000-Year-Old Boy is about Alfie Monk, who has been eleven years old for a thousand years. To some, this […]
Mockingbird
Several years ago, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. That was when I came across Asperger’s Syndrome for the first time. I read up bits and pieces about it, and was overwhelmed by the power of the brain and the ways in which it processes information. I picked up Mockingbird without knowing that it was written from the […]