The first book in the ‘Lizzie and Belle Mysteries’ series sees the young best friends and amateur detectives use their skills to investigate odd goings-on in a theatre, which in turn reveals further mysteries and crimes which they must solve.

Set in Georgian London, this book illuminates the multiracial history of Britain, and the struggles and injustices faced by Black people in a place where many powerful people thrived on keeping slavery alive. It also demonstrates that White people had an important role, as well as responsibility, to offer support to Black anti-slavery activists and to challenge the White slave owners of the time. Many of the characters and events in this book are based on real people and things that happened, and there is a lot of scope to research real stories. The real Elizabeth Sancho was daughter of the African-British writer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho. Dido Belle was the daughter of Maria, an enslaved young African woman, and John Lindsay – captain in the British Royal Navy.

This is a fantastic mystery story, which could also lead to discussions about race, theatre, slavery and family history.

Author JT Williams also visited our blog to discuss the role of fiction in bringing history to life for children.

Rainbow Grey is a funny, smart and creative tale, sprinkled with weather-related characters and places. The characters are not human, but still remain highly relatable; the main characters had friendship issues to deal with, like any children their age, and it’s important for children to be able to recognise things that they might be going through in their own lives in a book. Likewise, the nod to dyslexia when Ray describes letters as being jumbled on the page and later on, when reading from coloured paper was referred to, would resonate with a lot of children…

What could you do with an extra hour a day? Ailsa Craig, late to absolutely everything since the day she was born (two weeks late, at midnight), discovers the Magic Hour in the wake of her parents’ split and her house blowing up. Thankfully, she was late for that too.

Chased through a portal into an alternate, magical Edinburgh, Ailsa rapidly finds herself spinning her life around. With the extra time, her grades improve, enemies become (almost) friends, and it’s all just so intriguing and exciting that Ailsa doesn’t realise, at first, that anything too good to be true comes with a cost. And the costs are mounting up in a frightening way.

The Magic Hour is a fast-paced adventure packed with mythology and guided by the scientific method which will appeal to curious children in upper KS2 and Y7. Fans of The Train To Impossible Places, The Nowhere Emporium and Wonderscape will find much to enjoy here in a debut novel where the brakes are most definitely off…

We’re big fans of Elle McNicoll’s books here at BooksForTopics HQ. We were excited to hear that Elle’s newest book takes a firm step into the magical realism genre. Elle says,”This book is a love letter to readers of A Kind of Spark who wanted to see neurodivergent girls with real magical powers. I loved magical books as a child, and still do now, so to have a neurodivergent heroine in a fantastical world, it meant a lot to me to write. I’m thrilled readers are going to meet Ramya.”

At its heart, this is an exciting magical fantasy with a quest to save an endangered town. Ramya is a feisty heroine whose dyspraxia can make her feel misunderstood and disconnected from the world around her. Ramya can also perceive things that most people can’t – seeing through the Glamour that disguises magical creatures. As the story unfolds, Ramya learns to trust her own instincts more, despite feeling weary from a world that fails to give value to the way she is. Her unique way of seeing things is her superpower and her quest confirms to her that her whole unique self is powerful, wonderful and of greater value to the world than she dared to imagine.

Fantasy lovers will enjoy the imaginative cast of magical characters (beware – the fairies in this book are not at all as you might expect) and the idea that a co-existing magical world is thinly veiled all around us is one that has a timeless appeal in children’s literature. Many young readers will relate to Ramya’s struggle to navigate the emotional connections with different family members. We were pleased to see that this is only the beginning of Ramya’s adventures and that there is more to come from the magical world she inhabits, with a sequel due in Spring 2023.

This debut novel from Helen Rutter is inspired by her own son who has a stammer, and it delves into the worries and thoughts that Billy has about having a stammer and how he thinks the outside world will see him because of it.
When eleven-year-old Billy starts Bannerdale secondary school, he wants to fit in and be popular. In fact, he hopes to realise his dream of becoming a comedian and being known throughout the school as ‘Billy Plimpton, the Funniest Boy in School’. One thing stands in his way though – he decides he won’t talk until he’s ‘got rid’ of his stammer…