Ruby and Garnet are ten-year-old twins. They’re identical, and they do EVERYTHING together, especially since their mother died three years earlier – but they couldn’t be more different. Bossy, bouncy, funny Ruby loves to take charge, and is desperate to be a famous actress, while quiet, sensitive, academic Garnet loves nothing more than to curl up with one of her favourite books. And when everything around the twins is changing so much, can being a double act work for ever?
Crackpot’ is what everybody calls the Pott family. So when they go to buy a new car and come back with a WRECK, nobody is surprised. Except for the Potts themselves.
First, the car has a name. And she tells them what it is. Then they find that she can
fly . . . and swim . . .
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a car on a mission to stop a criminal gang in its tracks – and she is taking the Potts with her!
Jump into the world’s most loved magical car, for her first adventure ever!
ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF.
Twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity.
But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and her grandfather, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy.
A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo’s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.
There is a box. Anything you imagine will appear inside. You have one go, one chance to create anything you want. What would you pick?”
That’s exactly the question ten-year-old Timothy Hart gets to answer after discovering The Imagination Box. The greatest toy on earth.
The top-secret contraption transforms his life but when the box’s inventor, Professor Eisenstone, goes missing, Tim knows he has to investigate.
With the help of a talking finger monkey called Phil, he sets out to find the professor. In order to rescue his friend, he must face his darkest fears and discover the true potential of his own mind.
This stunning debut is first in an exciting new trilogy for readers aged 9+.
London street urchin Smith is 12 years old, and an experienced pick-pocket. One day on Ludgate Hill, he robbed an old gentleman, and one minute later watched him silently murdered by two men, who chased him for the document he had stolen but could not understand.
Smith artfully dodges the two men and winds up in the odd company of a wealthy blind man, who takes Smith into his home and provides him with an education. But this new comfort is lost when Smith himself is suspected of the very murder he witnessed.
Leon Garfield was a British novelist, born in 1921. He is best known for children’s historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books including Shakespeare’s Stories – retellings of Shakespeare’s plays for children, and he won many awards including the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal. He died in 1996, aged 74.
EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES by Erich Kastner has been in print ever since it was first published in 1928.
Young Emil is robbed on his first real railway journey of money entrusted to him by his hard-working mother for the relatives he is to stay with in Berlin. A gang of boys about his own age come to his aid, and a thrilling adventure full of surprises ensues as they use their wits to devise a wonderfully simple but practical trick to capture the thief.
With every detail clearly drawn – from the tiresome business of getting into best clothes for the journey, down to the final anxiety as to what shall be done with a gloriously unexpected reward – this is a story all young readers will enjoy.
A bunch of scruffy urchin kids in the backstreets of Paris outwit thieves to uncover the whereabouts of millions of francs stolen from the Paris-Ventimiglia express. Gaby is the leader, but it is super-cool Marion with her collection of stray dogs who is the heart of the gang.
It all begins when a local villain offers the children a fortune for their ‘horse’ – a headless rocking horse, given old tricycle wheels that they ‘ride’ down the steep cobbled street, but they don’t want to part with it. Then, a few days later, the horse is stolen, and so begins an adventure that is full of twists and turns, leading to a satisfying conclusion when the villains receive their comeuppance.
New York City girl Claudia, a mere month shy of being a twelve-year-old, has resolved to run away from home with her younger brother, Jamie. She knows that she could never pull off the classic spur-of-the-moment departure without a destination (inevitably involving having to eat outside with the insects, and cupcakes melting in the sun); so she plans everything to perfection, including their destination: the grand, elegant, beautiful, all-encompassing Metropolitan Museum of Art.
However, no sooner have Claudia and Jamie settled into their new home, than they are caught up in the mystery of an angel statue bought by the museum for the bargain price of $225. Is it in fact an as yet undiscovered work by Michelangelo, worth millions? Claudia is determined to find out, and her quest leads her to the remarkable, secretive Mrs. Frankweiler, who sold the statue to the museum – and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself.
Since its first appearance nearly 50 years ago, The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has gained a place in the hearts of generations of readers – and has rightly become one of the most celebrated and beloved children’s books of all time.
From the horrors of the slave trade to a book that changed the world, Catherine Johnson celebrates the incredible life of Olaudah Equiano in this gripping true story.
Born in what is now Nigeria in 1745, Olaudah Equiano’s peaceful childhood was brought to an abrupt end when he was captured and enslaved aged 11. He spent much of the next eight years of his life at sea, seeing action in the Seven Years’ War. When he was finally able to buy his freedom, he went on to become a prominent member of the abolition movement and in 1789 published one of the first books by a Black African writer. Journey Back to Freedom focuses on Equiano’s early life, demonstrating the resilience of the human spirit and one man’s determination to be free
The story before the scandal. A book to celebrate the inspiring legacy of the Windrush pioneers.
In June 1948, hundreds of Caribbean men, women and children arrived in London on a ship called the HMT Empire Windrush. Although there were already Black people living in Britain at the time, this event marks the beginning of modern Black Britain.
Combining historical fact with voices from the Windrush Generation, this book sensitively tells the inspiring story of the Windrush Generation pioneers for younger readers.
© BooksForTopics 2015-2024
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