Book Title: Return to Roar (available here)
Author: Jenny McLachlan
Illustrator: Ben Mantle
Publisher: Egmont
Publication Date: August 2020
Most Suitable For: Years 4-6
Reviewed By: Kristen Hopwood
Return to Roar is the follow up to The Land of Roar and Jenny McLachlan does a brilliant job of recapping important information from the first book without spending too long doing so.
Twins Rose and Arthur (who are the Masters of Roar) are going to spend the half term holiday with their Grandad. Or so their parents think. They are actually going to travel from their Grandad’s attic into the land of Roar, an imaginary place from their childhood games that has somehow come to be real. All of the imaginary residents are real too, including Crowky, who the twins battled with only a few months earlier. None of them can leave Roar though, unless they have something from the real world in their possession.
Once they arrive in Roar, Arthur and Rose find their friend, Win, a boy who lives in a cave. Rose wants to go and find her mermaid friend, Mitch, but Win tells them he hasn’t seen her for weeks. On the plus side, there hasn’t been any sign of Crowky and Win thinks he has gone for good. One night, Arthur has a strange dream in which he hears Crowky talking to him. Rose isn’t interested in Arthur’s dream, until they go outside the cave and see a message written on the wall: ‘What’s in the box?’ Arthur and Rose thought they had got rid of the box from their childhood, but now someone else seems to know about it. With the help of the Lost Girls, dragons and of course Win, they must find Mitch, locate the box and stop whatever is inside it.
Full of adventure, magic and friendship, Return to Roar is even more thrilling than the first book. I raced my way through it, wondering what dangers Rose and Arthur were going to encounter next, whilst simultaneously wanting to visit Roar myself! I love the idea of childhood games coming to life and I think this idea will appeal to many children age 8 and up. I will be adding Return to Roar to my Year 6 class library and I am sure many of them will be journeying there this year!
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You can order Return to Roar online or from an independent bookshop.
Many thanks to the publisher for sending us a review copy of this book and to our Review Panel member for reviewing it.
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