First things first, Max Counts to a Million is utterly brilliant.
Writing for the 7-9 age bracket is a balancing act of plot, vocabulary, humour and depth; keeping the book accessible without sacrificing complexity. Jeremy Williams has produced a debut that will be devoured by children but also loved by parents and teachers too.
Max is a typical eight-year-old, happily pootling along through life when March 2020 arrives. Suddenly all the talk is of new words like ‘pandemic’, the supermarket feels weird with half-empty shelves and the adults are telling Max not to worry while behaving in worrying ways. There are many things here that children (and adults) will immediately identify with from the start of the pandemic: not seeing grandparents, cancelled birthday parties, teachers’ anger at the fun new game ‘coronavirus tag’, school closures and finally lockdown.
To begin with, Max, a pretty bouncy and out-going character, is relatively unfazed. The sun is shining, his dad (an ear, nose and throat doctor) is home more, Max is allowed to ride his bike on the traffic-free roads, and, best of all, his mum (a nutritionist) relaxes some of her healthy eating rules. But then Dad moves into a hotel to help in the hospital, and Mum is busy working from her home office/bedroom corner. When everyone starts getting on each other’s nerves and when Max is sent to his room to ‘count to one hundred and calm down’, he just decides to keep going. What follows is a funny and light journey through Max’s counting odyssey, a way to manage the ups and downs. Max’s epic count also makes a handy metaphor: “Sometimes, just keeping on going makes you a hero”.
Short chapters and large spacing make Max Counts to a Million perfect for newly confident Y3-4 readers. The books also wears it’s learning incredibly lightly – in the 6 short pages of Chapter 4, it manages to explain the etymology of the word pandemic and how viruses work through the metaphors of train travel and Minecraft, while also being funny and moving on the plot. Max counts to a Million would make a fantastic class reader for teachers wishing to gently explore the impacts of the pandemic. There is a QR code to access teacher discussion notes, with activities include ‘Recognising and naming emotions and feelings’ and ‘Managing emotions and dealing with change’.
Reviewer: Carol Carter
The Ice Whisperers is set in beautiful, mysterious, icy Siberia. When Bela’s mother dies, she is summoned to deepest Siberia to stay with an uncle she’s never met. Exploring his strange scientific workshop, she uncovers a secret she was never meant to find – a doorway that opens to an icy land, frozen in time and full of legends come to life. But this frozen land is in danger, and it’s up to Bela to find a way to save it. To succeed, she must join forces with the impossible: a long-lost sister she never knew she had, born 40,000 years before . .
The book is perfect for children who love fantasy novels; Ren-ya’s land is filled with ancient creatures and references to myths from long ago. The theme of friendship and the intense bond that sisters have draws comparisons with Frozen too.
This would be a fantastic novel to share with a lower key stage two class and would fit perfectly with topics that deal with frozen landscapes as well as prehistory. There are themes of ecology to draw upon and it would be a great novel to use in order to commence a geographical study of this landscape that contrasts so starkly with our own.
Reviewer: Claire Coates
Gretel, a woolly mammoth from prehistoric times, has been encased in ice for thousands of years until one peaceful Tuesday morning when the ice cracks and she pops out to greet the world again. At first, everything is marvellous – she learns about the modern world, shares amazing stories and is loved by the locals (some very friendly seabirds). But all these new changes are a little fast and overwhelming and, being the last mammoth left on Earth, Gretel starts to feel a bit lonely.
Gretel the Wonder Mammoth shows us that, no matter your size, how many talents you have and even if you are surrounded by friendly faces, everyone can feel anxious, alone and sad. It demonstrates how important it is to speak up and share your feelings when life becomes overwhelming and stressful. This very relatable story is perfect for younger pupils and teaches its readers that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask for help.
The illustrations are fun and engaging, with simple language and cheeky sea birds adorning the pages. The colours link to the emotions of the text and one cannot help but instantly take to the gentle, gregarious Gretel.
I would highly recommend this book for younger readers – in PSHE lessons, assemblies or for children requiring support in overcoming their fears.
Reviewer: Gabby McConalogue
Fledgling is a real treat for those who love a gothic story full of thrills and atmospheric settings.
Taking place at the turn of the century in 1900, everything about Cassie’s life is remote; from the rock-edge house in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps to her aloof and emotionally distant parents and a gravely ill grandmother. When a strange cherub-like creature appears after a storm, a series of strange events are set into motion and a shocking family secret is brought to light.
With owls and angels, menacing storm birds, an eerie forest setting and a family mystery to uncover, there’s plenty of tension around each corner in Lucy Hope’s debut narrative. Taxidermy animals and strange inventions furnish the inside of Cassie’s home, while outside in the forest there are storms and strange birds and all the noises of the forest. There’s a sense of darkness gathering throughout the story and a brilliantly gothic cast of characters and setting. The story feels surreal in places, while never losing the thread of hope pulled long by Cassie and the cherub and finished with a warming message about love and family.
The Extraordinary World of Birds is a hardback, quality text with a weighty feel. Beautifully illustrated and packed with information, as we would expect from Dorling Kindersley, it makes an accessible introduction to the subject for beginner bird lovers whilst still containing enough detail and depth to stimulate afficionados.
Beginning with ‘What is a Bird?’ and the evolutionary link with dinosaurs, we learn the basics of flight, the purpose of nests, the incubation of eggs and bird eating habits. Each page is well laid out with good use of colour and fonts, and the text is both clearly factual and enticingly expressive, for example ‘a forked tail makes this bird elegant and buoyant in the air’. There are plenty of snippets that the reader will immediately want to share with a “Did you know…!”, such as that a stork’s nest can weigh as much as a horse and that a diving peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world at 390 kph.
Following sections cover bird families, bird behaviour, bird habitats and ‘birds and us’, and at 80 pages there is plenty of satisfying detail here. Personally, I particularly enjoyed learning about the various bird families, such as passerines (perching birds) and flightless birds, and their intriguing behaviours, such as territorial defence and amazing migrations.
Of particular note in this book is the excellent use of photography. Far too many modern non-fiction texts aimed at children are over-reliant on stylized artwork and design, when children would benefit more from realistic images to gain real-world understanding. Here, while many of the backgrounds are illustrations, almost all of the bird images are photographic images collaged over the top.
The Extraordinary World of Birds has been excellently executed as a primer to the wonderful avian world and will be pored over by children with an interest in the natural environment.
Reviewer: Carol Carter
There’s no feeling quite like cosying up with the next instalment of a much loved story – and Alex T. Smith’s Winston books offer an almost month-long delight of a festive tale.
A cross between a Christmas story and an advent calendar, the Winston books are charming full-colour hardbacks structured into 24½ chapters – one for each day of advent. Each day’s offering includes the next chapter of the story and easy-to-follow instructions for an accompanying craft to make or activity to try. New this year, How Winston Came Home for Christmas is the second Winston story and follows Winston the mouse on a quest to find a long lost friend.
Themes of kindness, connecting with loved ones, recovering what is lost and valuing friendships abide – all perfect for Christmas time – and the daily activities range from art and baking to giving gifts to others and finding out about festive traditions from different cultures.
This is a gorgeous gift book that will be treasured year after year as a treasured festive tradition for young readers.
A gentle tale of a famous seasonal traditional is offered in The Christmas Pine by Julia Donaldson and Victoria Sandøy.
The words were originally commissioned by The Poetry Society for their annual poetic welcome to Norway’s gifted Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, and have since been beautifully illustrated by Norwegian artist Victoria Sandøy and presented in hardback.
The gentle rhyming verse tells the journey of the Christmas tree itself, from its origins in a deep and snowy wood to its final destination in Trafalgar Square. Coupled with pictures that accentuate the joy of children and animals at each stage of the tree’s journey, this makes for a comforting bedtime story that refocuses attention on the aspects of Christmas that become treasured in our hearts long after the season is over.
This is the true story of Bandoola – an Asian timber elephant of Myanmar, which was for a time a colony of the British Empire. The story focuses on Bandoola’s adult life around the time of World War 2, when elephants were used to help move and haul hardwood teak. The elephants at this time were looked after by ‘Oozies’; men who cared for the elephants, but perhaps in a way that didn’t always show these majestic and intelligent animals the respect that they deserved.
Things changed when James Howard Williams arrived to work for the timber company, and soon saw the true nature of the hard-working elephants. World War 2 eventually arrived in Myanmar, and the people of the country were forced to leave. Bandoola and Williams led 53 elephants and over 200 refugees to safety in Northern India, on an unbelievable and treacherous journey that saw them scale mountains and tested them to the limit. This incredible journey showed an astonishing trust between humans and animals, with a remarkable level of understanding and bravery that saw them reach their destination in one piece.
Having enjoyed William Grill’s compelling retelling of Shackleton’s Journey in his wonderfully sensitive yet engaging style, it was a joy to have the opportunity to read another. Grill has a talent for finding incredible stories; stories with historical importance and that show the best (and sometimes the worst) of humanity.
‘Bandoola’ is visually and literarily compelling, powerful, and thought-provoking, providing a new angle among the range of WW2 book options.
Jummy at the River School is an immersive introduction to life at boarding school in 1990s Nigeria. Many of the themes of friendship and bravery and justice are universal, but the vividly described River School setting, and Jummy’s own unique voice, make the story sing.
Jumoke has always dreamed of being accepted to Nigeria’s best girls boarding school, and the reality is everything she hoped for. The grounds are beautiful, her dorm mates take her under their wing, and before long she is caught up in a whirlwind of midnight feasts, picnics, school songs and working hard to win the house prize. Everything seems perfect, the only fly in the ointment stuck-up Bolaji who thinks she is better than everyone else. However, it is not long before Jummy finds that, to her surprise, her best friend from back home, Caro, is also at the River School. Jummy’s initial elation turns to confusion when she realises that Caro; brave, funny, clever Caro; is there as a maid to the matron, to work not learn. Jummy decides that everyone deserves the opportunities she has, and with the help of her new friends, resolves that there must be a way to help Caro join them at school….
Suitable across the KS2 age range, Jummy at the River School is very accessibly written, with short chapters averaging 8 pages and large, well-spaced text that is easy on the eye. The underlying poverty and class differences affecting Jummy, Caro and Bolaji are never shied away from but also never overwhelm the joyful nature of the story and the light-footed writing that keep you wanting to turn the next page. Perfect for fans of school stories and as a class reader linked to Africa, Jummy at the River School is as juicy and sweet and captivating as Caro’s favourite agbalumo fruit.
This Book is Full of Brains is an amazing resource to understand more about our amazing brains. It is full of exercises and experiments that children can undertake to understand the brain and how it works.
The book is broken down into a set of logical chapters that cover how the brain works, different parts of the brain, how our brains compare to animal brains and about the ‘brains’ of robots and computers.
Each chapter is full of fun facts, interesting science knowledge made accessible to children and a range of illustrations to support the information being shared.
The book does not shy away from specific scientific language, including the different parts of the brain, but it explains it all in a way that children can understand. The ‘try it at home’ sections are a key feature of the book, giving practical activities for children to try to test out their brain or to apply the knowledge acquired within each chapter. There are lots of real-life examples and comparisons so that children can gain a deeper understanding of some trickier concepts.
This book is ideal for any science fan.
Reviewer: Kathryn Gilbert
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Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?
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yes
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