Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths by Maisie Chan, illustrated by Anh Cao

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

Danny Chung is excited when he finds his parents are planning to give his bedroom a makeover. He thinks he will be able to start having is best friend Ravi over for sleepovers. But then he finds out that his new roommate is in fact is grandmother from China – who doesn’t even speak English.

Danny is expected to look after his grandmother, when what he really wants to be doing is drawing his cartoons. And what about the maths project he is supposed to be doing in the holidays? The one that is part of a big inter-school competition? Not that he wants to be doing maths. Danny Chung does not do maths

Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths is a funny and affectionate portrait of life as the child of immigrant parents: of the struggle to find your own voice and be accepted for who you really are. It’s also about discovering that wisdom can be found in the most unexpected places – and that maybe, just maybe, you and your eccentric, embarrassing grandmother might make the best team ever. And maybe the pair of them have something to teach Danny’s parents too – who are sometimes working too hard to really listen to their son.

Danny’s cartoons are wonderfully realised by the illustrator Anh Cao.

WINNER of the 2022 Children’s and YA Jhalak Prize.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Night Bus Hero by Onjali Q Raúf; Tamarind and the Star of Ishta by Jasbinder Bilan; Chinglish by Sue Cheung (for older YA readers)

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories about intergenerational conflict

Perfect Accompaniment: dim sum

Genre: Children’s (middle grade)

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A Nest of Vipers by Catherine Johnson

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

I grew up loving the novels of Leon Garfield – with a special fondness for Smith. Catherine Johnson’s A Nest of Vipers plunges the reader into the same world of 18th Century London – but populated this time with a rich cast of characters reflecting the diversity that most of us are only now learning was the reality in London at that time.

Cato is a member of a gang of con artists who live at the Nest of Vipers (‘the best inn in London’), making a living from tricking wealthy fools of their money. They are led by Mother Hopkins, who has taken them all under her wing and given them a home. But now she’s getting older and she dreams of one last con – one so big they will be able to escape London, buy a house in the country and live out their days in peace.

But things have got out of hand. Cato has been caught – his gang, who he thought of as family – apparently abandoning him to the hangman’s noose. All that is left for him now is to tell his story to the Ordinary of Newgate – the prison chaplain whose job it was to record the last words of condemned prisoners and then sell them to an eager public, like the true-crime podcasts of their day.

Full of humour, colour and rich historical detail. We visit the Frost Fair on a frozen River Thames and learn about the sedan chairs that were the antecedents of modern taxis. We also come face to face with the uncomfortable true that there were house slaves bought and sold in the middle of London itself, and made to wear silver collars as a badge of ownership.

A book to delight any young history buffs out there.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Freedom by Catherine Johnson; Smith by Leon Garfield; Black Hearts Over Battersea by Joan Aitkin; Black and British: a short essential history, by David Olusoga

Avoid If You Dislike: Heroes from the wrong side of the law

Perfect Accompaniment: Hot pie with gravy.

Genre: Middle Reader, Historical


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A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought Of It:

A Kind of Spark is a gem of a novel – one to break your heart, inspire you and fill you with joy.

The central character, Addie, is intelligent, curious, articulate and bursting with heart. She is also, like the author, autistic. That means that she can easily be overwhelmed – by sensory inputs and by emotions, both of which she feels with sometimes unbearable intensity.

Like so many neurodivergent people – including Addie’s older sister, Keedie – Addie learns to deal with the outside world by ‘masking’, hiding who she is from the world on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis. It’s exhausting.

But when Addie begins to learn about the Scottish ‘witches’ – women persecuted for being different, just like her – she knows she needs to do something. In her own tiny village outside Edinburgh, there are records of women who were murdered on suspicion of being witches. Addie believes they should be remembered and honoured. But not everyone agrees.

This is a book about standing up to bullies. About the determination to do the right thing. About facing up honestly to the wrongs of the past, and understanding that until we do so, we cannot effect real change.

It is also a rare, profound and stereotype-free insight into what it can be like to experience our world as a neurodivergent person. McNicholl writes vividly, drawing on her own experience. Her passion, like Addie’s, is clear.

A book for anyone who wants to change the world a little bit – but especially for all the book-loving autistic girls out there, desperate to find themselves within the pages of a book.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Night Bus Hero by Onjali Rauf; Hetty Feather by Jacqueline Wilson

Avoid If You Dislike: Seeing the world in a whole new way

Perfect Accompaniment: Peace and quiet in the corner of a library

Genre: Young Adult


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The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

Chaya may only be twelve years old, but she has already proved herself a talented thief. Not that she takes things for herself. She only steals to pay for things her struggling neighbours desperately need. And she’s very successful.

Until, that is, she over-reaches herself, goes too far, and brings down disaster on all their heads. From that point on, whatever she does to try and make things better only serves to make things even worse.

But with the help of the royal elephant, Ananda, could Chaya and her friends Neel and Nour actually do something that will bring about real and lasting change, and allow their village and their country to thrive once again?

The Girl Who Stole an Elephant is set in Serendib, a fictionalised version of ancient Sri Lanka. The adventure takes the children from their village just outside the royal palace, deep into the lush jungle, where they will face dangers from leeches to leopards. Friendships and loyalties will be tested to the limit – and Chaya will have to learn that good intentions are not always enough.

A compelling adventure story in a wonderfully realised setting with a brave and resourceful heroine.

Longlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Young Adult and Children’s Prize.  

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; Asha and the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan.

Avoid If you Dislike: Leeches. Morally questionable heroines.

Perfect Accompaniment: Papaya

Genre: Children’s (Middle Reader)


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When Life Gives You Mangos by Kereen Getten

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

Clara is part of a small and close-knit group of friends in a rural, seaside community in Jamaica. But something that happened last summer has stretched friendship to breaking point. Will the arrival of Rudy, a girl from England visiting her grandmother, be Clara’s salvation?

The places where Clara used to play – the river, the hidey-hole under the mango tree – are tainted with the past. And Clara, who used to love the sea, is somehow now terrified of water. So Clara and Rudy strike further out in search of adventure – a ruined fort, the former plantation house where Clara’s reclusive uncle lives…

But then a hurricane brings a twist in the tale that will turn everything upside-down, and make you want to go back and read parts of it again.

Clara’s world is the world the author grew up in. Her evocation of a small community where everyone knows everyone else is both universal and delightfully specific. (No adult could, surely, have made up a game like Pick Leaf?)

The mystery and drama build teasingly in this brilliantly constructed novel. A story about friendship and loss and how we cope with trauma, full of tenderness and compassion.

Shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Children’s and Young Adults’ Prize.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Tamarind and the Star of Ishta by Jasbinder Bilan; The Million Pieces of Neena Gill by Emma Smith-Barton (for slightly older readers)

Avoid If you Dislike: Stories about losing a friend

Perfect Accompaniment: Mangos (of course)

Genre: Children’s (middle reader)

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Queen of Freedom by Catherine Johnson

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

She wished she knew a way to stop time: to keep the world just as it was at that moment – the shouts of the children, the music. She would have given anything to stop the setting and rising of the sun, the moon changing.

Like Alex Wheatle’s Cane Warriors, Queen of Freedom takes the true story of a slave uprising – in this case the Maroons in Jamaica – and retells is for a young audience.

Nanny is a real historical figure – if one shadowed in mystery and legend. She was a leader of the Maroons, escaped slaves from plantations in Jamaica who set up communities in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries and successfully defended them against the British until a peace treaty was signed, allowing them to continue to live as free people. Nanny herself is credited with freeing over a thousand slaves.

The book opens with a shockingly violent incident, when Nanny and a young boy are escaping British soldiers after their community made a raid for food.

The British are outraged that their ‘property’ has been allowed to escape, and they mount ever larger military campaigns to destroy the Maroons’ communities and recapture the slaves. But the inhabitants of Nanny Town know the mountains better than the British. And Nanny knows how to exploit their fear of her as an Obeah women – someone imbued with magic. But for how long can tricks and guerrilla tactics hold the might of the British army at bay? And at what cost to Nanny herself?

A story that lays bare human cost of the demand for sugar, and shows that – a hundred years before the abolition of the slave trade – there were those who were willing to fight for and win their own freedom.

Beautifully illustrated by Amerigo Pinelli. Shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize for Children and Young Adults.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle, Freedom by Catherine Johnson

Avoid If You Dislike: Frank descriptions of violence

Perfect Accompaniment: Yam and callaloo

Genre: Children’s (middle reader) Historical Fiction

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Boy, Everywhere by A. M. Dassu

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought Of It

Onjali Rauf’s wonderful The Boy at the Back of the Class has done an incredible job of raising awareness among younger children of what it means to be a refugee. But if there was one small criticism that arguably could be levelled at it, it was that it centred the British children in the class and not the refugee child himself.

A. M. Dassu’s Boy, Everywhere, aimed at slightly older children, makes Sami, the Syrian child forced to flee his country because of civil war, the very heart and centre of the story.

Sami’s life in the opening pages of the book could be the life of a middle-class child anywhere in Europe or North America. He plays on his Xbox and worries about having the latest football boots. His biggest worries are boring school lessons and defending his best mate from the class bully.

The war has been going on in the rest of Syria for a while now, but life in Damascus hasn't changed much. Sami never imagines the war will really affect him. But then one day a bomb goes off that destroys a big shopping mall, narrowly avoiding killing Sami’s mother and leaving his five-year-old sister traumatised. Sami’s parents realise they have no choice but to leave Syria and to try and reach a safe country.

Boy, Everywhere is the story of Sami’s perilous journey from Syria to the UK and what happens to him and his family once they arrive Manchester. It’s a tough story, based on first-person accounts from other young people who have made the journey.

At every turn it demolishes myths about asylum seekers. It shows what it means to put your lives in the hands of smugglers, to survive terrifying boat crossings, to arrive in the UK only to be locked up in a detention centre with other desperate people – and then when you finally begin to make a life for yourself in your new country, to face bigotry and rejection.

Sami is angry and frustrated as any teenager would be at being torn from his home and his friends. But he is terrified and guilty and confused. To read his story is to want to shelter and protect him. And there are so many Samis out there.

A heart-rending story that will open your eyes to the reality of what refugees face on their journeys here and when they arrive – and why they are fleeing their countries in the first place.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Rauf.

Avoid If You Dislike: Graphic accounts of the dangers faced by refugee families

Perfect Accompaniment: Maqluba (“upside down”) a Syrian dish of meat, rice and vegetables

Genre: Older children and Young Teens; Contemporary 

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The Night Bus Hero by Onjali Q Raúf

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought Of It:

Hector is a bully – someone who openly delights in picking on those smaller and weaker than himself. But when he takes on Thomas, a homeless man who likes to sit on a bench in the middle of the local park – pushing his trolley full of belongings down the hill and into the lake – he soon finds out he has bitten off more than he can chew.

Someone else has decided that rough sleepers are easy targets too. A thief is stealing iconic statues from London landmarks, leaving behind marks from the hobos’ secret code to suggest the homeless are to blame.

Could the two enemies possibly turn allies to track down the real thief?

It’s relatively unusual to have a story told from the point of view of a bully – but this is of course a redemption story. Hector is no cardboard cut-out villain – nor does Raúf take the easy road of having him come from a dysfunctional or abusive family. She knows well enough that bullies – like the homeless – can come from all walks of life.

Many years ago, I volunteered at a night shelter; so I know first-hand how complex the stories can be of how someone ends up on the street, and how far from their stereotypes rough sleepers can be. Raúf’s inspiration springs from more-or-less wordless encounters she had as a child with a homeless man she would see on the streets every summer. Her resulting cast of characters – especially Thomas and Catwoman – are full of warmth and humanity.

In her author’s note, Raúf notes how ironic it was to be writing this book in the middle of a global pandemic, when suddenly, for a short time, resources were found to find shelter for all rough sleepers. Even more ironic, then, that in the month it was published, the government announced that it would start deporting foreign nationals who were found to be homeless. Books like this, that allow us to see the anonymous huddles figures figures we too often just try and avoid, are more important than ever.

Raúf has always been a campaigner as well as an author. Here first book, The Boy At the Back of the Class, was a celebration of refugees, and she backed it up with the establishment of O’s Refugee Aid Team, which raises awareness and funds for refugees and delivers emergency aid. This time, she is similarly throwing her weight behind charities supporting homeless people by doating a portion of her royalties to homeless charities.

Whether at home or in school, this book provides the platform for discussing some important and sensitive issues, and the notes at the back of the book contain child-friendly information about homelessness in the UK and tell the stories of some of the charities helping them. 

But The Night Bus Hero is also a page-turning adventure story that children will love. Onjali Raúf is rapidly becoming the Jacqueline Wilson for a new generation.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Worry Angels by Sita Brahmachari; The Boy At The Back of the Class by Onjali Q Raúf, The Bed and Breakfast Star by Jacqueline Wilson

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories told from a bully’s point of view

Perfect Accompaniment: Homemade chips (skin on) and a donation to a homeless charity

Genre: Children (Middle Reader) , Adventure

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Tamarind and the Star of Ishta by Jasbinder Bilan

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought Of It:

Like Bilan’s debut novel, Asha and the Spirit Bird, Tamarind and the Star of Ishta is set in the north of India. Unlike Asha, though, Tamarind, the heroine of the book, is an outsider here. Thought she was born in her grandmother’s beautiful summer house in the cool hills below the Himalaya mountains, her father took her away when she was still a baby to live in Bristol, and they have never been back. Now, at eleven years old, she is meeting her mother’s family for the first time. And two questions burn:

What happened to her mother? And why will no one talk about her?

Like Asha and the Spirit Bird, this is a book a communion between generations and beyond the barriers of life and death. It celebrates magic and innocence and friendship.

Bilan captures the strangeness and joy for immigrant children experiencing their parents’ home country for the first time. New foods. Different customs. Relatives who act like they’ve always known you when you’ve only just met. And that one cousin who seems to resent your very presence…

Then there is the mystery of her mother. At first, Tam seems no closer to finding out anything about her. Everyone here seems to think it’s too sad to talk about too. But what about Ishta, the girl she meets in the garden at night, when she really isn’t supposed to be out there at all?

This is a tender book, laced through with a very particular kind of magic, and one that, at the right moment, might help a child coming to terms with the loss of a parent, especially one they have never really known. For others, it is another lyrical evocation of the high hills in the north of India.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Asha and the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan, The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories involving the loss of a parent.

Perfect Accompaniment: Potato and pea samosa with a touch of cardamom

Genre: Children and YA (Middle Reader)

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A Secret of Birds and Bone by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought Of It:

“Bone is impossible. It is the only material that could make such a thing. There are locks that need the strength of metal, the lightness of wood, the warmth of life and the cool of death. Only bone has all these qualities. So only a bone builder can make a skeleton key.”

Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s spooky new adventure story is set in Siena, in an alternative past where bone builders can create whole rooms out of bone. Her heroine, Sofia, wakes up in a room with:

“... thin shafts of light flitting in from the slits in the ribcage shutters … a moon-white skull still warm from the night before was cupped over her feet … Over her head draped a canopy of gold-dipped toe bones in great, gilded wreaths.”

You might think from this that Sofia is like someone from The Addams Family or Hotel Transylvania. But apart from the fact that her mother is an ossuarist – a bone builder – she is in fact a very ordinary girl. That is, until the day she decided to break the rules and go into Siena with her little brother to see the Palio – the wild and dangerous horse race for which the city is famous. And there she stumbles on a dark, dark secret. Something which puts her mother in grave danger, and only Sofia can save her.

Perhaps fittingly for a book that has come out in autumn 2020, this is also a world that has been ravaged by a plague: in this case, smallpox. The city’s ruler has closeted herself in her Palazzo, mourning the death of her husband, and the disease has left many, many orphans.

I was a massive fan of Joan Aiken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase series when I was a child, this has book has much the same feel to it. A world that is almost ours but not quite. Cruelty exposed by brave children. The tiniest hint of magic.

A Secret of Birds and Bone is a fast-paced adventure set in a beautifully realised world that will be lapped up by young readers who enjoy a hint of spookiness in their stories. The perfect book to read on  Hallowe’en night, in lieu of potentially-cancelled Trick or Treating.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (etc) by Joan Aiken, The Girl of Ink and Stars (etc) by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Avoid If You Dislike: Skeletons. Birds (especially crows and magpies)

Perfect Accompaniment: Fresh, clear, cold water

Genre: Children and YA (Middle Reader)


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Asha and the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought of It:

Winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award 2019, and now longlisted for the 2020 Jhalak Prize, Asha and the Spirit Bird is a wonderful adventure tale for young readers 9 and older.

Asha’s father is away, working in a factory in the big city to make money for his family. But no one has heard from him in months, and now thugs are demanding repayment of the loan her mother was forced to take out. If they can’t repay the loan by Divali – just seven weeks away – they will be forced to sell the family farm and join Asha’s uncle in England, away from everything they know.

Convinced that her nana-ji has been reincarnated in a lamagaia – one of the huge bearded vultures who live among the mountains of the Himalayas – and that her spirit is guiding her, Asha decides to take matters into her own hands. She and her best friend Jeevan set out for the city to find her father and bring him home.

This joyous adventure tale, gilded with the touch of magic, takes the reader from the fields of sugar cane in the foothills of the Himalayas, up into the snow-covered mountains where wolves and tigers prowl, to the pilgrim temple at the source of the holy Ganges and on into the slums of the city, among the street children who might have slipped from the pages of Deepa Anappara’s Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.

Asha and Jeevan are a youthful Mulder and Scully – with Jeevan the sceptic questioning Asha’s faith in her spirit bird while remaining utterly loyal.

This book is grounded in the author’s family tales and memories of holidays on the family farm where she was born. And it takes inspiration – as does its young heroine – from the warrior goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, like Durga, who fought off demons while riding a tiger.

A thoroughly modern fairytale and a true page turner – a pleasure for young readers and young-at-heart adults alike.

You Will Enjoy This If You Loved: The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargraves; The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories of lost fathers and families in danger.

Perfect Accompaniment: Cinnamon milk

Genre: Children’s 9+


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Freedom by Catherine Johnson

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

A couple of years ago, through reading David Olusogo’s wonderful history, Black and British, I was introduced to the story of Olaudah Equiano, the ex-slave who bought his own freedom. To the horrific story of the Zong massacre, and to Granville Sharp, the lawyer who worked with Equiano and others to prosecute the ship’s owners. These abolitionists – many of them Africans and ex-slaves – preceded the more famous Wilberforce by several decades and laid the foundations (not least in the court of public opinion) for the subsequent abolition of the slave trade.

These stories are not taught in schools and are far too little known in Britain. It is therefore a delight to find that the winner of the 2019 Little Rebels Award for Radical Children’s Fiction is Catherine Johnson’s Freedom. Through the engaging tale of Nat, a boy born into slavery in Jamaica and brought to Britain by his owners, Johnson brings the brutalities of the slave trade and the courage and determination of these early abolitionists vividly to life.

Set in 1783 – over twenty years before Britain gave up the slave trade and fifty years before slavery was abolished in British held territories in the Caribbean - the story opens on the morning that Nat’s mother and baby sister are sold away from the plantation where he was born, without him even being able to say goodbye properly. Nat works in the garden of the big house – a relatively easy job compared with being a field hand like his mother. But Johnson doesn’t shirk from showing the brutalities of the regime. Old Thomas, the head gardener, once tried to run away and had half his foot off to make sure he never tried it again.

Nat finds himself on a ship to England with his master, entrusted with the care of the precious pineapple plants they are taking as a gift for the master’s bride. From one of the ship hands, he learns the story of the Zong – the notorious ship, overcrowded with slaves, overcome with illness, whose owners jettisoned over 140 slaves – murdering them in order to save water – and then tried to claim insurance on their lost ‘property’.

Once in London, circumstances – and his own bravery and ingenuity – draw him further into the story, as we meet Equiano, Sharp and others.

This is a fabulous adventure tale, with the added edge of being grounded in real history. Should be read by adults and children alike.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved:  [Children]Dodger by Terry Pratchett, The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave / [Adults] The Long Song by Andrea Levy, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, Black and British by David Olusogo

Avoid If You Dislike: Being reminded of Britain’s central role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Perfect Accompaniment: A slice of fresh pineapple.

Genre: Fiction for 9-12 year olds

Buy this book here

The Boy At the Back of the Class by Onjali K Raúf

Shortlisted for The Jhalak Prize

The Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, is an annual literary prize awarded to British or British-resident writers. It is the first and only literary prize in the UK to only accept entries by writers of colour.

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

The Boy At the Back of the Class is the only children’s book to make it onto this year’s Jhalak Prize longlist, and one that I hope will come to the attention of the Little Rebels judges too.

It is a story that centres on Ahmet, a refugee child from Syria. But it is not the story of his perilous journey escaping a war zone and making his way to England. Rather it is the story of four friends at the primary school he starts to attend and how they react to learning his story.

The story is told by nine year old Alexa, who doesn’t understand why with the new boy at the back of the class doesn’t speak or smile, or why he disappears every break and lunchtime. And she certainly doesn’t understand the way some adults talk about him – what is a refugee kid anyway? Nonetheless, she is determined to make friends.

As the barriers between them begin to break down, and she learns that he and his family escaped from bullies who bombed their home back in Syria, that Ahmet made it safely to England, but that his sister has drowned in the sea and his mother and father are still missing. Thus emerges The Greatest Idea In The World – a plan to find Ahmet’s parents and reunite the family.

Although it is clearly aimed at younger children, the book this most reminded me of was The Hate U Give. by Angie Thomas. Like Starr, Alexa finds herself having to deal with the consequences of taking a stand for what she believes in. Those consequences can be frightening and overwhelming, but they can also be amazingly rewarding.

Raúf does not shy away from showing the ugliness of some adults’ views. Teachers, neighbours and the Press are all among those who show Alexa just how cruel and unfeeling the world can be. But there are also heroes and acts of kindness, and people who learn to change their minds.

At the back of the book, Raúf provides information for children about refugees, as well as questions that might be used in class – or within the family – to provoke discussion. A portion of her royalties are also going towards supporting refugee charities.

A joyous, life-affirming book about acceptance and the power to change the world

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 JHALAK PRIZE

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Worry Angels by Sita Brahmachari, The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Avoid If You Don’t believe every child deserves a safe place to grow up in.

Perfect Accompaniment: A pomegranate

Genre: Children’s, Middle Readers (typically 8-11 years olds)


Available on Amazon

Worry Angels by Sita Brahmachari, Illus Jane Ray

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

My next review from the Jhalak Prize 2018 longlist is another children’s book, this time for young readers.

Two very different young girls, both facing massive life changes, are eased into their new Secondary School by the wonderful Grace Nuala and her messy colourful art house.

Amy-May’s parents have split up. Her father has gone to live in a tumbledown cottage on a remote hillside, and she’s not sure if that means he doesn’t want her any more. He’s been home schooling her up till now, but she and her mother have moved to the city, and she has to face the prospect of going to a big new school.

We stand and stare at the metal and glass building that looks more like and art gallery than a school. The outlines of hundreds of children move like ants along the corridors. “I can’t come here, mum,” I say, and turn away.

Rima’s journey has been even more difficult. She’s travelled all the way from Syria. She’s known hunger and fear, and her little brother’s leg has been crushed by a bomb. She feels guilty because she’s alive and safe, but she doesn’t want people to see her only as a refugee. She wants people to see who she is.

With the help of Grace, and the volunteer translator Iman, Amy learns that there are so many ways to talk to someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you:

With your hands, with your eyes, with pictures in the sand...You act things out... you let the feeling show in your whole body... whatever way you can to show them you want to be their friend.

Grace makes Worry Angels, little figures to represent her young charges, and when they are ready to fly up to the big school, she gives the angels their wings.

Written in clear, simple English and beautifully illustrated by Jane Ray, this would suit young readers struggling with anxiety or those learning about refugees. But equally, it would be an excellent book for slightly older children learning English as an additional language. Worry Angels is full of warmth and empathy and above all, hope.

You’ll enjoy this if you loved: Azzi In Between by Sarah Garland, The Lost and Found Cat by Doug Kuntz and Amy Shrodes

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories about family breakup or children that have undergone trauma

Perfect Accompaniment: Chocolate Cake

Genre: Children, New Readers

Available on Amazon

Come All You Little Persons by John Agard, illus Jessica Courtney-Tickle

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

It’s lovely to start the Jhalak Prize longlist for 2018 with this picture book by John Agard.

We’ve always been fans of Agard in this house. My daughter had a poetry anthology when she was small that included his delightful ‘Got a Date With Spring’. And his poem ‘Half Caste’ is a punch in the gut must-read for older children and adults. Sot to find a new poem by him is a delight.

The first test for a picture book is how it reads out loud. And, as you would expect from a poet like Agard, Come All You Little Persons has the rhythm that makes that a joy.

Each little person that is called forth is described by their clothing, and each summoning introduces different words – from a feathered cape, to a shirt made of spray, from an apron that shines, to an invisible gown – so there is plenty to talk about.

Jessica Courtney-Tickle’s illustrations are filled with detail that can be pored over night after night. The style edges towards pointillist and the colour palette is rich but soft and slightly muted. Most importantly, the little persons called forth come in all shapes and sizes – male and female, tall and short, chubby and slim – and with every shade of skin from pale to dark, so every little reader can see themselves reflected.

The final page shows all the little persons circling the earth in a great dance – those we have seen called forth and many more besides that you can have fun creating identities for yourself.

The second great test for a picture book is whether is stands being read again and again, with enough to hold the interest of both adult and child. Come All You Little Persons passes that test with flying colours.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Lullaby Hullabaloo by Mick Inkpen, Owl Babies by Martin Waddell

Avoid If You Dislike: Rhythm, Dance, Reading Out Loud

Perfect Accompaniment: Bedtime cuddles

Genre: Picture book. Children's


Available on Amazon

The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

I read Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s enchanting The Girl of Ink and Stars when it was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize earlier this year. I wasn’t a bit surprised when it won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for 2017 – and was delighted when they brought forward the publication of her second book, The Island at the End of Everything, by way of celebration.

The two books share an island setting – and of course Millwood Hargrave’s wonderful, lyrical prose – but they have very different starting points. Joya, the floating island that is Isa’s home in The Girl of Ink and Stars, is a fantasy. Culion, where Ami’s story begins and ends, is a real island in the Philippines.

“There are some places you would not want to go. Even if I told you that we have oceans filled with sea turtles and dolphins, or forests lush with parrots that call through air thick with warmth. Nobody comes here because they want to. The island of no return.”

From 1906 to 1998, Culion became with world’s biggest leper colony. In the early part of the 20th C, thousands of those touched by the disease were forcibly transported to the island, their healthy children taken from them by government authorities to avoid further contamination. It is a story that has been repeated in varying forms in different parts of the world – from the Irish laundries to the Indian Residential Schools. A story of cruelty promulgated by arrogant authorities believing they know best and failing utterly to see the subjects of their experiments as whole people. Millwood Hargrave takes us into the heart of the story by showing it to us through the eyes of one of those children.

Butterflies dance over the cover of the book and butterflies form a thread that winds through the story. Mr Zamora – the man who comes to take the children away, and a villain quite as detestable as Dolores Umbrage – is a butterfly collector, someone who can only see the beauty of the butterflies once they are dead and pinned in one of his display cases. But it is the living butterflies who will connect mother with daughter, and Ami with her friend Marisol – the girl whose name means butterfly.

A story of love and trust, hope and reconciliation, told in language that is both simple and utterly poetic. A must-read for children and adults alike.

You'll Enjoy This If You Loved: The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; My Name Is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson; The Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara.

Avoid If You Dislike: Stories of children taken from their parents. Confronting the realities of arrogant decision making.

Perfect Accompaniment: Dragon Fruit

Genre: Children's Fiction (9-12yrs)

Available on Amazon

The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What We Thought:

Ink and stars - the two most fundamental tools of the cartographer.

Isa is the daughter of a cartographer, and his unofficial apprentice. The two live on their own, following the deaths of both Isa’s mother and her twin, Gabo.

Isa’s world is one that bears some resemblance to ours – it has continents called Afrik, Europa and Amrica, and oceans called the Frozen Circle, the Vanishing Triangle and the Cerulean Sea. But it is also a world where islands like Joya can be float free to sail across the oceans. And fire-breathing creatures at the centre of the earth may be more than just metaphors for a volcano.

For the time being, though, Joya is anchored to the seabed. And ever since the Governor arrived and took up residence in a grand palace above Isa’s village, the villagers have been forbidden access to the sea or the forest and their lives have shrunk to the little space in between. Isa’s Da no longer roams the world to map its continents, but walks heavily supported by a stick. And the only guide to the Forbidden Forest is an ancient cloth map left behind by Isa’s mother.

So when a girl is found dead in the Governor’s orchard and his daughter, Isa’s friend Lupe, disappears into the forest, it is up to Isa to don the mantle of cartographer and guide the search party into the heart of the island, where no one has travelled for years.

Maps have a magic about them. They can say as much about the people who made them as they do about the lands they depict. Kiran Millwood Hargrave has spun that magic into a tale of adventure that is – as all good heroic journeys should be - about friendship and courage, self discovery and self sacrifice. And just look how that magic is captured in the beautiful cover!

It is a book I would have loved reading aloud to my children when they were that age – and one of six shortlisted for the inaugural Jhalak Prize.

You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Nation by Terry Pratchett, Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson, and (for slightly older readers) Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

Avoid If You Dislike: Adventure tales set in fantasy worlds

Perfect Accompaniment: A large sheet of paper and a set of coloured inks

Genre: Fantasy Adventure for ~9-12 year olds.

Available on Amazon

Super Daddy Bedtime Questions by Nicolas Pavlou

Reviewer: JW Hicks

What we thought: From the first glimpse of this super-bright, gloriously illustrated storybook you’ll be hooked. Whether parent, teacher or doting grandparent, this is the one for you... and of course, the children.

Nicolas Pavlou follows the footsteps of top-of-the-tree children’s authors by writing simple, truthful prose, and using delightful illustrations with which to captivate the reader’s heart. Super Daddy Bedtime Questions is a humourous book, with child friendly rhymes that are easy to remember and easy to chant. It is a highly enjoyable read, delightfully true to life and inspired by the playtime and bedtime questions asked by the author’s young son.

As a one-time nursery teacher I would have loved to have this storybook in the library corner: a book enriched with brightly coloured words and clear un-cluttered pictures is not only a treat to read aloud, but a delight to read to a small tot.

It’s the perfect length for a bedtime read, and written from a father’s perspective, the Super Daddy in the title, it offers an everyday dad the chance to be Super Dad, reader of the best story ever, the dad who answers the unanswerable: ‘Daddy, can you fly?’ in this delightful way – ‘No! But I can throw you way up high!’

Nicolas Pavlou, as this debut story shows, is an author to watch.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Hill’s Spot series and Jill Murphy’s On My Way Home.

Avoid if you don’t like: Books that children will want read to them again and again and a...

Ideal accompaniments: A well-worn blankie, a grubby teddy and a sleepy, snuggly youngster.

Genre: Children’s books 7 and under.

Available from Amazon

Callum Fox and the Mousehole Ghost by AC Hatter

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: Callum is on his way to Cornwall to stay with the grandfather he barely knows. He doesn’t know it, but he is following in the footsteps of Jim, an evacuee from London sent to Cornwall at the start of the Second World War.

But when Callum has a head-on collision with an ambulance in the Cornish village of Mousehole, his life collides with Jim’s. Somehow in the course of the accident, he has acquired the ability to see ghosts. And when the ghosts realise, they won’t leave him alone.

Jim is a ghost too, but he keeps insisting he is granddad’s best friend, which to Callum makes no sense at all. He must have died when he was still a kid.

Callum Fox is funny, exciting and full of intrigue. Hatter skilfully blends story lines in the past and the present.

The story is rooted deep in the Cornish landscape, from the tiny fishing port of Mousehole to the tin mine at Geevor where the story reaches its tense climax. Whether you know Cornwall or not, Hatter’s writing will transport you straight there.

You’ll enjoy this if you liked: Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden, The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson

Avoid if you dislike: Blending history with humour and a dose of the paranormal

Perfect Accompaniment: a ice cream cone on the beach

Genre: Children’s Lit, humour, history, paranormal

Available from Amazon

Kimi's Secret

Reviewers: Emily, Alia and Caitlin

What We Thought: 

Emily: I found this book absolutely tremendous! The types of sentences and words the writer uses are brilliant and the story line was gripping and exciting. It is about a girl called Kimi who has a 'Tulpa' called Bentley. She goes on an adventure to find out secrets about her life and herself that she never knew.

I really liked it when Bentley kept on changing his age because it was quite funny how he could just change ages so quickly. The story made you want to read on and I found it hard to put down. I really liked how the story linked together towards the end. I also really liked the 'Greylians' because they kept on changing and making you think they were nice, and their name is really exciting and peculiar.

I think this book should be for older children - 11 years and up because it did have some fairly rude words. It was a book that is definitely worth reading and I can't wait to see if there is another book in the series.

Alia: One stormy night I was alone at home and I was bored out of my mind. As I walked into the dining room I saw a book lying on the table. I picked it up and went to my room. I sat down and started to read... And WOW! That book was GOOD! I'm telling you, you will want to get that book (or borrow or take or steal) and sit down and read it... and you won't want to stop until you have finished it.

It's about a girl called Kimi and it follows her through a big storm, through a cloud of crows, through quite a few twirlies, through a room with flying clowns, and then, oh, right back to the storm.

So I assure you, you will love this book. If you are 12 or 120 it doesn't really matter. (Although it's probably not much use to you if you're dead. Though I guess it's worth trying.)

Caitlin: Kimi’s Secret is a very exciting and interesting book that is full of mystery. It can be quite difficult to understand the first part of the book until you have read the end. Although there are some strange names that can be quite hard to read, it is a perfect book to excite you. It is definitely a page turner and hooks you on the story line. Throughout the whole story strange things happen, you feel like you can’t stop reading until you find out why or what it is, and at some parts of the book you have to flick back or remember what happened earlier in the story to understand what’s happening now. Even though this book is aimed at children between 10 and 15 years, it is a good read for all ages above ten, providing you like sci- fi and/or fantasy books.

Kimi is a very mysterious girl who is very wary, and conscious about the people and places around her. Her Tulpa, Bentley, is also very mysterious as he can change age and doesn’t give much away easily. But to find out what a Tulpa is and who Bentley and Kimi are then read the book!

This is a very good book because it draws you in right from the start and keeps you hooked throughout it! It is one of the best books I have read and strongly recommend it. If you like adventure and mystery then this book is definitely for you!

You'll enjoy this if you liked: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket

Avoid if you dislike: Gross stuff, fantastical creatures and aliens

Ideal accompaniments: Pommy juice and roasted dodo (or birthday cake - just clean your teeth afterwards or the Famoose will get you).



Genre: YA, children's, fantasy