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Books : Children's Books : Ages 12-16 : Authors
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Susannah Harker reads Sleep-overs in this unabridged two-cassette pack.New-girl-in-school Daisy faces up to familiar childhood dilemmas in this great story for younger readers written by the acclaimed, bestselling author Jacqueline Wilson. Daisy is finding her feet with a new group of friends, slowly becoming "one of the gang" who take it in turns to have sleep-over parties. But with her own turn to play host fast approaching, Daisy is faced with the task of telling her new friends about her mentally and physically disabled older sister, and she is unsure how they will react. The spoilt Chloe, with her snide bullying tactics, presents a particular problem: she has been reluctant to let Daisy into the group, and this could give her just the excuse she needs...
As ever, Wilson combines superlative, on-the-nose storytelling with an intuitive accuracy that captures the essence of familiar childhood insecurities. Readers will laugh, cry and cringe their way through this outstanding tale as Wilson's trademark heroine wins the day. Sleep-overs is a cracking story for children aged seven and over.
Running time is two hours. --Susan Harrison
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Bonus content inside the book
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When you have an author as good as Terry Pratchett writing for children, you expect that the result will be a novel of great invention, assured comic timing and a generally all-round highly readable fantasy tour de force. Readers of The Wee Free Men will not be disappointed. After winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal award for his previous story of Discworld for younger readers, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Pratchett has followed up with another irresistibly entertaining adventure.Miss Perspicacia Tick, a witch of some renown, is worried about a ripple in the walls of the universe--probably another world making contact. Which is not good. This errant activity is centred on some chalk country--where traditionally good witches simply do not grow well. Fortunately, Miss Tiffany Aching of Home Farm on The Chalk, nine years old, misunderstood and yearning for excitement, wants to be a witch and has just proved herself to be of great potential by whacking a big Green Monster from the river with a huge frying pan while using her annoying younger brother as bait. Miss Tick is impressed. So, after travelling to the chalky downs at once and dispensing some stop gap advice to Tiffany about holding the fort until she gets back with more help, Miss Tick is off.
Any hesitation Tiffany may have had about the seriousness of the situation expires when the Queen of the fairies kidnaps her younger brother. With the help of a talking frog, loaned by Miss Tick, and an army of thieving, warmongering, nippy, boozy wee free men called the Nac Mac Feegle (who used to work for the Queen but rebelled), Tiffany sets off rescue her kin.
There's humour at every turn, and the situations that follow are both wonderfully dramatic and preposterously unreal. Pratchett really is the master of his genre and it's difficult to imagine a more entertaining read. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay
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Lila wants to be a firework maker just like her father, but before she can even start she has to make a hazardous, life-threatening journey to the den of the evil Fire-Fiend, battling her way through strange lands and nightmarish scenarios with elephants and pirates and strange beasts a-plenty tempting her from her path.Philip Pullman has plucked a rare, exotic and totally bewitching idea from thin air and has turned it into the kind of magical adventure that all children dream of, crackling and sparkling with the same thrilling intensity as the fireworks in Lila's dreams. Lila herself is divine--the perfect blend of light-footed heroine and stubborn adventurer--and The Firework- Maker's Daughter, illustrated by Nick Harris, is a deserving winner of the Smarties Book Prize. A simply superb, gripping, action-packed adventure that will live long in the memory of anyone who enters Lila's world. --Susan Harrison
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Philip Pullman brings The Amber Spyglass to the spellbinding "His Dark Materials" sequence, which dazzles everyone who reads it, children and adults alike. After the original Northern Lights, he kept up the quality in The Subtle Knife, the second title in the trilogy. Now he brings the series to an extraordinary conclusion. Will and Lyra, the two children at the heart of the books, have become separated amidst great dangers. Can they find each other, and their friends? Then complete their mysterious quest before it's too late? The great rebellion against the dark powers that hold Lyra's world, and many others, in thrall is nearing its climax. She and Will have crucial parts to play, but they don't know what it is that they must do, and terrible powers are hunting them down.The pace of the book is compelling, the writing powerful. Pullman's plotting is intricate and cunning, surprising the reader again and again. Perhaps what is most striking of all, however, is the depth of the characterisation. Lord Asriel, Mrs Coulter, Iorek Byrnison the king of the armoured bears, a host of minor characters, most of all Will and Lyra themselves: the book is a library of beautifully drawn, remarkably convincing characters walking in worlds of marvels.
In this volume the cosmic dimensions of the story become more prominent, as a great conflict across many universes comes to a head--how well the narrative sustains such immensely weighty resonances is a question critics may well disagree on. The author's beliefs also come more into the open, and with them a polemic anti-religious theme that will please some readers and alienate others.
Philip Pullman's writing commands immense respect; more than that, it is raising the profile of the best children's books among adults, as demanding critics of all ages fall in love with this remarkable trilogy. --David Pickering
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At the end of The Northern Lights, Lyra Silvertongue watched in fear and fascination as her father, Lord Asriel, created a bridge between worlds. Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon are now lost in an alternate universe where they meet Will Parry, a fugitive from a third universe. Will has found a small window between Cittagazze--where children roam unchecked, but invisible Specters suck the spirit out of adults--and his Oxford, which, with its Burger Kings and cars, is frighteningly different from the Oxford Lyra knows. Will's father, an explorer, disappeared years ago, but some odd characters have started asking questions about him. Will has managed to accidentally kill one of them and is wanted by the police. Armed with the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts any material (including that which separates universes) and Lyra's alethiometer, the children set out to find John Parry, with adults of various stripes in desperate pursuit.Lyra's finest qualities are her courage and her quick mind. She finds she must use them constantly--not to put too fine a point on it, she must lie and steal to keep herself and Will out of danger. However, she must also know when to tell the truth and when to trust. She does not yet know--though her friends the witches do, and so does the reader--what a huge part she will have in the upcoming battle between Good and Evil. (Age 9 and over) - -Amazon.com
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Pratchett's third children's novel set in the Discworld, and the second to feature wannabe witch Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men, is so ridiculously well written and consistently funny it makes you wonder how he can keep writing such superlative novels without cheating a bit. It would be reassuring to think that the Carnegie Medal-winning author of The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and The Wee Free Men had his own small army of professional helpers, not unlike like a US sitcom, inventing and deliberating about which are the best jokes and plot lines to use to ensure the best quality quotient. But it's all his own work and that makes each brilliant novel more remarkable because of it.A Hat Full of Sky continues the adventures of eleven-year-old Tiffany as she endeavours to become a proper witch. She's 'done' magic before, quite spectacularly and to great effect, but now she must be apprenticed to an established practitioner of the craft, the amazing Miss Level, in order to learn exactly how she did it. Unfortunately for her, there's a crazed and malevolent ancient spirit buzzing about, called a Hiver, who is looking for a convenient host to consume. Hiver's are attracted to greatness, and Tiffany hides an enormous talent that seems ripe for domination.
Still grateful for Miss Aching's past help, a crack team of several Wee Free Men, nature's funkiest, drunkest and bluest fairy folk, take it upon themselves to help Tiffany out. Hiver's, however, are unbeatable and it's a definite "sooey-side mission" to save the big wee hag from harm.
It's great to see writing of such quality in a children's novel, and it's further evidence that this sector of the publishing world is having a bit of a golden decade. Long may it continue! (Age 10 and over)--John McLay
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Attention all serious book collectors and fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. This undoubtedly beautiful package, cloth-bound in a classy red and adorned by numerous illustrations by master engraver and illustrator John Lawrence, is sure to be a must-purchase. A pint-sized pocket volume, Lyra's Oxford packages together a short story set in the same universe as his famous trilogy, a fold-out map of the alternate-reality city of Oxford which Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon inhabit, a short brochure for a cruise to The Levant aboard the SS Zenobia and a postcard from the inventor of the amber spyglass, Mary Malone. Pullman, in his introduction, suggests that the peripheral items within "might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven't appeared yet. It's difficult to tell."The story, "Lyra and the Birds", begins when Lyra and Pantalaimon spot a witch's daemon called Ragi being pursued over the rooftops of Oxford by a frenzied pack of birds. The daemon heads straight for Lyra and is given shelter. The creature was given Lyra's name as somebody who might help. The daemon is seeking one Sebastian Makepeace--an alchemist living in a part of Oxford known as Jericho. Together Lyra and Pan try to guide the daemon to the home of this man, but it is a journey fraught with more danger than they had at first anticipated.
Somehow, this is a book that puzzles and fascinates all at the same time. It's very sumptuous and lovingly crafted but tantalising brief. The fourth volume in Pullman's award-winning sequence is The Book of Dust and despite the author's reputation for taking his time in writing each of his longer works, it is now just too far away in the future to be funny anymore. (Age 10 and over)--John McLay
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Stone Cold, winner of the 1994 Carnegie Medal, serves as a sinister warning to any young runaway and not just because there is a killer on the loose. Narrated by 17-year-old Link, homeless and jobless in London after being driven out of home by a drunken, abusive stepfather, he vividly recounts the day-to-day experiences of a homeless person. Because he tells it like it is, his descriptions of sleeping rough shatter any romantic notions: "So you pick your spot. Wherever it is ... it's going to have a floor of stone, tile, concrete or brick. In other words it's going to be hard and cold. It might be a bit cramped, too--shop doorways often are. And remember, if it's winter you're going to be half-frozen before you even start."If this was just another diatribe on the perils of sleeping rough, the reader's interest would soon wane but it is far more gripping than that. The author alternates Link's tale with that of an unknown serial killer preying on the homeless. You, the reader, see how closely their lives brush against each other and know it's only a matter of time before they clash. Will Link be joining the other recruits in the cellar--what a deterrent that would be! (Age 11 and over.) --Nicola Perry
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