Category: Childrens’

‘Alfie Bloom and the Secrets of Hexbridge Castle’ – Gabrielle Kent

Alfie Bloom’s life is dull. Dull and lonely, and this summer is set to be the most boring yet. All of that changes when he is summoned to the bizarre offices of mysterious solicitor, Caspian Bone, where he discovers he has inherited a castle full of wonders that has been sealed for centuries. Alfie is astounded to learn he was born in that very castle six hundred years ago during a magical timeslip. There, Orin Hopcraft, the last of the druids hid an ancient magic inside him, which others seek but should never be used. With the help of his cousins Madeleine and Robin, and Artan the flying bearskin rug, Alfie must keep the magic from terrifying adversaries and ensure that the secrets of Hexbridge castle stay secret, forever!

From the moment he arrives at Hexbridge Castle Alfie gets the feeling that this is a good place. However, it’s clear that there are secrets being hidden…and that they involve his new head teachers.

This is an exciting read for younger readers, with just a hint of terror. There are elements of the novel that can be found in a number of other popular stories for this age-group, but it doesn’t seem overly-similar . Great fun, and the events were left in a good place for book two.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and for Alfie that is certainly the case!

 

‘Witchtown’ – Cory Putman Oakes

When I saw this on NetGalley I, along with many others I would imagine, was expecting lots of details about witchcraft and perhaps some focus on exploring how it impacted on people’s lives in this imagined future. I got it, but not quite in the way I expected.

Macie and her mother, Aubra, move into his safe Haven called Witchtown. It is a safe community for those ostracised from the rest of the world when their talents become known. Sadly, it’s the latest mark in this pair’s thieving trail. Only this time, things are different.

Macie has always felt rather reliant on her mother. As a Void (someone with no magic) Macie has depended on her mother’s Natural ability to protect her. This leaves her vulnerable as she can rely on no-one. Yet we are told that in their last residence Macie did exactly that, and it started off what can best be described as an unstoppable source of tension.

Macie is a character who comes into her own in this, with the help of new friends Talya and Kellan. She learns more about who she is, what she wants from her life and what it might cost her to achieve it. Even though her mother is depicted in a rather caricature fashion, there’s something rewarding about watching Macie take a stand against what she’s been told her entire life.

Though there’s some interest in watching Macie learn the truth about herself (which we suspect from quite early on), there’s a lot that just doesn’t add up and this is, ultimately, frustrating.

‘Strange Star’ – Emma Carroll

They were coming tonight to tell ghost stories. ‘A tale to freeze the blood,’ was the only rule. Switzerland, 1816. On a stormy summer night, Lord Byron and his guests are gathered round the fire. 
Felix, their serving boy, can’t wait to hear their creepy tales. 
Yet real life is about to take a chilling turn – more chilling than any tale…

For fans of Frankenstein this is a real treat.

We see the story behind the story, so it was great to see the links and what was imagined.

When Felix opens the door of his master’s home one night to a young girl, he is not prepared to hear one of the strangest stories ever told. He listens spellbound as young Lizzie tells him the tale of Francesca Stine and her secretive experiments with electricity. Once she has finished Felix cannot help but see his master’s guests – Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley – slightly differently.

‘Neverwhere’ – Neil Gaiman

There was just something about this edition that screamed ‘read me’ and I, like Alice, ventured headlong into this crazy world of London Below…and, while the journey won’t appeal to everyone, it definitely has a little something for most readers.

I’ll start with the hero, Richard Mayhew. A more unlikely hero it would be difficult to find. He’s a bit nondescript, people can’t remember who he is and the existence of his terrifying fiancee suggests that he is something of a pushover. However, when he comes across a bleeding girl he is compelled to help…and so begins his weird and wonderful adventure into a place he never knew existed.

Door, the girl in question, is on the run from two vile villains. These two crop up with alarming regularity and have a wonderful penchant for gruesome behaviour – which is rather funny from the pages of a book, but they are the kind of stuff I think I’d have had nightmares about as a child.

The two, along with a few extra hands, then journey through London Below to discover who killed Door’s family; to find the Angel Islington and to try to help Richard get his normal and boring life back.

Gaiman creates a wonderful fantasy world, and he has an obvious love of language. There’s lots of humour in this, and we meet some truly grotesque characters. While the text was wonderful, the illustrations really brought these characters to life for me and added an extra dimension to my reading pleasure.

There was more than a hint of Wonderland about this, and I loved the potential in the ending.

‘Hour of the Bees’ – Lindsay Eagar

A charming story about growing up, changing and coming to terms with shifting family relationships.

Carolina (who likes to be known as Carol) is twelve and she’s worried about moving to junior high at the end of the summer. However, she has a more pressing issue to deal with – the fact that her family are upping sticks for the summer to move to her grandfather’s ranch to prepare it for sale as his developing dementia leaves him unable to care for himself safely.

Initially this felt like it would be a rather earnest read, with a lot of effort going into talking about dementia and the impact it has on Serge. There was a lot of time spent talking about the family’s Mexican roots, that they seemed to abandon until their return to the ranch.

My first impressions of Serge and the ranch were wholly negative. The drought meant everything was on its last legs-perhaps in a symbiotic relationship with the grandfather.

Anyway, Carol is reminiscent of her grandmother Rosa, so she strikes up a bond with her grandfather. He tells her stories about bees taking the water from the lake after the townspeople chopped down a tree that grew by its shores. Carol can’t tell what is story, what is a product of her grandfather’s dementia and what might be based in fact.

As the story progresses we see Carol grow as a person. Her summer was nothing like she envisaged it, but it’s a moving story with a happy ending (of sorts).

‘The Hidden Gallery (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place)’ – Maryrose Wood

Thanks to their plucky governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia are much more like children than wolf cubs now. They are accustomed to wearing clothes. They hardly ever howl at the moon. And for the most part, they resist the urge to chase squirrels up trees.

Yet the Incorrigibles are not entirely civilized, and still managed to ruin Lady Constance’s Christmas ball… So while Ashton Place is being restored, Penelope, the Ashtons, and the children take up residence in London. As they explore the city, Penelope and the Incorrigibles discover more about themselves as clues about the children’s-and Penelope’s own-mysterious past crop up in the most unexpected ways…

Just before their journey to London Penelope receives an unusual illustrated guide to London, the like of which has never before been seen, from her ex-headmistress and it’s evident that something odd is going on.

Characters who don’t seem to exist, strange noises from the attic, an obsession with charting the phases of the moon and people attempting to attack the children. There’s no escaping the fact that people are hiding things; the question is who, and why?

There’s the usual chaos surrounding the children, and Penelope’s determination to hang onto the power of education is amusing. Though it’s good fun, the clues about the origins of the children and suggestion that Penelope is linked were never developed fully and this felt rather short on answers.

‘What Not To Do If You Turn Invisible’ – Ross Welford

Having loved Time Travelling With A Hamster I was looking forward to this one.

Ethel lives with her grandmother as her mother is dead, and she knows nothing of her father. She has such severe acne that she resorts to purchasing a herbal remedy online. This ointment, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to do much to cure her acne…but taking it before she goes on a sun-bed has an unexpected side-effect. She becomes invisible!

There’s some lovely comic scenes where Ethel attempts to help her friend Elliot out. There’s an endearing quality to Ethel that shines off the page, and it was good to a genuine friendship between a boy and a girl.

Family, just as in Welford’s debut, is central to the book and there’s many links to it here. There are some unexpected developments in the course of the story, and this is a novel about finding yourself that will entertain and move you.

‘Twelve Minutes to Midnight’ – Christopher Edge

Orphaned Penelope Tredwell has taken on the mantle of publishing the magazine, The Penny Dreadful, after the death of her father. It’s 1899 so, as a young girl, she is expected to act with a certain decorum – which is at odds with her fascination with the macabre. Though she has raised circulation of the periodical by writing under the pseudonym of Montgomery Filch it is a time where nobody could believe a young girl would be capable of such writing, so Penelope is forced to pay a jobbing actor to pretend to be the writer in a bid to boost publicity.

A letter is sent to Mr Filch by a doctor at the notorious Bedlam asylum. Upon investigation Penelope learns that at precisely twelve minutes to midnight the inmates of Bedlam rise out of their beds and start feverishly scribbling what seem like nonsensical words and ideas on anything they can lay their hands on. Caught up in this real-life adventure, Penelope learns that these scribblings are being engineered, as someone is determined to use these visions as a way of predicting the future.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and we are plunged into a crazy world. Edge creates an authentic setting, and his style of writing is entertaining. I loved the range of vocabulary and literary skill evident here. Though this is targeted at upper primary/lower secondary age students, it is definitely one for more confident readers – but if you like Lemony Snicket then this should be right up your street.

‘Orbiting Jupiter’ – Gary Schmidt

This story is told through the eyes of our young narrator, Jack, and focus on how he copes when his family get fourteen year old Joseph – a young father who has been in detention after attacking a teacher – come to live with them.

Joseph is the kind of boy that many are quite happy to regard as trouble. He is mercilessly bullied by a trio of boys in his new school, and many of the teachers are convinced that he is bringing down the better students. He is, in many ways, a boy more sinned against than sinning – we never get all the details (thankfully) but what we are told about his behaviour suggests strongly that he has been abused while in care and that he does not come from a supportive family background.

However, Jack’s family judge a person’s character on how their animals react to them. Joseph is able to calm down the family cow, so he’s okay. A rathe simple approach, but it allows Joseph to bloom. As he relaxes in this new environment, he starts to share some of the details of his past. Unsurprisingly, things are not as we were led to believe at the start.

Just when there was a hint of something positive happening, we’re sideswiped by a move so shocking I wasn’t sure I’d read it correctly. Abrupt, certainly, but it did get me emotionally.

This is a very quick read, and I think I’d have liked to have had details fleshed out a little more or spent a bit more time with these characters. However, I really did feel an awful lot of stuff was packed into these pages…perhaps I couldn’t have coped with more.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in advance.

‘First Class Murder’ – Robin Stevens

In this third outing of the Detective Agency, we are in for a real treat as we journey with Hazel and Daisy on The Orient Express. They are under strict instructions to do absolutely no detective work whatsoever…thank goodness they don’t do as they’re told.

As a younger reader I would have loved to have read about the adventures of these two. They are rather old-fashioned (the 1930s setting makes their behaviour/scenarios feasible) but their camaraderie is reminiscent of Holmes and Watson, though the drugs are replaced with cakes and crossword puzzles!

Within hours of Hazel and Daisy getting on board the train we’ve been introduced to our ragtag bunch of characters, who become suspects in this third case for the girls.

We have a spoilt heiress; a rude husband; a penniless relative who writes murder mysteries; a Russian Countess and a magician. When Mrs Daunt is found in a locked room with her throat cut we immediately have a reason to mistrust every character we’ve come across, and it’s over to the girls to work out who did it and why.

Great fun, raising awareness of some bigger issues and, hopefully, arousing curiosity in its readers to learn more of the time/events referred to.