Barrington Stoke is 15 years old this year, and that’s well worth celebrating. For schools across the land, Barrington Stoke books are a godsend. Books that are accessible to reluctant and struggling readers but deal with subjects that they are interested in were rare for a long time. Until they came along, if you were a …
Cat Clarke(Quercus) When Alice is dragged to Scotland with the rest of her classmates for an activity-packed school trip, she is not expecting to have any fun. In fact, she is expecting it to be quite awful, especially when she and best friend Cass finds themselves stuck in a cabin with outcast Polly, quiet emo-girl Rae …
Organising author visits in schools is one of the best things about being a school librarian. I know my children are very lucky that we take them to literary festivals and to the theatre; for most children, author school visits is often their only opportunity to meet a writer “in the flesh” and it is a very …
Cat Clarke(Quercus Children’s Books) When we first meet Grace, the main protagonist and narrator of this tale, she is sitting in a fairly sterile environment, having been “abducted” by gorgeous boy Ethan. We don’t know why. She doesn’t know why either. All she remembers is she met him at the swings, as she was about …
