Last week-end I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Red House Children’s Book Awards ceremony with my son and a student from my school. It was a great day, set in the lovely Botanical Gardens in Birmingham. We got to meet lots of great authors and illustrators (I got to meet Allan …
RHCBA testing 2008
The Adventures of Dotty and Bluebell
Jools Oliver illustrated by Claire Fletcher (Puffin Books) I am not one for celebrity/gossip magazines; I buy them maybe 3 or 4 times a year, usually because I am either sick or travelling by plane. But I am curious, you know. And when I read Jamie Oliver’s wife had written a children’s book, I just …
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman illustrated by Chris Riddell (Bloomsbury Children’s Book) I’d never read anything by Neil Gaiman before; “Not my thing”, I’d decided. Then I watched the film adaptation of Startdust and thought maybe I’d give it a try after all. But I never did. And then all the publicity for The Graveyard Book started appearing …
Summer favourites
We went through a lot of books this summer but these have been our favourites: Mr Peek and the Misunderstanding at the ZooKevin Waldron (Templar Publishing)This book got brilliant reviews and was listed in most of the main newspapers’ summer reading lists. It looked like it would be good fun for my five year-old son …