How To Be True - Daisy May Johnson

 

We're back at The School of the Good Sisters and this time it's Edie who is the focus of our attention, having been sent to the school by her grand-mère after her parents left Paris to support protests around the globe.  At first, Edie hated the school but grew to love it when she discovered that the nuns actually teach useful things.  And these useful things come in rather handy when the school trip to Paris stay at the château where Edie's grand-mère lives, for, not long after they arrive, they discover that somebody is trying to steal a painting from the château.  But can Edie and her friends foil the thief, and can they get to the bottom of why this painting is so important to everybody?

After reading and loving How To Be Brave last year (https://kandobonkersaboutbooks.blogspot.com/2021/02/how-to-be-brave-daisy-may-johnson.html), I was absolutely thrilled when How To Be True arrived in the post - it jumped straight to the top of the reading pile and I most certainly wasn't disappointed!  I have a real soft spot for books set in Paris so was excited to join The Good Sisters and the girls on their trip.  We first met Edie in How To Be Brave where we saw some of her determination and panache.  This time, she is the focus of the book and we learn what brought her to the school in the first place, before the Good Sisters take her back to Paris and we see her in her home town doing what she does best: being fabulous and fierce.  She is a wonderful character and I know that readers are going to love her as much as I did - she is somebody I can imagine readers wanting to emulate.

I feel it appropriate that I am typing this review whilst drinking hot chocolate: a tribute to Edie as well as the Sisters!  As with book 1, the references to food are delicious!  The Sister's attitude towards biscuits is one I whole-heartedly applaud (I would most definitely approve of sock biscuit stashes should I discover the children in school were so inclined!) and the addition of French delicacies such as macarons and eclairs only adds to the deliciousness of the book - I can highly recommend having a stash of biscuits and tasty treats to hand whilst reading!

The friendly narration of the book by Good Sister June, the headmistress of the school, remains something I found completely adorable and the footnotes make you feel as though you are getting a more personal insight into everything that is happening, as though you are there with Good Sister June and the girls.  The humour and the playfulness are adorable to read and the familiarity of the writing has a warmth to it that I really enjoy.  However, there is also there is a backstory within the book (a flashback) that sees a change in tone that is completely heart-felt and tugs on the heartstrings.  It's a poignant and very relevant element to the book that made me think and stopped me in my tracks, and I liked the different element that this brought to the story.

With themes of friendship, family, love and fierce determination, I think I loved How To Be True even more than How To Be Brave (and I didn't think that would be possible!)!  Its funny yet poignant plot had me hugging the book at the end and left me craving more (more of the book as well as biscuits and pastries!).  Yes, I know that How To Be True isn't out until the 7th July so I have ages to wait, but a girl can hope!  In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to nibble biscuits and macarons whilst planning exactly where I'll be going when I'm in Paris this summer - and yes, the Laudrée shop on the Champs-Élysées will be on the list!

 

The Wondrous Prune - Ellie Clements

 

Prune Robinson, her mum and her brother Jesse have just moved into the house her grandparents lived in before they died.  It's meant moving away from her best friend and also switching schools.  Things aren't going so well as a group of girls in her class have been bullying her since her first day and she doesn't want to bother her mum about it.  But then things start to get very strange: every time Prune gets upset, her world is filled with clouds of colours that only she can see; and then she discovers that she can use those colours to help make her drawings come to life!  Prune needs to get to grips with her new-found powers whilst keeping them secret, but can she also manage to help her brother who is in danger when his old life catches up with him?

Prune is a wonderful character who is caring and just wants everything to work out.  She finds her power at just the right time and I loved reading about her creations, especially towards the bullies!  I can imagine children having great fun whilst reading the book imagining what they would conjure up and the problems it could cause.  

Bullying is explored as a major theme in The Wondrous Prune and shows that children choose to keep quiet about bullying in school and also shows that talking to teachers and parents is always the best thing to do (although, being able to use a superpower to help is really cool!)

This is a surprisingly different and uplifting story that explores children coping with bullying as well as the idea of settling into a new school and family dynamics.  

Due for release on the 12th May, I think The Wondrous Prune will be a hit in school and I'm looking forward to sharing it with the class. 

The Secrets Act - Alison Weatherby

 

World War II is well under way and Ellen is heading to a new job in Bletchley where she is met off the train by Pearl, a confident young lady, who takes her to Bletchley Park where the fist thing she is asked to do is sign the official secrets act.  Ellen has been recruited as a codebreaker but gets to know Pearl who is a messenger and introduces her to her circle of friends, including the young man, Richard, that Pearl is keen on.  However, when Richard is killed, the girls realise that all may not be as it first appears.  Deciding to investigate the accident, they find themselves embroiled in a spy plot that could alter the course of the war, but who can they trust?  And can they discover the truth before it's too late?

There is something about WWII fiction that I find irresistible so when I rad about The Secrets Act, I knew there was no point resisting and raced out to buy a copy (in fact, I think I picked up a copy just before its release date).  As I always advertise the book I am reading in school, I kept it until the half-term break, knowing that a YA book may not be suitable for the children (I was wrong, I think it is suitable for Y6 and will be sharing this with my class next week!).  And I'm glad I kept it until I had the time to dedicate to it without distractions as I was gripped from the very beginning and, as the climax to the plot loomed, I stayed up way past my bedtime as I just couldn't out it down!

The plot follows two very different girls: Pearl and Ellen.  We meet Ellen first who is intelligent but appears awkward and uncertain how to develop friendships with others, we learn of her mother's instructions on how to behave in social situations and of Ellen's own tricks to help her understand people - it wasn't until I read the historical note at the end of the book that I fully understood Ellen's neurodivergence and I really liked that Alison had developed her character in this way.  I loved Ellen and her steadfastness in her approach to everything she did.  Then there is Pearl who, to Ellen, appears to have it all: she is confident, can talk to boys, appears fearless and seems to know what she is doing - Ellen is slightly in awe of her; however, we quickly see that Pearl does have her insecurities and her worries (don't we all?), that she is just a young girl falling in love and trying to find her way into adulthood.  Together, they make a perfect pair and I thoroughly enjoyed the dynamic between them - their differences complimented each other.  There are a host of other characters that make this book a gripping read and, as the plot progressed, I found myself trusting nobody and second guessing the way people were behaving and the motives for their actions!

Having visited Bletchley with my son in 2018, I was thrilled to be able to visualise the setting for the novel: the image of the mansion and the huts sprang to mind so vividly; lunches around the lake and the freezing conditions during the winter made things very real.  The more I read, the more I wanted to go back again to follow Pearl and Ellen's footsteps.  The secrecy and the treks from their billets in all weather, the endless hours of work, the not knowing whether they had made a difference ... The Secrets Act really highlights exactly what these young women did, how much they gave and, until the 1970s, all in complete secrecy without being able to talk about any of it.  This book is an important reminder to young people today of exactly what my grandparents, their great grandparents, sacrificed for us and is one I feel everybody should read.

At this point, having re-read my review so far, I'm not completely certain I've quite done this book the justice it deserves!  It's an utterly gripping novel of bravery, secrecy and friendship that you won't be able to put down; it's a YA novel that would be suitable for some Y6 children and would make a wonderful film (I can see it on the big screen now!).  In short, The Secrets Act is a book you absolutely have to read so please go out and buy a copy today - I promise you won't regret it. 

The Sky Beneath the Stone - Alex Mullarky Blog Tour

 

It's my turn on the Sky Beneath the Stone blog tour today and I'm delighted to welcome Alex Mullarky with her piece on animal connections in the book.

Animal Connections in The Sky Beneath the Stone

One of the first things I knew about Ivy, the main character of The Sky Beneath the Stone, was that she would have a Border Collie named Grendel. I grew up in a house full of rescue dogs and when I was 13 I adopted my own dog – Snap, a Border Collie who made a funny groaning noise whenever you rubbed her behind the ears.

In the book Ivy is struggling to overcome her fear of the outdoors, brought on by a traumatic experience while hiking a year before. Dogs are the best hiking companions; that’s just a fact. In the final version of the story, Grendel isn’t Ivy’s dog – he’s a village pet, looked after by everyone. But he is the one who takes the first leap through the hole in the wall that leads to the fairy realm of Underfell, giving Ivy the courage to follow him. Dogs have that magic ability to make you feel braver simply by being there.

I spent most of my time outside with dogs and ponies when I was growing up, but I didn’t really know much about wildlife. It was only after I moved to the other side of the world and started noticing all the strange and colourful creatures over there that I realised I hardly knew anything about native wildlife back home in Cumbria and the UK.

Ivy, on the other hand, has grown up noticing everything around her: she can identify a bird from its song or its silhouette in the sky. She’s the kind of person who goes out with a torch after dark looking for badgers. She has dog-eared, well-loved guidebooks to bird and animal species. Maybe if I’d read a book about a girl like Ivy when I was that age, I would have been inspired to learn more about nature.

But I definitely notice now! While I was living in Australia I trained to become a veterinary nurse, and I spent all the time I wasn’t writing looking after everything from cats to kangaroos, managing wounds, monitoring anaesthetics, and caring for unwell patients. Meanwhile, writing this book was a way of teaching myself all about my native species, so that eventually I could know all the things Ivy knows.

In The Sky Beneath the Stone, birds and other animals move freely between our world and Underfell. Even when I was living in my dog-and-pony bubble as a kid, those animals were my gateway to the outside world: hopping over rocks in the river with Snap, crunching over frosted grass first thing in the morning to feed the horses. Bonds with animals, wild or tame, connect us deeply to nature, and that is what The Sky Beneath the Stone aims to celebrate.

 Alex Mullarky

The Sky Beneath the Stone is out now.

The Great Fox Illusion - Justyn Edwards

It's my turn on The Great Fox Illusion blog tour today and I'm delighted to share with you my original review of this delightful book that has gone down a storm with my class at school.

The world's greatest illusionist, The Great Fox, has died, leaving behind him a legacy of tricks.  Now a TV channel is running a competition for children to win the right to that legacy and Flick is determined to win.  An accomplished magician in her own right, her desire to win is different to the other eager contestants as her father was also a magician and she believes that his greatest trick, the Bell System, was stolen by Fox and lies somewhere in his house.  She is determined to get it back and find her father, who has gone missing, no matter what it takes.

I think The Great Fox Illusion is the first book I have read that has been so dominated by magic tricks and looking at how they are performed.  As a child, I remember watching The Paul Daniels Magic Show (yes, I'm giving away my age!) and wondering how on Earth he managed to do each trick and, even now, magicians baffle me with their tricks, so I loved that this book gave me an insight into this - I found myself trying to figure things out before the characters could (spoiler alert: I couldn't!)

Flick is one of those main characters you are immediately drawn to.  She isn't particularly showy and doesn't want to bring attention to herself; she has one aim and is determined to achieve it.  Having lost one of her legs in a car accident, she refuses to let herself be seen as different and, even when her prosthetic is causing her problems, she refuses to be defined by it.  I also liked the relationship she forms with Charlie: they are very different to one an other but complement each other perfectly.  

I have to give a mention to the Fox's house which deserves to be classed as a character in its own right. With a host of ever-changing hallways and rooms, not to mention the lift that seems to have its own personality, the house is alive with magic and intrigue, and I absolutely loved it - you never quite knew what to expect and I could fully imagine going into it and never being able to find my way out again!

The Great Fox Illusion is an exciting story about inner-strength, determination, family, friendship and never giving up.  It's a book that you'll pick up and won't want to put down, even once you've finished it; it will leave you wanting more and I, for one, can't wait to see what's in store next.  

Due for release on the 7th April, The Great Fox Illusion is a book that needs to magically find its way into your shopping basket!

The Secret of Splint Hall - Katie Cotton

 

WWII has ended but life isn't easy for Flora and Isobel whose father has died during the war.  On top of that, their house was destroyed, leaving them homeless and forcing their mum to make the decision to take them to live with their aunt and uncle at the family's ancestral home, Splint Hall.  From the second they arrive at the imposing manor, it becomes evidently apparent that their mum's brother-in-law, Mr Godfrey, rules the place and is not happy at their arrival.  Imposing strict rules on the sisters, he makes it clear that he doesn't really want them there.  Despite this, Flora and Isobel manage to explore and are curious to know why there are people arriving with packages during the night, what the blue sparks they saw are when they arrived and why they aren't allowed near the air-raid shelter.  The more they discover, the more it shows them that there is a family secret to be uncovered, leading them to an adventure they will never forget.

I'm always drawn to MG books set during the war so I was excited to dive into The Secret of Splint Hall; what I didn't expect was the turn the book took which really took me by surprise and also delighted me!  I don't really want to say too much more than that so I don't spoil things for those of you who haven't read the book but it's definitely a very different type of war book and one I won't forget in a hurry for all the right reasons!

Flora and Isobel have had a tough time of things, having lost their home as well as their father but they are strong and determined, and this is evident from the start in their desire to explore, despite strict instructions from Mr Godfrey not to.  Speaking of Mr Godfrey, he truly is a most unpleasant character and one, if I am honest, I would have rather liked to have punched on the nose!  His air of superiority and arrogance will instantly make readers dislike him and his attitude towards his wife and the girls will just cement that feeling until you take pleasure in hating him!  There are other characters that I would love to mention but I won't as I don't want to spoil things ... but I guarantee you are in for a treat!

With adventure, family and bravery at the heart of this book, The Secret of Splint Hall is a WWII book with a difference and one you won't be able to put down when it's released on the 3rd March.

Like A Charm - Elle McNicoll

Ramya has known she was different from a very young age and refusing to do as she was told by a stranger at her parents' New Year's Eve party in their London home shows us that in the opening of the book.  Only her grandfather seemed to understand what she was doing.  Unfortunately, that evening divided her family and Ramya hasn't seen her grandfather since.  Now, seven years later, she and her parents have moved up to Edinburgh where the rest of her mum's family live.  But when Ramya hears that her grandfather has died, everything changes.  Ramya goes to his funeral alone where she meets a stranger who tells her she has been left something in his will.  Against her better judgement, she goes to the bookshop where he tells her to meet him and he gives her a book that only she can read and write in.  It's this book, the enchanted form of the Greyfriars Bobby statue and Ramya's sense of needing to be herself that leads her to discover that there is a whole world of magical creatures hiding in Edinburgh, and she is about to become acquainted with them. But can she heed the warning to 'beware the sirens'?

I love Elle's writing and her fierce determination to put neurodivergent people firmly at the centre of her books.  All Ramya wants to do is live her life as herself and not be defined by her dyspraxia - she is a true hero in this book and her strength of character is an utter joy to read.  She has unique skills that allow her to see what most of us cannot and her approach should be a lesson to us all.  She is a role-model for us all.

I have a soft spot for books set in Edinburgh, having spent lots of my childhood holidays there visiting my grandparents so I was excited before I even opened the book, but discovering Greyfriars Bobby has a role to play in the story made my day - it's one of my favourite spots in the city and somewhere I have to go whenever I go back.  I spent much of the book being able to visualise where Ramya was which added an extra element to the book for me and next time I'm there, I shall be curiously hunting for the door the leads to the real Grassmarket!

A unique story that combines individuality with magic and adventure, Like A Charm was an unputdownable book and I'm not certain I'll be able to wait until next Spring to find out what happens next!  My class are going to love this book and it's definitely going on my March display in Waterstones Newcastle!