Blog Tour (Review & Guest Post): Nevertell – Katharine Orton (Illustrated by Sandra Dieckmann)

‘Gorgeously-evocative writing from a book that is guaranteed to be a winter winner. Fans of The Wolf Wilder, Sky Song, The Wolf Princess and The Tzar’s Curious Runaways should start with this.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: Nevertell
Author: Katharine Orton (@KatharineOrton)
Illustrator: Sandra Dieckmann (@sandradieckmann)
Publisher: Walker (@WalkerBooksUK)
Page count: 384
Date of publication: 7th November 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1406385182

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Escape 🏃‍♀️
2. Bravery 💪
3. Sorcery ✨

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Sometimes it take a little courage to discover magic.

Eleven-year-old Lina has never seen the world beyond the prison camp until the night she escapes with her best friend, Bogdan. As the pair journey across a snowy Russian wilderness, they are pursued by a vengeful sorceress and her pack of shadow wolves. The children will need every ounce of bravery – and a little sorcery of their own – if they are to survive… 

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Review:

Set in the uninhabited wilds of Siberia, this winter-bound story starts by introducing to our protagonist Lina. Born in a Soviet prison camp, she has no idea about the outside world after being confined to the surroundings of the camp for all her eleven years. After years of her young life of seeing the people around her being forced into labour, she seizes upon a chance to escape what’s she always been used to. However, this does come at an initial cost, the fact that she has to leave her mother, Katya, behind. At least initially.

Leaving one night is no easy task, and their escape is nearly thwarted when Lina comes face to face with the camp’s Commandant who Lina believes is as close to a father as she has ever known…

However, with a rag-tag group of campmates – Old Gleb, Alexei and Vadim – she leaves the camp only to find that the grass isn’t greener, or should I say the snow isn’t whiter beyond the fence. There is a line within the book that will always stay with me after reading this and it not only perfectly describes the treacherous conditions of the cold that Lina faces but also the way in which Katharine evokes a sense of atmosphere within her gorgeously-illustrative writing and that is “The coldness reached its fingers inside her skull.”

A little way after embarking on their journey, the group begin to hear footsteps and feel as if they may be attacked. However, lucky for Lina, they soon realise that they’ve got company. Company in the form of Lina’s friend from camp, Bogdan. As the group journey further on into the stretches of snow in search of Lina’s grandmother who is appearently located in Moscow, their journey becomes more intensified. Such that they are at the mercy of a sorceress and her pack of shadow wolves who get nearer and nearer…

Will they make the arduous trek across the tundra to safety? Or will they have to dig deep to find the courage they need to conquer the sorceress, her shadow wolves and the freezing cold?

Fans of The Wolf Wilder, Sky Song, The Wolf Princess and The Tzar’s Curious Runaways should start with this. A book that is guaranteed to be a winter winner with all of its readers. I simply can’t wait to read Katharine’s next!

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How fairytales inspired Nevertell

Nevertell is deeply inspired by fairy tales. Russian and Slavic ones in particular, which are among my favourites in the world, and which made the most sense to draw on since that’s where the story’s set. They’re part of the fabric of the book, but I’ve never told anyone which particular one inspired Nevertell the most. There’s a little clue towards the end of the book, but that’s all.

For a long time Nevertell had brewed in my head in a nameless, shapeless kind of way. I wanted it to be mainly for children and set in the Soviet Union of the 1950s because, for many reasons, it’s a place and a period of history I’ve been fascinated in my whole life. So I’d been thinking about this story when I came across an amazing book called Inside the Rainbow, where I learned that fairy tales – the magical, fantastical kind that I love so much – were not to be told to children at that particular time in the Soviet Union.

This really got me thinking. About what that would have been like for people with such a rich history of magical fairy tales and folklore – and why such a decision might have been made. On top of this I wondered how a magical world and those from it would cope with that. How might they push back? Baba Yaga wouldn’t like it, I knew that much. What of Vasilissa the Beautiful, or Koschei the Deathless? Could the relics of these other worlds – of our imaginations – be pushed out that easily? From these questions, Nevertell was born.

Now I had the spark for my story, I did more research, which also included my two favourite things: reading about history and about fairy tales. I rediscovered that Slavic folklore is populated with all kinds of nature spirits and supernatural beings, including animal helpers who pop up to aid the protagonists in their hour of need, usually in exchange for an earlier kindness: help, or food. During the story, my main character Lina meets a little moth who becomes important later – and the idea for it sprang partly from this.

There’s also a sorceress called Svetlana in Nevertell who pursues Lina and her best friend with shadow wolves, and you quickly learn that she herself is otherworldly. Some of the characters liken her to the fearsome witch from Russian stories, Baba Yaga. But it’s actually another fairy tale character altogether that relates closest to Svetlana – and she’s from the story which also helped inspire Nevertell.

It’s called The Stone Flower. It’s about an apprentice stone carver who longs to improve his craft and create true beauty. He’s heard of a beautiful “stone flower”, but it’s in the realm of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, and those who go there never return. I’ll leave you to read about exactly what happens to the apprentice stone carver when he finally does go in search of the stone flower (there’s even a sequel involving his fearless fiancée, Katya), but you guessed it: Svetlana’s character is in part inspired by the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.

So while the knowledge that fairy tales weren’t to be told to children is what helped spark Nevertell into being, it was actually one fairy tale, the tale of The Stone Flower, that gave Nevertell its (mountain-shaped) heart. And, perhaps, when you’ve read both, you might even spy The Stone Flower’s influences on Nevertell in other ways, too.

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Big thanks to Katharine and all the team at Walker for inviting me to be a part of the Nevertell blog tour and for sending me an advance copy.

Extra thanks to Katharine for writing such an insightful guest post!

Mr E

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Nevertell blog tour for more exclusive content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

Blog Tour (Review & Guest Post): Black Water – Barbara Henderson (Illustrated by Sandra McGowan)

‘Exquisite writing… every word is used for effect. This story is not only one of legend and lore, but one of pulsating action and adventure eagerly awaiting its readers.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: Black Water
Author: Barbara Henderson (@scattyscribbler)
Publisher: Cranachan (@cranachanbooks)
Page count: 88
Date of publication: 31st October 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1911279624

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Smuggling 🛢️
2. Poetry ✍️
3. Father-son 👨‍👦

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Down by the coast, black water swirls and hides its secrets…

Dumfries, 1792.
Henry may only be thirteen, but he has already begun his training in the Excise, combatting smuggling like his father does. But when a large, smuggling schooner is stranded nearby, the stakes are high – even with reinforcements, and the newly recruited officer, a poet called Robert Burns.

Musket fire, obstructive locals, quicksand and cannonballs – it is a mission of survival. As it turns out: Henry has a crucial part to play…

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Review:

Historical fiction and short stories, for me, are rather something of hidden gems in the children’s literature world. There’s such a dearth of both quantity and quality in the two genres that when I see a book that is set especially in a time period which has not been written about in detail before, I am thrilled and this is exactly how I felt when I cast my eyes over Black Water to see it satisfying both these untapped criteria.

As teenager Henry Lewars finds himself out at sea and hiding in the shadows of his father, he finds too that he has a lot to learn in following in his father’s footsteps and getting the hang of working for the Excise. It’s 1792, in the early hours of the morning and Henry, his father and their fellow officers are floating on the Solway Firth, determined to chase and catch the oncoming smugglers and their contraband whom are looming large. As they bring their captives and evidence ashore, it seems that Henry has, according to his father, done ‘tolerably well’ in one of his first missions.

But all is not quiet in the Firth for long… as news of an even larger ship – a schooner by the name of the Rosamund – has been spotted. As Henry and his father depart to take down these tax evaders on the orders of Riding Officer, Mr Walter Crawford, they realise however that they may need more reinforcements. One of them, a very famous one who is more known for his poetry (some of which is featured within Black Water) than his involvement as an Exciseman: Robert Burns.

Will Henry survive? Will he not only learn how to work for the Excise but finally earn the respect of his father? How does the bard help in their quest to board the Rosamund? And who is Old Finlay… a character who from the start holds more than a mystery about him?

With musket fire, cannon fire, bribery, quicksand, a race against the tide and battle-hardened sailors, this story is not only one of legend and lore, but one of pulsating action and adventure eagerly awaiting its readers. Barbara’s level of research is second-to-none and from reading her author’s note, a brief history of smuggling in Scotland and extracts from Crawford’s journal and Burns’ poetry itself, you can see how every word is used exquisitely for full effect and so proves that good things come in small packages.

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Burns and me, we have history
by Barbara Henderson

I have a terrible admission to make. Until I was 19 years old, I had never ever heard of Robert Burns.

I’m not kidding. Having grown up in Germany, I could recite Goethe and Schiller and had read a smattering of the German classics. I had covered some Shakespeare in English lesons at school, but Scots? My teachers would have run a mile! It was their job to produce an accent akin to BBC presenters in the 60s, crystal clear and a little old fashioned. Any deviation from this was frowned upon and avoided at all cost.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at Edinburgh University to study English Literature and, in a moment of madness, signed up to do Scottish Lit instead (the two were interchangeable and I fancied learning something new). I came to regret it – fluent in English, I was an absolute beginner when it came to Scots words – and Burns used quite a few of those! I bought a trusty second-hand copy of his works and set to work. It didn’t take long before there was a connection – I took to the romanticist element in his work (I had loved the same in Goethe) and there was something phonetically truthful in these words. Here was a poet who was making a point, taking a risk: deliberately including the language of ordinary people in literature. Here was someone deeply flawed, but at the same time drawn to goodness and virtue. Someone who believed in an egalitarian society before we were anywhere approaching that – and we still have some way to go! Someone who wrote poetry about mice and lice, all the way commenting on society as he saw it. One of my favourites is Holy Willie’s Prayer – exposing religious hypocrisy in a humorous way, digging at double standards.

Traditional Burns’ Suppers became a January fixture in our house (and our best friends got together at one of those!).

It’s always an occasion, and a joyous one at that. What’s not to love? Whenever in Edinburgh, I still pop into the Writers’ Museum to have my wee fix of Burns, Stevenson and Scott. One year I even persuaded the family that we really, really wanted to holiday in Dumfries – I was interested in visiting the place where he had lived. It hadn’t occurred to me that the poet would feature in one of my stories until I found out about the incredible events surrounding the seizure of the Rosamund, the real events that underpin Black Water. How on earth has no-one written for kids about this? It is a gift! It features the poet, but in his day job as an Exciseman which he took on as he needed a reliable income – but it is clear that his heart was in his poetry. This posed an interesting idea for me: What would he be like? How would he treat a child? Would he be likeable? I decided that yes, flawed as he was, he would have been likeable! He was passionate about his art, and that is as appealing today as I’m sure it was then.

It seems that, nearly 30 years after I first encountered him, I’m still a little charmed by the bard.

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Big thanks to Barbara and all the team at Cranachan for inviting me to be a part of the Black Water blog tour and for sending me an advance copy.

Extra thanks to Barbara for writing such an insightful guest post!

Mr E

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Black Water blog tour for more exclusive content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

Blog Tour (Review, Extract & Guest Post): Mother Tongue – Patricia Forde (Illustrated by Elissa Webb)

‘For Letta is one of the best heroines I have come across in a book. Steadfast, strong and unwaveringly resilient, she is the driving force behind why this series is becoming so revered.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: Mother Tongue
Author: Patricia Forde (@PatriciaForde1)
Cover illustrator: Elissa Webb
Publisher: Little Island (@LittleIslandBks)
Page count: 224
Date of publication: 12th September 2019
Series status: Second in The Wordsmith series (Standalone)
ISBN: 978-1912417278

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Words 🔤
2. Missing ❌
3. Heroine 💪

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After global warming came the Melting. Then came Ark.

The new dictator of Ark wants to silence speech for ever. But Letta is the wordsmith, tasked with keeping words alive. Out in the woods, she and the rebels secretly teach children language, music and art.

Now there are rumours that babies are going missing. When Letta makes a horrifying discovery, she has to find a way to save the children of Ark – even if it is at the cost of her own life. 

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Review:

With its themes of climate change and global warming, political power, truth versus lies and oppressive regimes, and set in an apocalyptic, dystopian future, you could say that this story has aspects that ring true to a future that isn’t actually that far from home in today’s political climate.

In this stand-alone sequel to The Wordsmith, the new dictator of Ark wants to silence speech for ever. But protagonist Letta, the wordsmith, is tasked with keeping words alive. For Letta is one of the best heroines I have come across in a book. Steadfast, strong and unwaveringly resilient, she is the driving force behind why this series is becoming so revered. As the evolution of language becomes less and less with each generation, Letta fights back against the system. But as she does, she uncovers more discoveries than she could have ever imagined… Will one of these discoveries be the death of her?

Freedom of speech, a world so well realised and a main character with more than a sense of gutsy determination all are on offer for the reader here and it is with all of these at play that readers – both children and adults – should make Mother Tongue one not to be missed of their To Be Read piles. If you’re looking for more, The Wordsmith (Book 1) is a must.

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For those intrigued by my review, you can read more in this extract below:

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Extract

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Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

This is the question I get asked most often at school events and it is a difficult question to answer.

Writers are hoarders, I find. We hoard images, snippets of conversation, stories from the local newspaper. This stash of inspiration is kept in our heads or hopefully in a notebook or on a computer file until we need it. When I wrote The Wordsmith the process started with a single image. I imagined a girl, called Letta, working in a shop selling words. I had no idea who she was or why she was selling words but I could see the location clearly. A big wooden counter and behind that rows of pigeon holes. Each pigeon hole held a box and each box held cards. Each card had a word written on it. I could hear Letta’s voice talking to her customers – did they want words for everyday colours or something more elaborate? The standard box had words like blue and black and white in it but the special box had cerise and indigo and violet. Slowly, over days and weeks and months I discovered her story. She wasn’t selling words, she was distributing them. She was distributing them because by law people were only allowed to have five hundred words. Show don’t tell, everyone said, so I set about showing this strange law in action.

In the first chapter of The Wordsmith we see Letta’s master learning that from now on citizens of Ark will be given a list of five hundred words and they are the only words they are allowed to use.

Writers, by and large, are divided into those who plan their novels and those who do not. I belong in the latter camp. My challenge with The Wordsmith was to uncover this strange world, why it came to be, why language was rationed and what my protagonist was going to do about it.

Standing back from it now, I can see where some of the ideas came from. My father had a shop in Galway, where I was born and still live. I was used to the world of the counter and of customers coming and going. I speak Irish, a language now under threat with an ever-diminishing list of words in daily usage, and I was concerned about global warming. As I dug for my story all of those things influenced me and shaped the ultimate narrative.

Mother Tongue continues the story and puts us back in the world of Ark. When I tried to imagine Letta, after the first story finished, I saw her in a field teaching children. That brought me straight back to the history I had learnt in school.

After the accession of William and Mary in the 1690’s, the education of Catholics in Ireland was expressly forbidden under the Penal Laws. As a result an underground system of ‘hedge schools’ sprang up across the country. They were so called because the classes were often convened under the shelter of hedges or in stables or barns. The teacher risked life and limb but the children received an education in the Irish language, reading, writing and arithmetic.

And so, in the first chapter of Mother Tongue we find Letta teaching in a hedge school.

Another strong storyline in Mother Tongue is about the disappearance of babies. Amelia, the new ruler of Ark, is carrying out an experiment. If children never hear language will it follow that they will never speak?

Babies were very much in the news as I was writing. In March 2017, the Irish commission of investigation into Mother and Baby Homes announced that the remains of 796 infants had been found in Tuam buried on the site of a former institution for unmarried mothers. The remains of the children had been placed in an old septic tank.

Tuam is about twenty-five miles from where I live. The country was in shock.

And then, in the United States, we heard of families being separated at the Mexican border. Most of these people were from Central America and the campaign was designed to deter families hoping to immigrate to the United States. Babies were taken from their mother’s arms and placed in foster care.

The youngest child separated from his family, Baby Constantin, was four months old. I hoarded the image of Constantin with his deep brown eyes and long eyelashes.

Where do you get your ideas from? You get them from life, your own life and the lives of others, and you try to make sense of them by putting them into stories.

Mother Tongue is dedicated to the memory of the Tuam babies and to all children without a voice.

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Patricia Forde is from Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. Her first novel THE WORDSMITH was published to great critical acclaim in 2015. It has since been published in the United States, Australia, Denmark, Russia, Turkey and the Netherlands. It has won a White Raven Award from the International Youth Library, is an American Library Association Notable Book for Children in the United States, and was shortlisted for the Children’s Book of the Year Award in Ireland. In 2018 Patricia wrote BUMPFIZZLE THE BEST ON PLANET EARTH, which was chosen as the Dublin UNESCO Citywide Read 2019. MOTHER TONGUE, the sequel to THE WORDSMITH, has just been published in 2019 by Little Island Books. She is married to Padraic and has two grown up children. She still lives in Galway, her favourite city in the world. You can visit her at www.patriciaforde.com, find her on twitter @PatriciaForde1 and on Instagram @TrishForde1.

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Founded by Ireland’s first Children’s Laureate, Siobhán Parkinson, Little Island Books has been publishing books for children and teenagers since 2010. It is Ireland’s only English-language publisher that publishes exclusively for young people. Little Island specialises in publishing new Irish writers and illustrators, and also has a commitment to publishing books in translation. In 2019 Little Island was the Irish winner of the inaugural Small Press of the Year award from The Bookseller magazine. You can find them online at www.littleisland.ie, and on Twitter and Instagram at @LittleIslandBks.

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Big thank to Patricia, Matthew and all the team at Little Island Books for inviting me to be a part of the wonderful Mother Tongue blog tour and for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Extra thanks to Patricia for writing such a fascinating guest post!

Mr E

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Mother Tongue blog tour for more exclusive guest posts from Patricia, content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

 

Blog Tour (Guest Post & Extract): The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow – Emily Ilett

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow
Author: Emily Ilett (@EmilyrIlett)
Publisher: Kelpies/Floris Books (@DiscoverKelpies) (@FlorisBooks)
Page count: 224
Date of publication: 26th September 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1782506072

Perfect for Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Shadows 👥
2. Adventures 🏃‍♀️
3. Sisters 👭

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Gail used to be close to her big sister. But lately Kay has changed: she’s sad and quiet, and Gail has no idea how to help.

But when Kay’s shadow slips away as well, Gail knows she must bring the shadows back.

Gathering her courage, Gail chases the shadows through caves and forests, discovering maps, a pearl and an unexpected new friend who can speak to birds.

Can she find what the shadows are seeking?

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“Gail and Kay used to swim every week, but everything had changed after their dad left. Now, Kay never left her room if she could help it. She hardly ate, and if she looked at Gail, it was like she was looking all the way through her, as if she was invisible.”

When Gail’s older sister, Kay, becomes depressed, Gail doesn’t understand what is happening. The two sisters used to do everything together – they dreamed of being marine biologists and swam in the sea whenever they could. So when Kay becomes tired, sad and distant and won’t swim with Gail anymore, Gail feels abandoned and is furious with her sister.

The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow follows Gail as she chases across the island after her sister’s shadow, certain that if she finds it and brings it home, everything will go back to how it was before. On her journey, Gail befriends a young girl called Mhirran.

“A strange girl with orange hair tapping Morse code deep inside a tunnel like the whole island might be listening.”

Mhirran speaks Dolphin and talks to the stalagmites in Morse code. She can mimic bird calls and wave her arms in semaphore. She talks about whistling languages and how spiders can communicate through their webs, like playing guitar strings. She talks about the ways elephants can feel the warning call of other elephants through the ground and how whales speak to each other through miles and miles of cold water.

At first, Gail dismisses Mhirran’s constant chatter. She says that Mhirran talks all the time but never says anything real. But when Gail hears Mhirran’s own story, she realises that Mhirran is also trying to reach out across a difficult silence in her life. And as she begins to listen more closely to her friend, Gail draws strength from learning how different creatures communicate.

This is a story about the impact of Kay’s depression on Gail, and how she finds the courage to be there for her sister, just as Kay has looked out for her, so many times before. I hope this story will help young people and families talk about depression and mental health, and the different ways we can continue to reach out to each other through difficult and painful experiences. Gail learns to ask for help and take the help that is given, and I hope this book, through a tale of magic and adventure, supports young people to ask for, and give help, themselves.

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Emily Ilett, author of The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow

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“Kay said too many people try to do things by themselves – she couldn’t understand it. It’s a brave thing to ask for help, she said. The bravest thing.”

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In this extract, Gail is trapped inside a tree’s shadow and she is looking at a photograph of Kay in the hope that it will give her the strength to escape the shadow.

“Gail ran a forefinger down the photo, following the curve of Kay’s cheek. Kay had always been the strong one, not her. She remembered the time when she’d broken her arm and Kay had drawn twenty-three octopi on her cast so that she had all the arms she needed, and when Kay had spent hours explaining the tides because Gail was afraid of not knowing when the ocean would shift or shrink. She remembered when her sister had taken the blame the day Gail had turned their mum’s umbrella into a jellyfish with pink tissue paper and superglue, and when she’d squeezed Gail’s hand and distracted her with stories of marine biologist Asha de Vos while Gail had her first terrifying injection.

And she remembered one day after Kay had started sinking, when she had turned to Gail in the sticky silence, and said softly, “Do you remember the time we went swimming last October? We stayed in for ages and when we came out our lips and fingers were blue. You squeezed my hand and I couldn’t feel anything at all.” Gail had nodded and Kay stared at her own hand, flexing her fingers. “I feel like that now, Gail. Everything is numb. It’s like I’ve been swimming for hours. But I don’t know how to get out. I can’t get out.”

Gail had stiffened at Kay’s words then. Kay was the strong one. She needed Kay to be the strong one. And so she had tightened her mouth and tapped at the window and shrugged and said nothing at all.

Twigs broke behind her. They crunched in a creature-like way. Gail held her breath; she slipped the photo back in her bag and tried once more to wrestle her feet from the tree’s shadow. It was beginning to convince her that there were leaves growing from her nostrils and in between her teeth: Gail had to touch her face to check that there weren’t. She tugged her hair behind her ears, and shifted her rucksack higher on her back.

Leaves crackled to her right, followed by the scuttling of insects disturbed.

“Hello?” Gail whispered. “Who’s there?”

For the first time, she wondered why the deer had been running so fast. Perhaps something had spooked them in the forest…

Gail shrank her head into her jumper. She had to get out of the tree’s shadow. Who am I?Remember who I am. But all she could see was Mhirran’s pale face, and Kay, flexing her fingers sadly on her bed.

Caww. A crow burst upwards, startled into flight: something was moving in the forest. Gail froze. She could smell animal: damp fur and hunger. Every part of her body tensed. She squeezed her eyes shut, frantically racing through all the defences she knew: the octopus’s spray of ink, the eel’s organ regurgitation, the slime of the hagfish. She thought of the leafy seadragon’s camouflage and the jellyfish’s sting. And then she thought of Kay and the way she stared everybody down without any other kind of weapon at all. So Gail opened her eyes.

The eyes staring back at her were full of wilderness. Of hunts and hiding. Of exile and territory. They were full of night secrets and independence. They were coral-proud and luminous. They shone.”

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Big thanks to Emily, James and all the team at Kelpies/Floris for inviting me to be a part of the wonderful The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow blog tour and for sending me an advance copy of the book

Extra big thanks to Emily for her guest post and to Kelpies/Floris for inviting me to share this wonderful extract above.

Mr E

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Blog Tour (Extract): The Cloud Horse Chronicles: Guardians of Magic – Chris Riddell

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The Cloud Horse Chronicles: Guardians of Magic
Author: Chris Riddell (@chrisriddell50)
Publisher: Macmillan (@MacmillanKidsUK)
Page count: 320
Date of publication: 19th September 2019
Series status: First in the series
ISBN: 978-1447277972

Perfect for Year 4, Year 5 & Year 6.

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To celebrate the upcoming publication, I’m delighted to share with you an exclusive extract from Guardians of Magic, the first title in a brilliant new magical adventure series from the creator of Goth Girl, Chris Riddell.

With gorgeous two-colour illustrations throughout and a special full-colour guide to the giants in the book, this fantastic hardback is a perfect gift.

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For as long as anyone can remember, children have made a wish on a cloud horse, never quite believing that their wishes will come true. But times are changing. The future of magic is in danger. Enemies are working together to destroy it – especially the magic of nature and its most powerful source, The Forever Tree. Unless three brave children fight back and believe in the impossible, soon magic and the cloud horses will be gone. Zam, Phoebe and Bathsheba don’t yet know how powerful they are…

In Guardians of Magic the Costa award-winning, 2015-2017 UK Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell weaves together a magical quest. This is the first title in The Cloud Horse Chronicles series.

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Click to download extract

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Guardians of Magic blog tour for more exclusive content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

Blog Tour (Review, Guest Post & Giveaway!): The Boy With the Butterfly Mind – Victoria Williamson

‘Truly sensational. Told through two voices and suffused with real heart; empathy and emotionally-invested storytelling at its best that has so much to teach today’s children. My heart genuinely aches. A must, must, must read.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The Boy with the Butterfly Mind
Author: Victoria Williamson (@strangelymagic)
Illustrator: Floris Books (@FlorisBooks)
Publisher: Kelpies (@DiscoverKelpies)
Page count: 264
Date of publication: 12th September 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1782506003

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 & Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Heart 💖
2. Family 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
3. Butterflies 🦋

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It doesn’t matter what I try.
There’s no cure for being me.

Jamie Lee wants to be normal. But his ADHD makes him feel like his brain is full of butterflies.

Elin Watts wants to be perfect. If she can be, surely her dad will come home.

When Jamie and Elin’s families join, chaos and order collide. But perhaps they have something in common. Maybe there’s no such thing as normal, or perfect. Maybe being yourself is more than enough.

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Review:

Told through a two-voice dual perspective that’s soon becoming Victoria’s inimitable style of storytelling, The Boy with the Butterfly Mind tells the stories of Jamie and Elin, who unbeknownst to each other at the start of the book, become part of the same blended family.

The difference between the two protagonists is immediately noticeable. As the character of Jamie is introduced to us through his struggles with his work at school, we see on the flip side that Elin is thriving academically. However they actually have more in common than first appears. Yes, they’re both eleven years old but actually they’re both finding it hard to ‘fit in’ and it soon becomes clear that socially they stand out amongst their classmates.

Reading on, the two’s home dynamics are shared with the reader and it is clear that both of these characters are experiencing very complex and fractured family breakdowns. With Jamie, he soon becomes a spare part as his mother wishes to move to the United States with her new partner who isn’t that tolerant of Jamie’s ADHD, forcing him to move in with his father who’s living with his own family. Whilst Elin is a pure perfectionist who distracts herself from her father walking out of the family home by whiling away her time in fairyland writing fictional stories based on the real-life characters around her, believing that if she is perfect enough her dad will soon step back into her life.

Through this chain of events, Jamie and Elin find themselves all living under the same roof, though Elin assures herself that it won’t be for very long as when Jamie comes to stay, his behaviour and the changes in her life soon sends her up the wall. Will she feel that she can continue to live with him? What will change her attitude towards him? Can they live harmoniously?

Victoria yet again gets in to not only the heads but also the hearts of her characters and this story will surely permeate in to not only the heads but also the hearts of its readers. This is a story of self-discovery, suffused with real heart and bursting with empathy, with so much to teach today’s children.

It takes an author with immense compassion, with perception and with to not just recognise the complexities, intricacies and eccentricities that are weaved into this story but to also write them with a nuance that shows that when it comes to emotionally-invested storytelling, Victoria really is in a class of her very own.

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A Summer Adventure on The Book Bus

When you think of a mobile library, what’s the first image that comes to mind? If you’re anything like me, then it won’t be any of these:

But volunteering with The Book Bus in Zambia, elephants by the side of the road, tame zebras, cheeky monkeys and crocodiles in the rivers are part and parcel of the reading assistant’s everyday experience.

This summer I spent four weeks working on Book Bus Charlie in Livingstone, visiting local communities and helping run story and craft activities in the primary schools and libraries which the reading charity has partnered with. It was a unique experience, but the project is something that anyone with a passion for books, children’s literacy and international development can get involved with, either through volunteering, or donating to keep the buses on the road and the bookshelves full.

The Book Bus charity was founded in 2008 by publisher Tom Mascheler, and initially began work with schools in Zambia, before opening further reading schemes in Malawi and Ecuador in 2010. Each Book Bus programme is run by local teams all year round, who work alongside teachers to provide literacy support and literary schemes to improve the children’s overall education standards. The teams also run regular reading sessions at community and public libraries, with the staff in Ecuador running an after-school programme of remedial reading sessions for children struggling in the classroom. Over the summer, international volunteers are invited to join the Zambia project for between two and four weeks, planning and running story sessions, reading activities, and crafts in the primary schools and libraries around Livingstone.

That’s the background, but what’s the actual experience of being a volunteer like?

Well, the day starts early on Monday-Fridays, with breakfast from 7am depending on how far away the school to be visited that week is. Planning for the morning’s activities has already been done in pairs or small groups the afternoon of the day before, so after a quick check to make sure you have all the books, colouring pencils, crayons, scissors and craft materials you need, Charlie sets off from the Lodge.

It’s hot during the dry season, so don’t forget your hat, sandals and sun screen!

The roads to the schools around Livingstone can be narrow and often lack tarmac, so Book Bus Charlie’s driver, Edward, has to take it easy on the tyres over potholes and slow down as branches brush past the windows, making sure the bus and its occupants all get to the schools in one piece! This gives the volunteers plenty of time for sight-seeing along the way, and elephants and zebras are often spotted along the road through the national park.

Reaching the school, the team sings songs with the children in a big group, often learning local songs and dances in return, before splitting into smaller groups in classrooms and on mats outside. For the next few hours the Book Bus staff and volunteers, often assisted by the school’s teachers, read a story book with the children, followed by songs, activities and crafts based around a chosen theme.

This year’s theme was, very appropriately, ‘Animal Planet’, and all of the books and activities chosen were based around animal stories. At the start of the week, a group working with the older children might look at a book such as Usborne’s Big Book of Animals, helping children read information about the animals, locate where those animals live on a map, and draw pictures of animals they’ve learned about  for hanging on the classroom wall or for taking home.

Later in a week, once the team has had a chance to gauge the children’s reading levels and English vocabulary, they might choose sets of story books that the children will be able to read along with. One that worked very well this year was The Tortoise’s Gift: A Story from Zambia by Lari Don and Melanie Williamson. The children enjoyed making lion masks, monkey finger puppets and a giant tortoise to act out the story at the end of the week.

After packing the books, mats and craft materials back onto Charlie, the team sings some final songs with the children before heading back to the Lodge for lunch and planning for the next day’s activities. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are spent in one of the local community libraries, reading one-to-one with children and helping them develop their literacy skills and English vocabularies. This is particularly important as English is the official language of Zambia, however there are a total of 73 languages spoken in the country, and children are taught in their local language in Grades 1-3 in school, and are taught in English from Grade 4, which can be confusing in terms of learning to read a new set of phonics to go with all of the new English words.

On returning to the Lodge, volunteers have the chance to wash away the dry season dust, have dinner, continue planning, or have some time to relax. This year some of the evening activities involved card games, roasting marshmallows over a brazier (while trying to stop them being eaten by the tame Lodge zebras!) and singing campfire songs with the group of Girl Guides who joined the project for several weeks. One of the highlights of working with The Book Bus is being part of a team of enthusiastic volunteers who have come together to share their time and effort for a common purpose. As one former volunteer on Book Bus George said: ‘Because of the length of time the project has been running, and the impact it has had, everyone recognises George (not to mention the yellow shirts!), and you immediately become part of the community, rather than just another tourist. Children wave as the bus goes past, shouts of “Book Bus!” accompany any journey by George on the road, and the children suddenly appear at school once George is parked.’

Does it sound like a project you’d like to get involved with? Find out more about The Book Bus, volunteering and donating here: https://thebookbus.org/

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Giveaway!

To celebrate the publication of The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, Victoria has  kindly given me this butterfly BUNDLE to give away!

If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning this beautifully emotional story, simply retweet (RT) this tweet!

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Be sure to check out the rest of the The Boy with the Butterfly Mind blog tour for more exclusive guest posts from Victoria & content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

Blog Tour (Review & Guest Post: Books that encourage care): My Pet Star – Corrinne Averiss (Illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw)

‘…this heartwarming story emits empathy from its pages within. It definitely gives you all the feels.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: My Pet Star
Author: Corrinne Averiss (@CorrinneAveriss)
Illustrator: Rosalind Beardshaw (@RosBeardshaw)
Publisher: Orchard (@orchardbooks) (@HachetteKids)
Page count: 32
Date of publication: 8th August 2019 (Paperback)
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1408353660

Perfect for Nursery, Reception & Year 1.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Star 🌟
2. Heart 💛
3. Friendship 🤗

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I found him underneath a tree,
not somewhere a star should be!
He’d fallen from his home in space,
bumped and tumbled, scratched his face.

When a little girl discovers a star who has fallen to Earth, she takes him home and nurses him back to health.

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Review: 

I’ve been a big fan of Corrinne’s deeply thoughtful, empathetic and emotive stories ever since I first saw Joy, and I am eagerly awaiting another that is coming soon in Hope.

With My Pet Star, a beautiful rhyming picture book that explores the relationship between a young girl and a star that she’s surreptitiously found one evening and shortlisted for the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Awards 2019 Picture Book, it is clear to see that Corrinne continues to write in such a way that resonates with all readers.

Fearing that the star had lost his glow, the little girl takes the star home to nurse and nurtures him back to good health; the little girl acting as the star’s cosmic vet and the star as the little girl’s new-found pet. As the two begin a friendship that’s formed on reading, learning and enjoying being in each other’s company, it appears that they build more than an unbreakable bond between themselves.

As the little girl learns more about the star with each passing day, she realises that at times they live very different lives from each other. With the star being nocturnal, unable to communicate verbally and shining so bright during the night, the little girl starts to recognise that her house may not be the best place for this well-again star.

Opening the window wide, the star returns to its natural habitat and is able to live once again in the night sky shining down on the little girl and the world below thanks to the love, care and devotion shown by she.

With soft, expressive and characterful illustrations from Rosalind, this heartwarming story emits empathy from its pages within. This sweet-natured story about letting go sometimes to the things you love most dearly would be brilliant for sharing at bedtime, in assembly time in schools for a younger audience or for reading at home between parent and child. It definitely succeeds so well in giving you all the feels.

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Books that encourage care… by Corrinne Averiss

My Pet Star is a little story inspired by a child’s instinct to nurture; to prioritise the needs of someone else because they empathise with their suffering or discomfort.

My three year old daughter is always tending to things – throwing blankets over our cat, asking her if she ‘wants another cat biscuit?’ with head sympathetically to one side and recently, sharing her books with her. Even inanimate objects and toys draw her affection and sympathy, we can have cars with plasters on and stones wrapped in blankets.

The little girl in My Pet Star finds a fallen star in her garden and nurses it back to health, but Pet Star is representative of many things… it could be a hedgehog, a small bird fallen from its nest, a sick parent, sibling, friend or even our own mental health or inner child. Whatever it is that needs ‘love and time and care…’ to feel better again.

Ice creams are missed… toys aren’t played with… but a bond is forged through time and tenderness and the Star’s glow is restored.

Feeling small and helpless in the world themselves, it is powerful for a child to be able to reassure someone they perceive to be more vulnerable. I’ve chosen a few books that I feel also represent this theme. Treating others – be they human or animal – with respect and tenderness. Just curiosity and an open heart allowing the needs of another to be observed and understood.

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The Smartest GIANT in Town – Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler

I love the instinctive kindness of George the Giant who helps the animals he meets on his journey even when this results in his own comfort. It’s such a powerful littlestory and I adore the pride in his song, that grows with each good deed ‘…my shoe is a house for a little white mouse’. My shoe! Look what it means to someone else!

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Lost and Found – Oliver Jeffers

It’s important not to assume we know what someone needs – to be open-minded, helpful, and to see what unfolds.

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The Storm Whale – Benji Davis

Noi reacts quickly to help the storm whale; keeping him wet in the bath, reading to him, playing music, feeding him. He is instantly completely present and ‘there’ for thewhale and its needs.

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How to Hide a Lion – Helen Stephens

Similarly, Iris dedicates herself to caring for the lion – brushing his mane and offering a bandage for his sore paw. She elects herself sole defender of the lion from suspicious grown-ups and this beautifully captures the way children feel themselves to be the equals of animals.

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Big thanks to Corrinne, Alison and all the team at Hachette for inviting me to share my thoughts as part of the My Pet Star blog tour and for sending me an advance copy in exchange for this review.

Extra thanks to Corrinne for writing such a brilliant guest post!

Mr E

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Be sure to check out the rest of the My Pet Star blog tour for more exclusive guest posts from Corrinne & Rosalind, content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!

 

Review & Guest Post (The Inspiration Behind The Monster): The Switching Hour – Damaris Young (Illustrated by Kelsey Buzzell)

‘Spooky, suspenseful and Stranger Things. Damaris’ haunting yet hopeful words and worlds so atmospherically realised here suggest she could be the next and natural successor to Hardinge.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The Switching Hour
Author: Damaris Young (@damarisyoung)
Cover illustrator: Kelsey Buzzell (Website)
Publisher: Scholastic (@scholasticuk)
Page count: 288
Date of publication: 1st August 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1407195049

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Friendship 👭
2. Monster 👹
3. Drought ☁️

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Never stay out after the Switching Hour… never let the outside in…

Every night, at twilight, Amaya locks her door to keep out the Badeko, a creature that vanishes children away to devour their dreams.

When Amaya’s small brother is taken, she must fight her way through the terrifying and twisting forest to the Badeko’s nest.

She must face her fears that come alive after dark…

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Review:

Fishing in her local river, we are introduced to Amaya who lives with her grandmother, her small brother Kaleb and her pet goat Tau. Soon realising she’s been out for far too long, she rushes back home just in time before the time of the Switching Hour starts where the day turns to night and the living turn to the lure of a legend…

“The creature licked its lips and sucked the dream through its sharp teeth, but the empty hunger in its belly still roared. It wasn’t enough.
Always hungry. Always thirsty.”

The legend of Badeko. A monster. A demon. A beast. A dream-eating devil who steals away children at night. Awoken greater now by the terrible drought that’s plaguing Amaya’s homeland, of which is stripping it of its little food and water and limited resources that’s left.

To stop Badeko, every night the doors must be locked at twilight. For Amaya, she’s come too close to comfort before to its humming, haunting presence and so now with the insistent calls of her grandmother ringing in her ears, she ensures that all the doors are not only closed but slammed shut, bolted down and checked at least three times. But when her wise old grandmother is needed by a local in a remote, far-off community, she’s left to look after her younger brother all by herself. Will she be able to protect what matters most to her?

“Dragging my feet over to my bed, I curled up under the covers without caring to change out of my clothes. As I drifted off, I had the uneasy feeling of something left undone.”

But whilst the adults are away, and unbeknownst to Amaya who’s sleeping soundly, the Badeko reappears to play one evening during the Switching Hour rearing its head and wilfully prowling outside her home to try its luck at the seemingly-locked front door only to find its way in to Kaleb.

Snatched away in the dead of night in the clutches of this creature, Amaya awakes to find her brother gone; her worst nightmares coming true; her heart and soul ripped out; her world torn apart and thus the start of a creepy, compulsive and compelling adventure in which she must undertake to face her deepest and darkest fears across the Blackened Forest to seek out the Dead Tree – where Badeko calls home – to bring her brother from the back of beyond. Legend has it that once Badeko claims a child, all relatives will forget their existence within three days and be left in a state of eternal grief and mourning. They call it the Sorrow Sickness, so can Amaya rescue her sibling before this lingering longing sets in?

In its central character of Amaya, Damaris has created a heroine of unforgettable power. With her faithful goat-friend Tau for company, she finds herself as much on a physically-arduous journey as a mentally-testing one.

Submerged in a supernatural and almost tribal-tinged world, influenced by Damaris’ own experiences of myths and legends of a childhood growing up in South Africa, it shows the power of friendship, especially with supporting character Mally, and the very real fear of forgetting the ones you love. Therefore, it’s no surprise that this spooky, suspenseful story with all senses of Stranger Things about it will completely snatch hold of its readers and keep them gripped the whole way through. Her haunting yet hopeful words and worlds so atmospherically realised here suggest she could be the next and natural successor to Hardinge.

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‘Spooky, suspenseful and Stranger Things. Damaris’ haunting yet hopeful words and worlds so atmospherically realised here suggest she could be the next and natural successor to Hardinge.’

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The Inspiration Behind The Monster in The Switching Hour

When I started writing The Switching Hour, I had been interested in climate issues for a long time and it was important to me that the story had a connection to this crucial topic, without being too taken over by it.

In The Switching Houra dream eating creature is awoken by a terrible drought. This monstrous creature is my interpretation of our global changing climate, as the drought threatens to devour all life. It preys on young children by eating their dreams, in the same way climate change will affect generation to come. In The Switching Hour, while the adults hide away behind locked doors, it is the children who are brave and take action.

In our real world, it is young people who are also leading the way when it comes to creating awareness about climate change. The young activist Greta Thunberg is inspiring global protests, urging politicians to take action, and proving that no matter how old you are, your voice matters!

With demands from social media to connect and engage, to the bombardment of the news and the pressures to achieve, young people often feel like they have little control over the world around them, which is why The Switching Houris ultimately a story of courage and hope. It may seem like there is too much that is out of our control, but there is still so much that is. Every one of us has a voice and it’s up to all of us to fight our monsters, real or imagined.

 

 

Damaris Young, author of The Switching Hour

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Big thanks to Damaris, Mary and all the team at Scholastic for inviting me to share my thoughts as part of The Switching Hour blog tour and for sending me an advance copy in exchange for this review.

Extra thanks to Damaris for writing such a brilliant and insightful guest post!

Mr E

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Blog Tour (Guest Post): The True Colours of Coral Glen – Juliette Forrest (Illustrated by Jamie Gregory)

‘With Coral Glen, any signs of second novel syndrome are banished as it’s an absolute feat of storytelling; full of the magical, multi-layered and ethereal world-building we’ve come to know, love and expect from Juliette.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The True Colours of Coral Glen
Author: Juliette Forrest (@jools_forrest)
Cover illustration: Jamie Gregory (@jgregorydesign)
Publisher: Scholastic (@scholasticuk)
Page count: 300
Date of publication: 4th July 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-1407193229

Perfect for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Colours 🌈
2. Grief 😥
3. Ghosts 👻

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Coral Glen sees the world through a rainbow of colours not visible to others.

An afternoon of adventure is Treasure Island Gold, but a morning with a maths test is Stormy Canyon Grey. When her beloved grandma dies, Coral can’t conjure the colour to match how heartbroken she is.

She meets a mysterious boy who offers to help her say a last goodbye to Gran – in exchange, Coral must stop an evil spirit from escaping the graveyard, and go on a daring adventure full of witches, ghosts and other things lurking beneath the surface of her not-so-ordinary-after-all town…

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‘With Coral Glen, any signs of second novel syndrome are banished as it’s an absolute feat of storytelling; full of the magical, multi-layered and ethereal world-building we’ve come to know, love and expect from Juliette.’

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It gives me great pleasure to welcome Juliette Forrest, author of The True Colours of Coral Glen, and the wonderful Twister, to The Reader Teacher today where she talks more about the inspirations and ideas behind her second book…

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The inspirations behind The True Colours of Coral Glen

When I was in the middle of writing my second children’s book, I went to stay in Ayrshire for a while. I was no stranger to the place as it was where my grandparents had lived. They told me stories about the area’s dark history of witch trials, warring clans, Covenantors, smugglers, cannibals, black death victims and ghosts. As a kid, it became impossible to separate folklore from historical fact. I could imagine the past creeping out from the shadows to coexist with the present and was keen to capture this sense of magic and danger lurking around every corner. I have my grandparents to thank, as they were the ones who planted the seeds for this colourful tale.

What would you do to be with a loved one again?

At the heart of this story is a girl who is bereft at the loss of her grandmother and will do anything to see her one last time before she crosses over to heaven. I’ll never forget a documentary I watched where a woman talked about the death of her son, and how she would give anything to have just one more minute with him. It was so powerful and moving, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It made me wonder what you would be prepared to do to make this happen. Coral Glen chooses to risk everything for the chance of a final farewell with her gran.

Coral Glen sees a rainbow of colours not visible to others

My heroine has the enviable ability to see an extraordinary range of colours others can’t, which opens doors into a world she never knew existed. I used to work as an art director in advertising and fell in love with the names of paints. Yellow was never plain old boring yellow: it was Luscious Lemon Drops or Treasure Island Gold or Downy Duckling or Tuscan Sun. It was as if they could, somehow, magically transform your life for the better. I wanted the different colours to add an extra layer of vibrancy to the story as well as to be positively life-changing for Coral Glen.

Tales of the supernatural

I never got to meet my grandpa Forrest. When I was young and listening into conversations I shouldn’t have been, I heard mention he’d show up at family christenings. Nothing strange there you might think – until I tell you that he had died many years before I was born. I never caught sight of his ghost myself, but I always liked the idea that death hadn’t stopped him from enjoying a good shindig and found it comforting he came back to be with the family. It was this curious tale that inspired the idea of Coral Glen being able to see people others couldn’t.

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The True Colours of Coral Glen will be released on 4^th July.

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Big thanks to Juliette, Mary and all the team at Scholastic for inviting me to host this guest post as part of the The True Colours of Coral Glen blog tour and for sending me an advance copy in exchange for this review.

Extra thanks to Juliette for writing such a insightful and suitably supernatural guest post!

Mr E

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Blog Tour (Review & Author Q&A): The Last Spell Breather – Julie Pike (Illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova)

‘It’s a magical must-read that takes place in such an original, chapter-turning and cleverly-imagined world I didn’t want to leave behind. With The Last Spell Breather, Julie doesn’t just write about magic, she writes with a special kind of magic; as if her pen is gold-tipped.’

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Title: The Last Spell Breather
Author: Julie Pike (@Juliepike)
Illustrator: Dinara Mirtalipova (Website)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Children’s (@OUPChildrens)
Page count: 304
Date of publication: 4th July 2019
Series status: N/A
ISBN: 978-0192771605

Perfect for Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6.

#3Words3Emojis:
1. Magic ✨
2. Fox 🦊
3. Words 👄

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Enter the unique world of the Spell Breathers!

Spell Breathing does not come naturally to Rayne – she loathes the hours of practice, the stacks of scrolls, and the snapping mud grotesques that cover her mother’s precious spell book. When she holds the spell book over a fire, it is only meant as an empty threat – until she feels the grotesque’s tiny teeth biting into her finger and lets go. In one clumsy move, her mother’s spells are broken, her village is plunged into danger, and an incredible adventure begins…

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Review: I often think if only I had some way of transforming myself to be able to do something else. I often think about magic. I think we all often think about magic. But within the pages of this very special story, magic comes to life in an equally special way. Breathed to life. By the name of spells. Spells with a capital S. Spells that are strong and wrap around you and which possess a magic of their very own. However should those words come out in the wrong order or be directed in the wrong direction, then these Spells can cause a chaos of their very own too. And for the sometimes-creator of that chaos, let’s meet Rayne…

With the title of Spell Breather’s apprentice bestowed upon her ever since her mother decided to take her out of school (and almost away from her friends!), the world of spell breathing is not one Rayne is familiar with. Sometimes bungling and with a lack of self-confidence but often with her head elsewhere like wanting to play with her friends which reminded me of The Worst Witch meeting Luna Lovegood, she feels that she doesn’t have the same way with words that her magical mother, who is at the call of the community to help them, does.

You see, Rayne’s mother has been at this spell-breathing skill for some time. Not only does she service the locals with her powers but she also preserves the barrier that is keeping their town, Penderin, safe. However when an unexpected visitor arrives at the barrier, something is amiss and Rayne’s mother has to leave, meaning that Rayne has to learn quickly to look after herself and her town.

After speaking to Julie and hearing about her being from Wales, I’m sure I spotted more than a few Welsh references which resonated especially well with me. It’s a magical must-read that takes place in such an original, chapter-turning and cleverly-imagined world I didn’t want to leave behind. With The Last Spell Breather, Julie doesn’t just write about magic, she writes with a special kind of magic; as if her pen is gold-tipped.

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‘It’s a magical must-read that takes place in such an original, chapter-turning and cleverly-imagined world I didn’t want to leave behind. With The Last Spell Breather, Julie doesn’t just write about magic, she writes with a special kind of magic; as if her pen is gold-tipped.’

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I’m so pleased to welcome Julie Pike to The Reader Teacher today with her awe-inspiring and life-affirming blog post about the wondrous adventures she has been on that have influenced the writing of The Last Spell Breather…

When I set out to write The Last Spell Breather, I knew I wanted to create a magical page turning adventure. What I didn’t know was how to go about it. I went to see Garth Nix talk at the Hay Festival. It was my first ever author talk, and it was wonderful. One thing he said stood out like a beacon…  ‘I learned how to write’.

I spent the next decade learning how to write my ‘page turner’, wrapping my head around plot, character arcs, pacing, story beats, magic systems and a whole lot more. I’m not done yet, I still have much learning to do.

Along the way, I realised there was one aspect of story I already knew inside out and back to front. I already knew that the best adventures were filled with high stakes and personal challenges. How did I know? Because the stories I’d devoured as a child had inspired me to have real-life adventures of my own.

Here’s a taste of my adventures, along with some grainy, pre-smart phone pictures, for good measure. 

Wondrous Adventures
I’ve adventured overland through India, Nepal, Tibet and China. I left the UK on my own and made friends along the way. We slept on trains and visited friendly elephant reserves. We sailed down the Ganges to beautiful Varanasi. We slept in tents on the high plains and under the stars in the deserts. We journeyed to Everest’s mighty North Face and slept at Rongbuck monastery. We cleared road blocks in Lhasa, even pushing aside a police car with two coppers inside (thankfully they didn’t mind!). We ordered food in restaurants by pointing at other people’s dishes, because the only language we shared was smiling and laughter. We climbed mountains, and on the last night, we climbed to an abandoned part of the Great Wall of China and camped in a dazzling lightning storm.

Yes, my hair really was that red

Hard Work Adventures

My hardest adventure was climbing Kilimanjaro. The peak is 5,895 metres and a three-day hike from the park entrance. The higher you climb, the colder it gets and the water in your bottle freezes. The altitude makes it tricky to get a good night’s sleep and makes you feel queasy, so you don’t feel like eating. Closer to the top you’ll get a headache and may drop out, because it’s just too darn hard.

The final push begins at 11pm at night, where you climb the steep scree slope under a star filled sky. The idea is to be at the top for sunrise. It sounds wondrous, but by this point all you can think about, for hours and hours, is putting one foot in front of the other.

I didn’t make the top at sunrise, I was about 100 metres below. I sat on a rock and watched the sun crest the horizon, mesmerised by its red, orange and golden glory. By that point I was empty. I couldn’t go on. And I was sure I had no energy to get down either. Did Kilimanjaro have mountain rescue?

But I was wrong. I did have more. My guide, Arbogast said, ‘you can give up if you’re tired, but you’ve come from Europe to climb this mountain.’

Talk about the power of words! I picked myself up and staggered-crawled to the crater’s rim.

Me and Arbogast, I wouldn’t have made it without his support.

Leap of Faith Adventures

I’ve ridden white water in Chile, tandem-sky dived over the Great Lake of New Zealand and abseiled down a 100-foot freezing waterfall in France. None of these are skills I possess myself, they’re all borrowed from other people. Before each activity I feel sick with nerves and ‘what ifs.’ But I’ve done my research, I know my guides are experts, so I follow their instructions and take a leap of faith into adventure!

Come on in! The water’s lovely.

And then there are the adventures where you have no guide, you’re on your own, it’s totally down to you and there are no grainy pictures – because when you’re in a REAL adventure, the stakes are too high to stop and pose.

If you want to know about that one, come by an event or signing table and ask.

I try to bring all my adventures into my writing. I hope I’ve succeeded. I hope you enjoy The Last Spell Breather, and it inspires you (just like the stories I read as a child) to have adventures of your own.

Happy reading. Happy writing. Happy adventuring!

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Julie Pike – Biography

Julie grew up on a council estate, nestled between the forests and foothills of the Welsh Valleys. She is passionate about adventure stories, and volunteers in local schools and libraries in Dorset, helping children find stories that excite them. She is passionate about real-life adventures too, and has crawled inside the great pyramid of Giza, travelled to the peak of Kilimanjaro, and camped on the Great Wall of China in a lightning storm.

Twitter: @juliepike

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Big thanks to Julie and all the team at Oxford University Press Children’s for inviting me to kick off and share my thoughts as part of the The Last Spell Breather blog tour and for sending me a copy in exchange for this review.

Extra thanks to Julie for writing her excellent guest post!

Mr E

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Be sure to check out the rest of the The Last Spell Breather blog tour for more exclusive guest posts from Julie, content & reviews from these brilliant book bloggers!