Reading - Framed

Framed by Frank Cottrell Bouce

A Junior Fiction

 

Dylan Hughes is more interested in the Nnja Turtles than in the Renaissance artists they are named after.   But then Dad leaves home and, overnight, nin-year-old Dylan must become man of the household and boss of the failing family business.  A masterpiece worth a mint might be just what they all need...

Reading - Be First in the Universe

Be First in the Universe by Stephanie Spinner

A Junior Fiction

 

Twins Todd and Tessa don’t always think alike, but there’s one thing they both agree on—Gemini Jack’s is their favorite store in the mall. Where else can you find a remote control that works on people, or a mirror that sees 10 minutes into the future? And Jack is even stranger—he glows in the dark, and gives discounts to Tod and Tessa because they’re twins. Then Jack develops an interest in the other set of twins in Tod and Tessa’s grade—nasty Ned and Nancy. They’re so mean, even their mother is scared of them. Why would Jack want to meet them?

Tod and Tessa are about to learn what happens when you introduce your worst enemies to the coolest guy in the universe.
.

Reading - Little Wolf's Diary of Daring Deeds

Little Wolf's Diary of Daring Deeds by Ian Whybrow

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

 

In letters home to Mom and Dad, Little Wolf describes his journey to rescue his little brother, Smellybreff, from a crafty cubnapper, Mister Twister the Fox.

Reading - Demon Dentist

Demon Dentist by David Walliams

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

 

Darkness had come to the town.  Strange things were happening in the dead of night.  Children would put a tooth under their pillow for the tooth fairy, but in the morning they would wake up to find ..... a dead slug; a live spider; hundreds of earwigns creeping and crawling beneath their pillow. 

 

Evil was at work.  But who or what was behind it ?

Reading - Gangsta Granny

Gangsta Granny by David Walliams

A Junior Fiction

 

Our hero Ben is bored beyond belief after he is made to stay at his grandma’s house. She’s the boringest grandma ever: all she wants to do is to play Scrabble, and eat cabbage soup. But there are two things Ben doesn’t know about his grandma.
1) She was once an international jewel thief.
2) All her life, she has been plotting to steal the Crown Jewels, and now she needs Ben’s help…

Reading - God Help The Child

God Help The Child by Toni Morrison

 

 

 

At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

Reading - Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

 

 

 

A murder…A tragic accident…Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

Reading - The Kites are Flying

The Kites are Flying by Michael Morpurgo

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

 

Travelling to the West Bank to witness first hand what life is like for Palestinians and Jews living in the shadow of a dividing wall, journalist Max strikes up a friendship with an enigmatic Palestinian boy, Said. Together the two sit under an ancient olive tree while Said makes another of his kites. When Said takes Max home, the reporter learns of the terrible events in the family’s past and begins to understand why Said does not speak. Told from both Max’s and Said’s points of view, Morpurgo has created a beautiful tale of tragedy and hope with an ending that rings with joy.

Reading - Meeting Cezanne

Meeting Cezanne by Michael Morpurgo

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

 

When Yannick learns that he is to stay with his aunt Mathilde and her family in the South of France, he cannot believe his luck. He has rarely been out of Paris, and if the paintings in his mother’s beloved Cézanne book are to be believed, surely Provence is paradise itself. So begins an idyllic month for the young city boy: roaming the gentle hills and rolling valleys and daydreaming about his beautiful cousin Amandine; helping at his aunt and uncle’s bustling village inn; feeling that he has come to the most wonderful place in the world. But one evening the spell is broken when an important local comes for dinner and Yannick accidentally destroys a precious drawing the man leaves behind. How can the devastated Yannick make things right again — and what surprising discoveries might come of it?

Reading - Little Manfred

 

Little Manfred by Michael Morpurgo

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

It is the summer of 1966, and Charley and her little brother, Alex, are walking their dog Manfred on the beach when they notice two old men, staring out to sea.  A chance encounter brings them together and slowly Charley and Alex learn of their mother's past and the frendships that can be formed in the most difficult of circumstances.  For in 1945, their farmstead home was a posting for German prisoners of war, and their mother Grace was just a littlt girl .....

 

In the Imperial War Museum is a wooden Dachshund, carved by a German prisoner of war who was working on a British farm after the fighting ended.  This is the story of how it got there.

Reading - Can You Whistle, Johanna?

Can You Whistle, Johanna? by Ulf Stark

 

A Junior Fiction

 

 

 

 

Why doesn't Berra have a grandfather ?

 

How can he get one ?

 

There are plenty of old men at the retirement home. Ulf suggests.  They go there together to find one - ideally one who eats pig's trotters, invites you to tea and can teach you to whistle.