What Manor of Murder? Christopher William Hill

Orchard Books ISBN 9781408332931 £ 6.99 Enid Blyton meets Agatha Christie in this retro crime mystery. Twins Eustace and Horatio leave their boarding school for Michaelmas to stay with their Aunt and Uncle at Bleakley Manor for a family gathering collecting Oliver, a ‘Poor Unfortunate’ (orphan) on the way. Eustace is hoping for a mystery…

Warrior Boy, Virginia Clay

Chicken House ISBN 9781911490371 £6.99 13-year-old Ben knows that he is half Kenyan; that his father who died before he was born was a Maasai warrior and that there is a whole part of his family he has never met in Africa. Ben also knows that he finds it hard to forge a place for…

Speed Birds, Alan Snow

OUP ISBN 9780192758729 £14.99 An exceptional book. A young crow is impressed by the speed of a peregrine falcon, the world fastest bird. He is inspired to work with other crows and create the Speed Bird, a car that will enable him to go faster than any other bird. This is a fascinating story about…

Run Wild, Gill Lewis

Barrington Stoke ISBN 9781781128282 £6.99 Izzy and her friend Asha are determined to follow their hobby of skateboarding, but using the board park is almost impossible because of the two ‘Skull’ brothers, the local bullies. When they find a way into a local disused gasworks it seems to be the answer to their problems. Then…

Poetry for a Change: A National Poetry Day Anthology, compiled by the Forward Arts Foundation, illustrated by Chie Hosaka

Otter-Barry Books ISBN 9781910959503 £6.99 This slim volume, published in time for National Poetry Day (October 4th in 2018) contains new poems by well-known, award-winning poets, who have also chosen favourite poems to share. The whole is thus a rich seam which yields much material to support poetry work in the classroom, and not only…