No catches, no fine print just unconditional book love and reading recommendations for your students and children.
You can create your own school's page, develop tailored reading lists to share with peers and parents...all helping encourage reading for pleasure in your children.
Find out more
Everyone smells! The sense of smell plays a crucial part in survival, communication, and taste, and is the basis of a multi-billion-dollar industry. But, despite all this, it's the sense we often know least about. This hilarious and fact-packed book puts that right. Find out everything you could ever want to know about stinks, whiffs and pongs, from the fruit so pungent it's banned from public transport to the top-secret military programme developing the stinkiest stink bomb.
Level 5 - National Geographic Kids Reader | Newly adapted to British English and the Key Stage 2 Curriculum and benefitting, as do all the National Geographic Kids excellent series of readers, from their archive of superlative photography, this Face to Face series gives a fascinating insight into the skills, techniques and routines of the wild-life photographers who capture such wonderful images. Brian Skerry here shares treasured family moments as his 11-year old daughter is befriended by a manatee calf and the reader can share his genuine respect and interest in these gentle and increasingly vulnerable sea mammals. A carefully balanced account shows how manatees have in some cases gained from human developments such as power stations providing the warm water and expanding their habitable areas as well as the obvious dangers caused by pollution and increasing numbers of boats. The reader learns about their worldwide distribution and conservation issues as well as fascinating facts about their, place in myth, legend, history and biology. They are, in fact, most closely related to elephants! At Level 5 the text contains some complex, technical language and varied sentence structures suitable for a confident, independent readers, but the image quality, design and layout will engage readers and support understanding. Research skills are also facilitated with the help of all the correct information text features such as contents page, and excellent index and glossary.
-978-0-00-835814-3-162x200.jpg)
Level 6 - National Geographic Kids Reader | Published in the UK by Collins, the National Geographic Kids Readers are a valuable resource for classroom and library collections. Beautifully designed and produced, with clear text boxes and layout, interactive features such as quizzes and benefiting, of course, from the superb photography that the parent magazine is renowned for. Each book has been carefully levelled against Book Bands and all have the key information text features such as index, contents and glossary, making them very useful for guided reading. But their main appeal is in the genuinely engaging writing and the sound research behind every title. Many children prefer to read information books about the real world and with attractive, appealing texts like these it is no wonder!
Level 6 - National Geographic Kids Reader | Published in the UK by Collins, the National Geographic Kids Readers are a valuable resource for classroom and library collections. Beautifully designed and produced, with clear text boxes and layout, interactive features such as quizzes and benefiting, of course, from the superb photography that the parent magazine is renowned for. Each book has been carefully levelled against Book Bands and all have the key information text features such as index, contents and glossary, making them very useful for guided reading. But their main appeal is in the genuinely engaging writing and the sound research behind every title. Many children prefer to read information books about the real world and with attractive, appealing texts like these it is no wonder!
Level 5 - National Geographic Kids Reader | Published in the UK by Collins, the National Geographic Kids Readers are a valuable resource for classroom and library collections. Beautifully designed and produced, with clear text boxes and layout, interactive features such as quizzes and benefiting, of course, from the superb photography that the parent magazine is renowned for. Each book has been carefully levelled against Book Bands and all have the key information text features such as index, contents and glossary, making them very useful for guided reading. But their main appeal is in the genuinely engaging writing and the sound research behind every title. Many children prefer to read information books about the real world and with attractive, appealing texts like these it is no wonder!
Exquisitely gorgeous illustrations accompany a well known fairy tale with a difference, an edge. Tiny Owl Publishing have a series of books called ‘One Story, Many Voices’, where authors and illustrators explore well known fairy tales from different perspectives. Here, the Twelve Dancing Princesses from the Brothers Grimm are transformed into The Secret of the Tattered Shoes by Jackie Morris. I opened the package containing the book and exclaimed in delight. The illustrations by Ehsan Abdollahi carry the story perfectly, the gold glistens, the pears call to be picked, the background as stunning as the puppet-like characters. The story by award-winning Jackie Morris sits boldly on the page, simple, evocative, familiar yet different. The love that Jackie Morris holds for nature shines through, while the ending made me smile, it suits, it feels, well, just so right. The Secret of the Tattered Shoes conjures the traditional fairy tale yet awakens new feelings and thoughts. I absolutely adored this rich and vibrant tale, both for the new interpretation, and the illustrations which adorn it.
This is a return to the characters of Di Camillo’s Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana’s Way Home – though it is not necessary to have read either novel to appreciate this story. Precipitated by the death of her dog companion, Buddy, Beverly has no reason now to stay at home, so she leaves. She is 14 years old, but by a sequence of good luck, and a lift from a cousin, she ends up in Tamaray, bunking with a grandmother figure in a trailer park community and getting a job with a very disorganised café owner. This story could have been very bleak, but the wonderful characters DiCamillo draws, and the humour with which she tells this story make it very engaging. Obviously set in the US this gives the landscape an exotic feel, and the characters have a wonderfully transatlantic humour that can be appreciated anywhere. This is the story of Beverly’s survival, and the rebuilding of her grief battered resilient character – so she can eventually return to her hometown, her close friend and her less than satisfactory mother. An ultimately uplifting story of survival, acceptance and friendship in unlikely places.
September 2019 Book of the Month | The Cloud Horse Chronicles is the new fantasy by the Costa award-winning and Children's Laureate, Chris Riddell. The first book in the series, Guardians of Magic follows the adventures of three ordinary children who have extraordinary gifts, and come together to defeat the enemies who threaten to use the power from the Forever Tree for their own dark magical agendas. Highly illustrated throughout in Chris’s unique style, you will feel like you can step into the world he’s imaginatively built with his page.
Shylo is the smallest rabbit in his family, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t strong, courageous and clever too. Indeed, he’s a key member of the Royal Rabbits whose duty it is to protect Queen and country from their warren under Buckingham Palace. When Shylo returns home for a visit, he finds that the peace of the countryside has been disrupted. A no-good rabbit called Harlequin has set up a commune and persuaded the other rabbits that together they’ll find the legendary Golden Carrot, though it will bring great risk to them and national security. He’s reckoned without little Shylo and his fellow rabbits-in-arms though … A perfect mix of excitement and charm, this story also neatly delivers messages about the importance of self-belief, generosity and true courage. There’s a wonderful cast of characters, it reads aloud beautifully and Kate Hindley’s delightful illustrations are full of life and energy.
The third book in Cressida Cowell’s new Wizards of Once series is full of magic – magical adventures and magical creatures, and it overflows with the magic of great storytelling. Our heroes, Wish the young Warrior girl and Xar the boy wizard, are continuing their dangerous quest to defeat the witches they accidentally freed in book one and which threaten both their worlds. They travel on a magic flying door, accompanied by their friends – sprites, a giant, snowcats, a werewolf and Bodkin, Wish’s young bodyguard – and come up against some awesome enemies. In hot pursuit are their parents, Xar’s father King Encanzo the enchanter and Wish’s mother, Warrior Queen Sychorax, both terrifying, both determined their children will do as they are told. Who will succeed? Can Wish and Xar change the course of history and write their own happy ending? We don’t know yet, but readers of all ages will be wishing with all their hearts that they can. Cressida Cowell’s invention and ambition for her characters is boundless, and this unputdownable story is as full of ideas and intelligence as it is of excitement.
A magical adventure to delight the imagination. The curl-up-on-the-sofa snuggle of a series from a uniquely talented author. Tilly Pages is a bookwanderer; she can travel inside books, and even talk to the characters she meets there. But Tilly's powers are put to the test when fairytales start leaking book magic and causing havoc . . . On a wintery visit to Paris, Tilly and her best friend Oskar bravely bookwander into the land of fairytales to find that characters are getting lost, stories are all mixed-up, and mysterious plot holes are opening without warning. Can Tilly work out who, or what, is behind the chaos so everyone gets their happily-ever-after? The second enthralling tale in the bestselling Pages & Co series.
Interest Age 8+ Reading Age 8 | September 2019 Book of the Month | Short and, in Barrington Stoke style, accessible to all readers, Tin Boy is a powerful and inspiring story, and one that will get children thinking about the world and their place in it. The hero Tono lives in the Indonesian province of Bangka Belitung and, though he’s only a boy, goes to work to each day, swimming down to mine tin by hand from deep under sea. It’s dangerous work and caught in an accident, he’s lucky to survive. That luck, together with something he finds on the seabed, changes his life. It’s a gripping story, that both vividly describes Tono’s life and plays with the idea of superheroes in a way that will resonate with all readers. Readers who enjoy Tono’s story should also look out for Kick by Mitch Johnson.
