What Miss T Read

Eleven-year-old Maggie lives in Fennis Wick, enclosed and protected from the outside world by a boundary, beyond which the Quiet War rages and the dirty, dangerous wanderers roam.   Her brother Jed is an eldest, revered and special. A hero. Her younger brother is Trig - everyone loves Trig. But Maggie’s just a middler, invisible and left behind. Then, one hot September day, she meets Una, a hungry wanderer girl in need of help, and everything Maggie has ever known gets turned on its head.  The Middler had been sat on my imaginary to be read pile for a looooong time. Imaginary because it's full of the books I don't own but have already read reviews of and those that I'm desperate to get my hands on. So when I spotted a copy on offer in Morrisons of all places I snapped it up immediately.  The Middler follows the story of Maggie, a middle child (hence The Middler), forever jealous of the eldests - the older children who are sent off to war to help fight...

A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow impossible though it seems they may still be alive. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children really took me by surprise. It wasn't what I was expecting AT ALL. I'd seen the film trailers, but not the actual film and picked this up on a whim from my local charity shop, thinking it would be a nice but spooky children's novel that might fill the void of "scary books" that my class are always clamouring for. How wrong I was.  First up, this is definitely a Young Adult novel, not your usual "middle grade" book. This is mai...

Harrison Beck is reluctantly joining his travel-writer Uncle Nat for the last journey of the royal train, The Highland Falcon. But as the train makes its way to Scotland, a priceless brooch goes missing, and things are suddenly a lot more interesting. As suspicions and accusations run high among the passengers, Harrison begins to investigate and uncovers a few surprises along the way. Can he solve the mystery of the jewel thief and catch the culprit before they reach the end of the line? I'm a little late to the party with my review of this rip-roaring adventure but boy was it worth the wait. Those of you who, like me, read an exceptional amount of children's fiction, will no doubt be familiar with M.G Leonard's Beetle Boy series (a firm favourite of mine) and she has joined forces with friend, and debut novelist, Sam Sedgman in this action-packed adventure.  The Highland Falcon Thief follows Harrison Beck (Hal for short), a young adventurous lad, stuck on a trai...

Chaya can talk her way out of anything - except stealing the Queen's jewels. Even if she had the best of reasons...So she escapes on the back of a stolen elephant and leads her friends on a jungle adventure, where leeches lurk and revolution is stirring. And this gives Chaya an idea. Maybe she can leave her village a thief but return a hero? A sunny day in isolation and I knew exactly what I was going to pick up. The Girl Who Stole and Elephant has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now after picking it up when it was first released. The children at school have loved it and the two weeks' work we did around the book in our Authorfy club (would highly recommend) built up plenty of excitement around the book. I still have the proof copy left to give away to one lucky author of the term when we do return to school! I devoured this in one day and it really was a story that I couldn't put down thanks to the non-stop action. It's been a while since I read a ...

Eleven-year-old Joe can't remember a life outside of his hospital room, with its beeping machines and view of London's rooftops. His condition means he's not allowed outside, not even for a moment, and his few visitors risk bringing life-threatening germs inside his 'bubble'. But then someone new enters his world and changes it for ever. I think I was perhaps more excited than my class when we visited the library van before Easter and I nabbed a copy of Bubble Boy. I've been trying to reserve a class set of them from our library, but every time I narrowly miss out to another school - showing just how popular this book is! Bubble Boy follows the life of eleven-year-old Joe. He has a life threatening condition which means germs are his worst enemy and because of this he has spent his whole life inside a hospital room. For Joe the hospital staff have become his second family and he relies on the daily visits from nurse Greg and his older sister, Bet...

Switzerland, 1816. On a stormy summer night, Lord Byron and his guests are gathered round the fire. Felix, their serving boy, can't wait to hear their creepy tales. Yet real life is about to take a chilling turn- more chilling than any tale. Frantic pounding at the front door reveals a stranger, a girl covered in the most unusual scars. She claims to be looking for her sister, supposedly snatched from England by a woman called Mary Shelley. Someone else has followed her here too, she says. And the girl is terrified. I am a big Emma Carroll fan having read quite a few of her books, and they are perfect examples of making history come alive in fiction for children. Strange Star landed in my classroom after a trip to the library van and on the recommendation of an avid reader in my class I picked it up and devoured it.  Strange Star was inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, something that I didn't realise until reading the first chapter and then I had to do ...