What Miss T Read

Since her mother’s disappearance, eleven-year-old Tilly has found comfort in stories at Pages & Co., her grandparents’ bookshop. But when her favourite characters, Anne of Green Gables and Alice from Wonderland, appear in the shop, Tilly’s adventures become very real. Not only can she follow Anne and Alice into their thrilling worlds, she discovers she can bookwander into any story she chooses. Tilly’s new ability could even help her solve the mystery of what happened to her mother all those years ago. But danger may be lurking on the very next page… When I read this I genuinely felt like this is the book that had been missing from my life.  Pages & Co - Tilly and the Bookwanderers is the first instalment in Anna James' series, featuring Tilly, a book-loving young girl who lives with her grandparents in their bookshop Pages & Co. From the very start I was invested. Who wouldn't want to live in a bookshop? And if, like me, you spend an awful lot of time in bookshops,...

What is a bumbershoot? Or a moonbow? And what does it mean when someone absquatulates...?  Test your knowledge with more than 400 words to amaze, confuse and inspire budding wordsmiths (and adults). All of the words featured in this book are difficult to spell, hard to say and their meanings are obscure to most children (and most adults)! The Dictionary of Difficult Words has been on my bookshelf for a while now and is a firm favourite within my classroom. I first saw it on Twitter about 6 months ago, when a flurry of fellow twitter teachers were purchasing and using it in their classrooms. Keen to improve vocabulary in my own classroom and because of my own love of words, it wasn't long until this fantastic book found its way into my hands.  The book is written by Jane Solomon, a lexicographer (the definition is explained within the book of course!) and illustrated beautifully by Louise Lockhart and each page brings an eclectic exuberance of words. Written in alphab...

Eleven-year-old Mouse is travelling to see his grandparents on Christmas Eve with his mother and two sisters. But it's snowing, visibility is bad and the car goes off the road, and crashes.  Mouse is thrown from the car.  When he wakes, he's not in his world any more. He meets a sheep named Bar, who can only say Baaa, and a sarcastic horse named Nonky, who is a surprising mix of his beloved toy horse and his older sister. So begins a quest to find a castle in a world of wonder - a world of monsters, minstrels, dangerous knights and mysterious wizards; a world of terrifying danger but also more excitement than Mouse has ever known. When I found this book lurking in my local charity bookshop I almost let out an external squeal. I'd just finished reading The Last Wild and loved it, AND this is an excellent condition proof copy, and there's something slightly magical about proof copies.  Piers Torday yet again transports you to a magical, yet believable world ...