Pip is everything that Olive isn’t. Olive is an only child. She lives by the sea in a ramshackle old house full of bric-a-brac and oddments with her eccentric yet highly successful mother, Mog.Mog is a high-flying lawyer with ambition who is hardly ever home, leaving Olive to fend for herself. Olive is a very pale and very quiet child who doesn’t seem to quite fit in at school. Wha ...

Synopsis: A fictionalised  autobiography about an unusual boy with a suit of armour, an unshakeable dream and a most unusual vocabulary, written by that very boy, Nigel Dorking.

Review: A fantastic and enjoyable book about the world through the eyes of Nigel Dorking, Grade Six. In Jacqueline Wilson style Mary-Anne Fahey tells the story of a difficult family situation ...

Barnaby Grimes is a tick-tock lad, delivering messages and running errands all over the city, day and night. Gangland funerals and diving expeditions are hazardous enough, but it is when the graveyards begin to give up their secrets that this tick-tock lad faces his deadliest challenge yet. Read this blood-curdling tale of greed and betrayal, if you dare, and find out whether Barnaby will be d ...

Charlie Small is at least four hundred years old but he has never grown up. When he was eight something very strange happened to him, and despite his great age, he still appears to be ... eight! Charlie has travelled to the ends of the earth, the centre of the earth, faced down fearsome monsters and had the adventure of a lifetime but now he is trapped...

At the end of his last journal ...

Synopsis From the first cave paintings to modern masterpieces, this book follows the story of painting from the dawn of time right up to the present day. Along the way, you’ll come across all sorts of fascinating facts, intriguing tales and tricks of the trade.

Review: Books purporting to give a ‘story of painting’ or ‘history of Art’ are very ...

Synopsis Topher worries when his pet cat Ka goes missing yet again, especially when he is about to go visiting friends in London. Worse still, terrorists threats are increasingly threatened in the capital and Topher battles his anxieties about bomb scares to go there in the first place. When his life is put in danger, Topher finds himself inexplicably drawn into another time travel adve ...

Synopsis: Andrew Matthews's vibrant and accessible retelling, coupled with expressive and funny illustrations by Tony Ross, provides a perfect introduction to this story from Shakespeare. Also included are notes on the themes within the story to prompt discussion and background to the Globe theatre.

Review: This is an excellent narrative retelling of Shakespeare’ ...

Another in the excellent ArtVenture series, this colourful book covers traditional (Flemish School) and contemporary art and artists from Rubens and Hobbema, through Martin, Nash, and Hokusai to Hockney and O'Keefe. Chinese, Iranian and American art feature; movements touched on include Cubism, Romanticism, Abstraction, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

This is an intense text, ...

Jack has been working as a chimney sweep for a kindly master in Victorian London when his father suddenly reappears to claim him. Then, while climbing in a chimney, Jack overhears a murder being planned through the wall. He is unable to prevent the murder but becomes determined to solve it. Jack becomes suspicious even of his own father, who has a strangely large sum of money on him, and is su ...

   I was immediately drawn into this practical book on stories in art by the colourful, cartoonlike nature of the front cover with its primary colours. The format and size of this ArtVenture series are immediately attractive to young readers.

Each doublepage spread features short, sharp scenarios of stories with captions underneath to help 'unpack' segments of narrative ...