Phosphorescence

Lola lives on the Norfolk coast. She has all her life. Her embarrassing dad is part of a wildlife conservation team. Very embarrassing when he chases them off the land and gives boring lectures to tourists. Lola knows Norfolk upside down so when her parents get divorced, and she has to go and live in London her whole world is turned upside down. She does not fit in at her new school. No one must know about her old life. So when a fieldtrip to Norfolk Coast is arranged, Lola has to find a way to make her old and new life work together.

It was a good read. It was probably more a girl's book but did not weigh too heavy on the subject  so a boy could read it.

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (first impressions)

First impressions of this book was mixed. The opening paragraph or so was action packed and then it slowed dramatically. for me it was way to slow and after a while I was starting to get a bit fed up but from past reviews it sounds like it picks up to the pace it started at. sorry for short review this is due to minimum amount read hense the mass of bordem

saving violet park

Saving violet park is a book by Jenny Valentine.It is a book about a teenage boy called lucas who's father died he finds an ern one night in a minicabs office. The lady name in the ern is violet park. Lucas feels sorry for her and wants to put the ern in a more peaceful place. Lucas finds out some very intresting infomation about Violet, and in the end he sees a connection betwenn his father and her.

hj

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

The Secret Dairy of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 is about a boy called Adrian Mole. The book is a dairy of his life everyday. It includes all his feelings and him talking about how he is an unidentified interlectual. He has a normal teenage life but somehow the author manages somehow to make it a bit more exciting than a everyday normal teenager. The main stories are his parents fighting, the new girl at school Pandora and the old man he helps Bert Baxter. I would reccomend it to anyone from age 12 and up.
T.W

Escape

Escape is a book written by Paul Dowswell and is about prison escapes from all over the world.This book is very gripping and took me by storm. It is in grave detail and is written as if Paul was there himself.

The book starts off with Escape from Alcatraz and this in my opinion is my favourite story mostly because I watched the movie the night before, and it is about a man called Frank Morris and from his first looks at the prison he knew he could escape.So he starts exploring and finds that the air duct at the floor of his cell is surrounded by old and brittle concrete.So then he tells some of his "prison friends" and they start doing the same so when they are big enough to get thorugh........

I loved this book and would recomend it to ANYONE as its SO good

Here is an interview with Paul about his book http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9x9wFa3ZvQ Its the best I could find

I would give this book a straight 10/10 for its gripping detail and great description.

Please give it a read and i'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Special Mention to Seb Harwood!!!! for letting me use his copy of Escape

This review was written by Charlie Newman 

Kids Book Review Writer

Hana's Suitsase

Hana's suitcase by Karen Levine
This is a true story

Hana's suitcase is about a young girl who was Jewish who had her parents taken away by the Natzi's into a concentration camp. Then it was her and her brother, george were taken somewhere else.
A woman called Fumiko Ishioka owned a small Holocaust museum in Japan, Fumiko had been asking all the large museums if she could have any belongings, like socks, suitcases,tops etc...
Fumiko had asked everyone she tried one more museum soon after they sent her a suitcase so her and some children who were interesded could find out more.

This is what the suitcase looked like...



Fumiko trys to find out about the girl who owned the suitcse, to solve the mystery. And for the next year, she becomes a detective, scouring the world for clues to the story of Hana Brady.

Fumiko went to the Terezin Ghetto Museum were she found a woman with the list of almost 90,000 men, women and children. Fumiko and the women sat down searching for a Brady they found a name, George Brady. By all the names they had a tick apart from Georges this means he survived Aushwitz, but is he still alive and does he know what happened to her little sister...

H.B 

  

The battle of britain

Harry woods is a young lad who has just joined the RAF in the 1940's, the late world war two.
At the start of this book the boy cmes home to see his parents are all of him training.
Harry thinks it is fantasic and his dad is asking about all the planes and are they as good as they say they are and all that and then there mother tells them both not to talk about war, so they have a sivilised convosation.
Later in this book the boy finds it quite dramatic and blinded by the fact that all these people are getting killed.
I would recommend this book to 8 to 14 year olds so maybe jade.
Urquy

The Declaration by Gemma Malley

This book is about a 15 year old girl called Anna, a new drug has been created called longeivety this drug means you can never die of old age or diseases but you can die for example if you were shot, if you take the drugs you are not allowed to have any children, you can choose to 'opt out' which means you do not take the drugs and you are allowed to have children, if you do not 'opt out' and have children those children are illegal and will be put in a surplus hall and made to work for the duration of there lives, the parents go to jail and the illegal child is a called a surplus. Anna is a surplus and she has been in the surplus hall for years, in these halls the surplus's are taught that mother nature hates them and that they have to repay mother nature for being illegal by working. Anna does not know her parents but they are in a group called the underground movement and they fight against these drugs saying it is wrong to live forever.
A new surplus has joined the surplus hall recently called Peter, Peter claims to know Anna's parents and they start planning an escape plan to get out of the makeshift prisons called 'surplus halls', they know of a tunnel out and escape but they are not free yet and Peter finds out who his parents really are...

I really enjoyed this book because although the cover is a butterfly i think that boys and girls will enjoy it i reccomend this book to all and i will definetley be reading the sequel 'The Resistance'. By Harry Smith

Noughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses is written by Malorie Blackman. It is in a world where black ad white are right and wrong. The white are called noughts and the blacks are called crosses. There are two main characters called Callum and Sephy. Callum is a nought and Sephy is a Cross. Callum and Sephy love each other but it is very hard to show and have that because of their diffrence in colour. The Book is about Callum and Sephy trying to find a way to ovecome this. For Years Callum and Sephy have always met at the same beach when they wanted to see each other. The Government had recenty changed the fact that Noughts werent allowed into schools. So Sephy started helping Callum prepare for the exams on the beach. Callum had got into the school and had said that nothing would ever get him out of it. One way that the Noughts were trying to turn the table was the liberation Militia.The Liberation Militia is a very large group of Noughts using violence to try and win over the Crosses. Callum got into the school and said that nothing would ever make him give up is place. Callum does end up leaving the school in the end after a few things happen at the school and he realises that everyone is against him. Callums family have been having a few problems. the first one is that lynette callus sister was killed. lynette acted like the glue between the family and kept them together. also callums dad and callums brother, jude have joined the liberation militia so callums mum is very annoyed the jude and callums dad part of the liberation militia are ordered to plant a bomb in a huge shopping centre and he is found guilty and gets a life scentence but kills himsef trying to escape on the electric fence. Sephys family have also been hvaing some problems so sephy decides to go to a boarding school but before she leaves she sends a letter to callum which says "if you want to be together and spend the rest of our lives together then run and stop me from leaving". callum rads the letter and runs as fast as he can to try and stop her but is just to late. Their lives depart from each other and start to forget each other but then.......................................................................

Sam C

PIGEON ENGLISH BY STEPHEN KELMAN

PIGEON ENGLISH is about a boy called Harrison Opoku, more commonly known as Harri, who is 11 years old and newly arrived from Ghana and now living in an inner city housing estate. He is blissfully unaware of the danger he faces when he and his friend Dean start to investigate the stabbing of a teenager outside Chicken Joe's fast food restaurant. 
What will happen to naive Harri on his maiden voyage through life in his personalised trainers with the adidas stripes drawn on with a marker pen . . . . . ? Well, you'll just have to read the book to find out!
10/10 a great read.
Please check with your parents before reading due to bad language.

The Bad Tuesdays

The Bad Tuesdays is set in present day and is about Splinter, Box and Chess, who live on the Wharf. They know nothing of they past and so begin the journey that will turn their life upside down.
             Children everywhere are disappearing, Jacks and Street Rats. They call them the hunters and they are coming for the Street rats.
             One day the Wharf is attacked by Hunters and all of the children are rounded up and taken away. But the Tuesdays manage to escape and are shocked to discover that they have a bigger part to play in the kidnappings than they thought. The Symmetry want Chess and the Commitee need her too. Which side should she take, or should they just stay out of it all together?
              This book was good once you got into it but the blurb did sound awful. I would recommend it to 10 and up,and for boys and girls.

Tamar-Mal Peet

In 1943 a man code name Tamar is dropped into Nazi occupied Holland. Decades later in the mid 1990s his granddaughter (called Tamar) is trying to find out more about her dead grandfather when she comes across a box with her name on it it contains money, some odd bits, and a map of the Tamar Valley. Is this linked to her fathers dissaperance 3 years ago?  What do these clues mean ? Why did her grandfather leave her this? What will she find when she goes to Devon? What was her Grandfathers role in the war? Is there some bigger mystery forgotten in the intervening decades? I would recommend this book to anyone over the age of 12 because the plot is quite complicated. My advice to anyone reading this is to keep reading as the story takes a while to get going.   
CH

Michael Morpurgo The sleeping sword

This book is about a boy called Bun who is 10 and is in love with this girl called Anna who is 14. One day when Anna is swimming, Bun sees her and jumps into the quay with her, and dives straight onto the rocks and has to be taken to hospital, when he wakes up he has lost his memory and his sight. when he gets back from hospital he falls in a hole, when he is working the fields. He finds a sword and a shield. That night when he goes to sleep, he has a dream that he and Anna must return the shield back to king Auther. I found this book very sad at the start, when he cant see and when he has no memory, but towards the end the book got a bit happier.
By Hugo bungey

Escape

Escape by Paul Dowswell is a collection of true stories about people escaping from various prisons, some are about prisoners of war and some are about proper convicts. There are about 7 stories in the book. My favourite is about 4 men escaping from Alcatraz. What I really like is that in the stories of the convicts, the main characters haven't been seen since as if they were, they would be reimprisoned. All the stories start withthe characters backround and end with an after the story thing.

Stephen Hawking and Black Holes

I read this book at the beginning of the Easter Holidays (really)! It is a short fact book about Stephen Hawking and his life. There are 11 more books in this series about other scientists. It ranges from when he was born to present day. I think that it is a very accurate book as most of the evidence has been backed up by my genral nknowledge and the start of Hawking's own book 'A Brief History of Time'

NOW

Now is the last book of the triology. It is set in Australia in the present day. Felix is an old man and he has a grandaughter called Zelda named after his best friend by his daughter who is helping in Africa with her husband. Felix is left to look after Zelda.
In the other two books Felix is the one telling the story, but in this one his grandaughter is.
This boojk describes the forest fires in Australia and the drama it causes. If you have read the other two books you will become attached to the charachters. Its a good book but not as good as THEN in my opinion.

Lance Armstrong - By John Wilcockson

This book is a great book I think because you dont have to have a great intrest in Cycling to enjoy the book.  As some of you may know Lance Armstrong is not only the most successful cyclist ever (Winning the Tour de France 7 times!!!) but he also is a testiculqar cancer survivor.  He survived testicular cancer when doctors thought he had 1% chance of living, and then went on to win the toughest sporting event in the world.  I think that this book is right for ages 8/9 years up simply because it is quite a tough read, i think that every one in this room would enjoy it. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is written by Mark Haddon and is about a boy called Christopher and his father. It all starts out one night when Christopher looks out of his window one night and see's the neighbours doglying outside. He goes outside and discovers that the dog has been stabbed with a pitch fork and is lying on the floor dead. Christophers neighbour called Mrs Sheers comes running out and calls the police. When the police turn up one of them comes up and touches Christopher who proceeds to hit the police officer because he highly dislikes being touched by people. he gets arrested however he is let of with a warning. After Christophers encounter with the dead dog he becomes intiqued to discover who the murderer was. When he mentions to his Father after doing some investigating that he thinks that the murderer might have been Mr Sheers his father gets extremelly angry and tells him to never say Mr Sheers in the house ever again and to stop the detective cherade. Despit this Christopher finds loop holes in the agreement and continues to ask questions and gets himself into a bit of a muddle.

The book is written from the point of view of Christopher as if he is writing the book wich i think is a very clever style. Because Christopher isnt quite right he doesnt understand emotions so at the end it gets very sad but Christopher just stays blank wich i found highly frustrating.Despit this i found the book very enjoyable and would recommend to anyone looking for a good read. 10/10!

By George Hawkins.