The girl from the future
Mark Shirrefs – John Thomson: The Girl from Tomorrow (Hodder and Stoughton 1990) The Girl from Tomorrow was an Australian sci-fi series for kids in the ’90s. The series has been nominated for several awards and has won three of them internationally in the youth category. It was also airing in Hungary. The authors of the series made a book version of it. I didn’t see the series, I just read it in a book, first when I was in elementary school. Since then, however, I’ve re-read it countless times because I really enjoyed the story. We’re in 3000. Society and technology are both advanced, people have learned from their (countless) past mistakes. Now they live in peace with nature, they hear nothing but the sounds of birds and insects, there is no engine roar – the internal combustion engines have reached the fate of dinosaurs. Then the first time…
The Country of the People
Ágnes Mészöly – Eszter Molnár T.: Az Emberek Országa (The Country of the People* Pagony Publishing House 2019) We are at 2646, much of the Earth is uninhabited due to the Third War and the climate change. A self-sustaining state, the Kalaallitt Nunaat, has emerged in Greenland as the last refuge for culture. Due to its high population density and scarce resources, the employment and supply of the population (even the length of one’s life) are decided by a central organization, the Kitik AKittuk. The Heim is the most important educational institution in Kalaallitt Nunaat where future leaders of the country are trained. Children are selected at the age of six and those who are suitable are removed from their families to prepare them for service of the country Later, they will also decide what exactly their tasks and work will be.. Nanouk is a boy who has recurring dreams,…
Orion Lost
Alastair Chisholm: Orion Lost (Nosy Crow 2020) We are in the future. India is the leading space nation. The Orion colonizing ship sets off with its thousands of passengers to the Eos Five, their future home orbiting a dwarf star. To bridge a distance of 26 light-years – which would be almost 300,000 years at conventional speed – they have to Jump multiple times. They’ve been traveling in deep space for four months now, when after one of the Jumps, the adults don’t wake up from the then mandatory Sleep. The Ship can only wake Beth and his five friends, so it’s up to them to repair the damaged spaceship and get it to its destination intact. In their work, they can only rely on artificial intelligence, Ship, while space pirates and a mysterious alien species, the Videshi (stranger in Hindi), are also lurking on them. With several great twists…
The incredible adventures of Bronte Mettlestone
Jaclyn Moriarty: The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone (Guppy Books 2019) Jaclyn Moriarty: The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars (Guppy Books 2020) Australian writer Jaclyn Moriarty spent her childhood in Sydney with her four sisters and one brother and they all loved to invent stories. Her two sisters later also became writers, of whom Liane Moriarty is best known for her novel Big Little Lies. Jaclyn Moriarty wrote her first novel at the age of seven and was an Enid Blyton adaptation. Later, however, she realized that even if she wanted to be a writer, she had to get a “real” job first, so she studied English in Sydney, where she wrote her dissertation on Roald Dahl’s work, and then studied law and enjoyed it so much that she got her Master’s degree from Yale. Then completed her PhD in Cambridge. She wrote her first novel here,…
Colorful books for Easter
Pedro Mañas: Anna Kadabra – Full Moon Club* (El Club de la Luna Llena; Destino Infantil 2020) Pedro Mañas has a degree in English Philology from the Autonomous University of Madrid and has already been awarded several prestigious prizes for children’s literature. His award-winning books have been translated to French, German, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese, among others. Anna Kadabra moves with her family to the dusty little town of Moonville. Their new residence, despite the mysterious rumors about witches, doesn’t even seem exciting. Or does it? Three more books from the seven published so far in Spanish will be published soon in Hungarian. Annie M. G. Schmidt: Minoes, or Undercover Kitty (Querido 1970) The Dutch writer was born in 1911 and wrote her first poems at the age of 14. She later worked as a librarian then made a daily children’s series for the newspaper with illustrator Fiep Westendorp. In…
Return to Hotel Winterhouse
Ben Guterson: The Mysteries of Winterhouse (Macmillan Publishing Group 2020) You may have already read the first book of the Winterhouse series on BogiWrites before Christmas. Although the first two volumes in the series take place during the Winter Holidays, the story of the final piece of the trilogy begins in March and lasts until Easter, making it a perfect spring reading. Elizabeth Somers now has her home at the Winterhouse Hotel and goes to a local school, which she likes much more than her previous one. The spring break has just begun, and Elizabeth is looking forward to the joyful chaos of the Hotel. Her best friend Freddy is also arriving with his parents and everything would be perfect, but some guests are starting to behave oddly, and unnatural tremors shake the Hotel… Various puzzles also play important role in this book. Ben Guterson himself is very fond of…
New releases which I’m looking forward to reading (April to June 2022)
L. D. Lapinski: The Strangeworlds Travel Agency: The Secrets of the Stormforest (Orion Children’s Books 2022) When Flick moves from the big city to the quiet Little Wyverns to finally live in a house with a garden instead of an apartment, she’s not as happy about it as her parents are. Looking around the small town, she enters the Strangeworlds Travel Agency and her life changes in one fell swoop: she joins the Society, which deals with the mapping and conserving of different worlds. In the closing volume of the trilogy, Flick has to face that how little she knows about the Society itself for which she is risking her life. Cerrie Burnell: Wilder than Midnight (Penguin Random House 2022) Silverthorne is a mysterious place with winding roads, thorny forests and a mysterious castle. In the story, we can follow three girls: Saffy, a little girl from the village who…