The reader
Anna James: Pages & Co – The Treehouse Library (HarperCollins Publishers 2022) Every book we read leaves a trace on us. Tilly and her friends experience unusual adventures: with the help of their imagination, they can read themselves into the books, talk to the characters and experience their story. But now they don’t get to spend time in their favorite books, because they have to protect the fantasy world (and their own world as well) from the Alchemist, who wants all the magical powers in the books and he would do anything for it. In the first three volumes, we can follow Tilly Pages, but in the fourth Milo Bolt already plays an important role, and he is the protagonist of this book. The story itself is a transition to the last, concluding volume, which will be published this September. I bought this volume in hardcover version and I really…
Tea at Three
Robin Stevens: Arsenic For Tea (Puffin Books 2016) Robin Stevens was born in USA, but has lived in England since she was 3 years old. She herself went to a boarding school, however, unlike the protagonists of the story, she waited in vain for a real crime that she could investigate. The mysteries followed her throughout her life. Ever since she read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, she knew she wanted to be Poirot or Miss Marple when she grew up. She studied crime fiction at university and then worked for a children’s book publisher before becoming a full-time writer. The Murder Most Unladylike series started in 2014 and ended in 2021. It contains a total of 11 volumes, two of which are short stories. The second book has just been published in Hungarian. The main characters of the story are Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, who attend DeepDean School…
Crimes and solutions
Katherine Woodfine: Mystery and Mayhem (Egmont 2016) The very word “mystery” is exciting in itself. When we hear it, we imagine ruined castles, secret passageways, lost treasure and brave detectives before us. People have always been interested in mysteries to be solved. It gave birth to the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Children were also investigators, like Nancy Drew, the Famous Five or Kalle. One of these stories can be found on almost everyone’s bookshelves. However, alongside the old favorites, a completely new generation of crime novels has appeared. This anthology presents new authors of children’s crime fiction through 12 stories. The stories of the 12 writers are divided into four groups in the book. Impossible Mysteries presents crimes that took place in a closed room; among cases related to dogs (Canine Capers), we find both the Hound of the Baskervilles and a modern-day customer of dog cosmetics;…
Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
Cavan Scott: STAR WARS – Adventures In Wild Space – The Escape (Egmont 2016) With the end of the Clone Wars and the destruction of the Jedi Order, Emperor Palpatine has unlimited control over the galaxy. After the creation of the new system, the Empire turned its attention to the Wild Space and wanted to explore even the Unknown Territories. Here, outside the borders of the Empire, the cartographers Auric and Rhyssa Graf work with their children Milo and Lina. The children were born on their parents’ ship, the Whispering Bird, and accompanied their parents everywhere during their voyages of discovery. The family is sent by their agent to a remote and unmapped swamp-planet, but they have no idea that the shadow of the Empire lures nearer and nearer… This volume is the prequel to the six-volume series and published for World Book Day in 2016. The main characters of…
Fairy cakes
Fiona Patchett: The Usborne Children’s Book of Baking (Usborne Publishing 2006) Fiona Patchett is a children’s book writer and editor at Usborne Publishing in the UK. From cookbooks to history books, from sticker books to fairy tales, she collaborates with illustrators and designers to create eye-catching and informative books. In her free time, she likes to bake and tries different recipes for fairy cakes. Two of her children’s cookbooks have already been published: Christmas Baking for Children and The Usborne Children’s Book of Baking, which can also be read in Hungarian. I was still in high school when I saw it in a bookstore, and I really liked the beautiful cake photos. I tried a few of its recipes, but then I didn’t come across it for years, until I finally baked from it several times at last Christmas. What I liked about it was that – since it was…
Wizard from the past
Simon Farnaby: The Wizard In My Shed (Hachette Children’s Group 2020) Simon Farnaby: The Warror In My Wardrobe (Hachette Children’s Group 2021) Simon Farnaby: The Wizard and Me (Hachette Children’s Group 2022) Merdyn, the Wild, has already caused so much trouble in the Dark Ages that the people of Albion banish him to the stream of Purgatory. But the spell goes awry and Merdyn is thrown into the Stream of Time, which dumps him in 21st century Bashingford. Rose is an ordinary girl nowadays, who stands out from the rest only because she has a particularly good sense of embarrassing herself at school. Her only friend is Bubbles, the guinea pig. The two eccentrics are brought together by fate to turn the city, the world and each other’s lives upside down. However, they have no idea how good an effect they will have on each other. Caution: if you read…
Clumsy witch
Jill Murphy: The Worst Witch (first published by Allison & Bushby in 1974) Future witches study at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches. Outside, gloomy gray walls and towers rise to the sky, and inside there are long narrow corridors running between the staircases and the sunlight almost never gets in. The girls who study here also wear black uniforms, capes and peaked caps. Mildred Hubble is the clumsiest among them. What she is doing usually goes wrong. If she accidentally succeeds with a spell, she will cause trouble with that as well. In the novel, we can follow her adventures with her best friend Maud Spellbody and the snooty know-it-all Ethel Hallow within the enchanted walls of the school. The novel is short, but very fast-paced and exciting, despite the fact that it does not resemble today’s action-packed adventure novels but is much cuter. We don’t have to worry about…