Illustrators – Natalie Smillie
Vashti Hardy: The Griffin Gate (Barrington Stoke 2020) L. D. Lapinski: The Strangeworlds Travel Agency (Orion Children’s Books 2020) Annaliese Avery: The Nightsilver Promise (Scholastic 2021) Natalie Smillie didn’t always want to be a children’s book illustrator. As a child, she preferred to work in the police. She later studied at the Plymouth Collage of Art and Design and then served in the Royal Air Force. Eventually, though, she returned to drawing and currently lives in Devon and spends every minute illustrating. She’s already worked with Hachette, Oxford University Press and Penguin, but it would be her big dream to illustrate Philip Pullman’s works or The Secret Garden one day. Natalie comes from a creative family and makes her drawings on her iPad instead of paper. Eyvind Earle and Mary Blair’s illustrations inspire her as well as Monet’s use of light and want to make drawings most for stories that…
Return to the Mexican desert
Kaela Rivera: Cece Rios and the King of Fears (Harpercollins Publishers 2022) The adventures of Cece Rios will continue in this September. I was lucky that the author sent me the e-arc and I could read it before it came out. The plot continues from the moment the first book ends. Cece and Juana finally return to their home. There, however, they find only their mother because their father has left. From then on, Juana goes to work on the lands with their mother, while Cece does the other jobs. However, her friends stayed with her. The criatura months are slowly coming to an end and the dark criaturas are returning to Devil’s Alley so they will not appear for another nine months. Apparently, everything is fine, and they could calm down, but there is something wrong with Juana… She is irritated, unable to sleep and does not reciprocate the…
Mexican desert
Kaela Rivera: Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls (Harpercollins Publishers 2021) In the old days, humans – the children of the Sun – and spirit beings (criaturas) – the children of the Mother Desert, lived side by side in peace. Until the appearance of the bruja, the witches who steal the souls of spirit beings to control them and gain power. Revenge against the humans created the dark creaturas whom the people are fighting against, so the circle is complete. However, Cece is able to see the creaturas differently: she considers them to be persons who are determined not by their fate but by their actions. That’s why other people find her weak. And being weak in Tierra del Sol is not ill-advised, especially in the months when criaturas emerge from Devil’s Alley. Our story begins with the night, when Cece’s fearless sister is abducted by El Sombrerón –…
You are the next
Karen M. McManus: One of Us Is Next (Random House 2020) Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for sending me the book! You may have read about One of Us Is Lying and Two Can Keep a Secret before on BogiWrites. I first heard about One of Us Is Lying from foreign booktubers and it immediately piqued my interest and I have read it in English. I really liked it and I finally read it in Hungarian this year, which was also very good. After the Netflix series and release of the book with the movie cover, it was obvious that I would read the sequel as well. Another death occurs at Bayview High School. However, the story doesn’t start that time, but 10 weeks earlier, when two desperate people start talking in a revenge forum where Simon also posted previously. The high school community is still hungry for gossip, but…
My experiences at the Book Week
The 93rd Festive Book Week was held this year (the first was in 1929!), but for me it was the first event in Budapest, so far, I was only at the programs in Debrecen. I really liked everything: the many different publishers, the plethora of color booths, and it was a great experience to meet the writers, translators, and illustrators. I had books signed by András Földvári, Nóra Tomcsik, Dr. László Bujtor and Cintia Vaspöri, whose works you might have already read about on BogiWrites before. I received books for review from Maxim Kiadó, many thanks to them! I’ve been really looking forward to The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke. According to the story, we go to Amsterdam in 1880, where five babies are left on the steps of an orphanage one night. We can follow their adventures in the story. In One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus,…
Multiverse in a suitcase
L. D. Lapinski: The Strangeworlds Travel Agency – The Secrets of the Stormforest (Orion Children’s Books 2022) Strangeworlds Travel Agency is in Little Wyverns, a small town in England and it is not an ordinary travel agency. There is no computer in it, but there are plenty of different battered and worn suitcases with which we can travel not only to other countries but to other worlds. When Felicity Hudson goes into this agency, she will be part of a magical adventure, and also make friends forever. In the final volume of the trilogy, Flick has to face a group that threatens the entire multiverse. To defeat them, she has to find a special suitcase, one that can destroy the entire multiverse: the Final Doorway. Meanwhile, a family secret is also revealed. In addition to the exciting adventures, the personal feelings of each character are also important in this story.…
Last journey on the Aurora
Vashti Hardy: Firesong (Scholastic 2022) Vashti Hardy’s latest book is the final piece of the Brightstorm trilogy, which was published in May. Brightstorm was the writer’s debut novel. Since then, her books have won numerous awards and translated to several languages. Steampunk elements can always be found in her stories. In the first volume of the trilogy, the Brightstorm twins, Maudie and Arthur learn that their father died on the expedition as he attempted to reach the South Polaris with his skyship. If that weren’t enough, he is even accused of trying to stop the other team from reaching their goal. The twins do not believe what Eudora Vane, the captain of the other skyship claims. There is only one way to find out the truth: they have to go to the Ice Continent and try to reach the South Polaris, so they join Harriet Culpepper and the Aurora crew,…
Story itself
Anna James: Pages & Co. – The Book Smugglers (HarperCollins Publishers 2021) ’We’re all built of stories.’ We may have felt before that there are whole worlds in the books. For Matilda Pages, however, this is reality. She can read herself into a book, or the characters can step out to visit her. With this special ability, she is not alone, many people in the world are capable of doing so, but only in libraries or bookstores is it possible to bookwander, because enough magic is gathered only here. However, Tilly’s grandparents have a small bookshop in London, named Pages and Co. The girl and her friends involved in many special adventures with their favorite characters like Anne (with an e at the end) or Jack the Beanstalk, but they also meet William Shakespeare on their travels. In this book, they travel to Venice on a special train that can…
Night black silver
Annaliese Avery: The Nightsilver Promise (Scholastic 2021) In Annaliese Avery’s novel, a very special world comes to life before us. We are in London, in the Empire of Albion. Above the city, special buildings and neighborhoods float, such as the new Greenwich Observatory or Kensington Park. Engineers watch the Celestial Mechanism – the gears that move the celestial bodies – and tell the people which Track lies in the stars that the Chief Designer had planned for them. Alchesmiths make a material that can defeat even the dragons – the black Nightsilver. Paisley Fitzwilliam hopes that her stars will hold a fate similar to her father’s and that she too can be an explorer. However, when she finally got the prophecy, she didn’t get what she wanted at all. Meanwhile, her scientist mother is making a big announcement about a comet heading for Earth, which some say is a Great…
Starfell 4 – Willow Moss’s adventures continue
Dominique Valente: Starfell – Willow Moss and the Magic Thief (HarperCollins Publishers 2022) I cannot recommend the Starfell series enough to everyone, the first volume of this is already available in Hungarian too. I got to know the series last year and it immediately became my absolute favorite. You may have read about the first three book on BogiWrites before, and I also did a mini interview with the author at the time of the Hungarian release. Starfell is a wonderful place pervaded by magic. In addition to humans, it is populated by witches, wizards, dragons, trolls, and other wonders. Although after a war the magic almost disappeared from the world, it later returned and gave some people special abilities. However, Willow Moss was given the least special version of special abilities: she finds lost things. She doesn’t even think that Starfell’s most powerful witch needs her. Moreg Vaine asks…