Posts

Showing posts from August, 2022

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS4 - Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert

Image
  A fantastic YA thriller In our family, we keep our magic close, but our secrets closer . . . Ivy's summer kicks off with a series of disturbing events. As unnatural offerings appear on her doorstep, she's haunted by fragmented memories from her childhood, suggesting there's more to her mother, Dana, than meets the eye. Dana's tale starts the year she turns sixteen, when she embarks on a major fling with the supernatural. Too late she realizes that the powers she's playing with are also playing with her. Years after it began, Ivy and Dana's shared story will come down to a reckoning between a mother, a daughter and the dark forces they never should have messed with. Publisher:  Penguin Random House Children's UK ISBN:  9780241614532 Number of pages:  352

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS3 - Cuckoo Summer by Jonathan Tulloch

Image
  Summer 1940. As the cuckoo sings out across the Lake District, life is about to change for ever for local boy Tommy and his friend Sally, the mysterious evacuee girl who lives on the neighbouring farm. When they find a wounded Nazi airman in the woods, Sally persuades Tommy not to report it but to keep the German hidden. This starts a chain of events that leads to the uncovering of secrets about Sally's past and a summer of adventure that neither child will ever forget. Publisher:  Andersen Press Ltd ISBN:  9781839132094 Number of pages:  256

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS5/Adult - A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

Image
  Tonight nineteen-year-old William Lavery is dressed for success, his first black-tie do. It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. He can barely believe his luck. But as the guests sip their drinks and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation. It is October 1966 and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school: Aberfan. William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job, and will be - although he's yet to know it - a choice that threatens to sacrifice his own happiness. His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to bury. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because - as William discovers - giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves. Publisher:  Faber &

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS5/Adult - In the Seeing Hands of Others by Nat Ogle

Image
  You are about to enter a novel formed of documents and evidence. Here is the blog of a nurse on a dialysis ward attempting to live in the aftermath of bringing a trial to court in which the defendant was exonerated. Here are the transcripts of the police interviews with her, and the accused, the emails and texts between them submitted for trial; his journal, his conversations on 4chan, his drama scripts, him, him, him. How will the nurse, Corina, ever get him out of her head? This is a highly original debut novel that combines some of the investigatory pleasures of a legal drama with a provocative and literary exploration of the limits of empathy. It will win plaudits for its inventiveness while being at heart a very approachable piece of storytelling with the pleasures of suspense and family drama. Provocative, blackly funny and moving, it announces a new voice unlike any other. Publisher:  Profile Books Ltd ISBN:  9781788168359 Number of pages:  368

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS4 - Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs

Image
  Soaked in mist and old magic,  Storyland  is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes. It begins between the Creation and Noah's Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans. These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape and the yearning to belong, inhabited with characters now half-remembered: Brutus, Albina, Scota, Arthur and Bladud among them. Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary. We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Wayland's Smithy, spanning the length of Britain from the archipelago of Orkney to as far south as Cornwall; mountains and l

The Library Weekly Book Recommendation - KS3 - Nura and the Immortal Palace by M. T. Khan

Image
  A magical adventure rooted in Muslim culture and tradition,  Nura and the Immortal Palace  follows a young girl's journey from modern-day Pakistan into the world of the jinn. Nura has worked all her life in the mica mines, earning just enough to keep her family afloat - and enjoy the odd delicious gulab jamun from the market. Some day she's going to find the Demon's Tongue, a legendary treasure buried deep in the mines, and her family will never have to worry about money again. But when a terrible accident buries her best friend below ground, Nura goes in search of him and passes over into the magical and terrible world of the jinn. Across a pink sea and under a purple sky, she finds her way to a palace, where great riches and a whole new life are on offer. But it's not long before Nura discovers this world to be as unfair as the real one, and that trickster jinns will always live up to their reputation... Publisher:  Walker Books Ltd ISBN:  9781529503494 Number of pa

The August issue of our OPHS Online Library Newsletter #13

Image
  The OPHS Library Online Newsletter August 2022  #13 Welcome to our Online Monthly Library Newsletter Every month, in our Library Newsletter, we have reviews on wonderful books that we have in our Library, snippets of new books on the horizon, interesting information about lovely Authors and also books-to-movies information. There will be links to access upcoming books that are in The Library and lots of book information that you will enjoy.  We will have competitions, winner announcements, links to short stories and poems and other interesting literacy information all in one Newsletter!   If you would like to add a contribution to our next Newsletter (September issue), such as:  What is your favourite book from our Library?  What were your favourite and/or worst books that you have ever read?  Would you like to send in a book review and/or a literacy picture? Can you think of anything else that would look great in our newsletter?  Then please email: ltaylor@oakspark.redbridge.sch.uk