Tag: #KeyStage2

Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate’s Portolano by Victoria Williamson

On By @f33lthesunIn Y4+1 Comment

Blurb

A daring mission, a sister turned pirate and a sea full of secrets…

In a world of water where land is a legend, 11-year-old Kittiwake Stormhaven dreams of adventure aboard the Amazon Princess. When a vital mission takes the ship into dangerous waters, Kittiwake discovers shocking news – her long-lost sister, Petrel, is now a feared pirate queen.

Kittiwake must outsmart pirates, outmanoeuvre storms and face ghostly captains to save her ship, her mischievous monkey Caboodle and her friends. But in a high-stakes showdown, family loyalty collides with survival, and Kittiwake learns the ocean hides more secrets than she ever imagined.

Kittiwake Stormhaven is a fast-paced, sea-swept adventure filled with daring rescues, thrilling discoveries and the magic of friendship.

Review

I always look forward to reading a story by Victoria Williamson and this one is no exception. It is a fast paced action adventure on the high seas, with pirates, stowaways, a naughty pet monkey and a quest to find fuel before the ships all sink.

Kittiwake and her stowaway friend, Scally, have to look out for each other as they break the rules several times to try to discover what happened to her sister. Is she really a dreadful pirate now? Or did she disappear never to be seen again? Which story, if any, is real?

As the truth emerges, Kit, also aided and abetted by her pet monkey Caboodle, is caught between loyalty to her mother, the ship’s captain, and finding out about her sister. On the adventurous journey she meets pirates, a scary monster that attacks the ship, hears rumours about her father (who also disappeared) and makes a deal with a pirate that she is not sure will come off.

The cast of characters is wide ranging. My favourite is the Doctor. You are never quite sure if he is serious or sarcastic about all the exotic sounding diseases he thinks everyone who comes to see him is suffering from.

In between each chapter of the story is an excerpt from The Pirate’s Portolano, a book detailing information useful to pirates, from maps and drawings, to key information about the strengths and weaknesses of ships, smuggling routes and sea creatures to avoid.

This is a brilliant adventure story for Year 4 up, with themes of friendship, families, secrets and survival. I will also admit it took me too long for the names Kittiwake (Kit to her friends and family) and Caboodle to click. They really are the whole thing.

The cover and inside illustrations by James Brown are superb.

Thank you to the author, the publisher Tiny Tree and @The_WriteReads for a copy of the book (and the fabulous gifts it came with) to read and review for this blog tour.

About the book

Genre: Adventure

Age Category: Middle Grade

Publisher: Tiny Tree Books

Number of Pages: 176 Pages

Publication Date: October 23, 2025

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238744341-kittiwake-stormhaven-and-the-pirate-s-portolano 

Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ca5e59cb-f36d-43bd-8f07-953adcf0b2fd 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/5yuErMp (Canada) https://a.co/d/bhdaIxp (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/hl3XQ8H (UK)

The Thief of Farrowfell by Ravena Guron

On By @f33lthesunIn Upper KS2+Leave a comment

Blurb

Welcome to a fantasy world where edible magic is the hottest commodity, traded between those who can pay or – in the case of Jude Ripon, the youngest thief in Farrowfell – those who can steal it!

Twelve-year-old Jude Ripon has never been taken seriously by her family of magic-stealing masterminds. To them, she’s just the youngest, only good for keeping watch while they carry out daring heists.

Desperate to prove her worth, Jude decides to steal valuable magic from the fanciest house in town . . .

But Jude’s stolen prize was protected by a curse which threatens to wreak havoc on the family business.

While attempting to untangle the mess she’s made (and wondering why anyone would want to curse an honest thief trying to earn a living), Jude discovers just how far her family will go to stay at the top of the criminal world.

Suddenly, her quest to become a true Ripon isn’t straightforward any more . . .

Review

What a magical, adventurous start to the Farrowfell trilogy.

Jude is fed up being ignored and is out to prove herself to her very demanding family, who run their own criminal enterprise, acquiring and selling illegal magic. She is very much a “go big or go home” girl, so she steals a piece of rare magic from a mansion heavily fortified by spells. She realises too late that the magic is cursed and she needs to lift the curse before bragging to her family.

So begins a sequence of events that very quickly get out of control.

Having overheard snippets of family meetings, Jude is convinced her family have no faith in her and see here as a mere inconvenience. But are they hiding something? Something big?

Just shows great determination to prove herself. However, she makes a lot of assumptions about those around her and their motives for their actions.

As the story unfolds, we discover information about the family and their criminal enterprise in bits, as Jude does. We also see Jude believing something to be true with no evidence except her emotions. She is being told things by people she trusts, not knowing the whole story so fitting what she knows and discovers into her experience and world view, believing she is responsible for some things because she is sure she did something wrong and feels guilty … but she does not know everything, so gets more wrong. She is only human!

A strong sense of selflessness versus selfishness permeates the whole story and that ultimately is what counts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. The best bit is they are already out, so no waiting. Well, Book 3 is out on May 8th so time to read one and two!

Thanks to The Write Reads and Faber & Faber for a copy of the book to read and review for this blog tour. Please look out for the other blogs in the tour (see banner below).

About the Book

Genre: Fantasy

Age Category: Middle Grade

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Number of Pages: 320 Pages

Publication Date: May 2, 2023

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62018486-the-thief-of-farrowfell 

Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/05b998c4-6ac9-41a8-a423-f92f6ad48be6 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/akN8Evl (Canada) https://a.co/d/cBViD8E (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/eyqvgyQ (UK)

Or my preferred option – buy from your local independent bookshop.

The Thief of Farrowfell is Book 1 in the Thief of Farrowfell series. 

Book 2, The Beast of Farrowfell, and Book 3, The Battle of Farrowfell, are also available.

The Secret of the Moonshard by Struan Murray

On By @f33lthesunIn Fantasy, Upper KS2+Leave a comment
Cover and art by Vivienne To

Blurb

Domino is an eleven-year-old girl with a strange affliction: if she goes anywhere near magic, it will kill her.

All her life she’s been trapped in a floating laboratory, safe from magic but not from the cruel children and the crueler Science Barons who live there. Domino believes the Barons are trying to invent a cure for her magic allergy, but when a mysterious wizard arrives and unleashes total chaos, she discovers that everything she’s been told is a lie.

Domino escapes to the wondrous city of Abzalaymon, its streets filled with marvels she’s never seen, from automobiles to televisions to hulking thunder lizards. But the Science Barons are on her trail, and Domino must brave a hidden realm of magic if she is to defeat their sinister plot, and uncover a secret that might just save the world: the Secret of the Moonshard.

Review

Struan Murray has done it again. A superbly crafted story in a fantastically created world. The Scientarium floats above the city, tormenting Domino, who dreams of visiting it one day, who has known nothing else but the bullying / prankster revenge and testing cycles her life consists of, thanks to the Science Barons who raise her there “to protect her from magic”. Does she really need protecting?

Once again, following the highly original and exciting Orphans of the Tide trilogy, the author has delivered with a variety of well defined characters, twists and turns, magic and mayhem, chases that have you on the edge your seat and even some dinosaurs.

Creating characters with depth and believability is a special skill and Murray has this down to a fine art. The ones that I’m particularly drawn to are those who bring indecision to my mind…which side will these characters fall on when push comes to shove? Abzalaymon, the spirit, is a deliciously contrasting character, which puts you, as the reader, on edge. Will they help Domino, Calvin and Raphael…or eat them?

A book map is always a bonus.

Thanks to NetGalley and Puffin for the eARC in exchange for this review. The book will be published on March 7th 2024

The House of One Hundred Clocks by A.M. Howell

On By @f33lthesunIn Children KS2Leave a comment

It is 1905. After the death of her mother Helena finds herself moving to Cambridge with her father, a clock maker, and her precious parrot Orbit. Her father has accepted a job in the house of Mr Westcott. The job is a strange one, to keep all the clocks in the house ticking, never letting them stop and to never discuss any strange goings on. Helena finds this bizarre but then discovers other things that deepen her resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery. Just as she works out one puzzle, another one appears.

She befriends Florence, Mr Westcott’s daughter, and Stanley, the only servant left in the house. Together they try to work out why the clocks can never be allowed to stop, why Mr Westcott and his sister, Katherine, do daily clock inspections, what happened to Helena’s father’s predecessor, what is behind Katherine’s mysterious behaviour and why the clock keys disappear.

This is a well paced story with plenty of twists and turns. It also provides plenty of discussion points along the way, including the historical backdrop of the development of flight by the Wright Brothers.

The story has many themes, including loss, grief, superstitions, attitudes to females in engineering/academia at the time and that doing the wrong thing for whatever reason is not going to end well.

It is unusual to find end papers in paperback novels so I was excited to discover this book has them. Saara Söderlund has beautifully illustrated clues to different aspects of the story…clocks, books, hats and feathers.

Space Oddity by Christopher Edge

On By @f33lthesunIn Children KS2Leave a comment

Do you want Cosmic capers? UFOs? Alien Abductions? Killer Robots? Smelly aliens? Embarrassing dads? Zorbs?

Then this is the book for you.

It also has numerous references to Star Wars, Doctor Who and a certain David Bowie Song…”and there is nothing I can do”.

Space Oddity is a fast paced adventure. Jake thinks his dad is embarrassing (is that not the role of parents though?) and when asked at a dad and son space adventure weekend if he would rather have a boring dad or an out of this world dad, he really wants to say the first option. But then, when his dad is abducted, he will do anything to get him back.

This is a story about relationships, perception of others and how you feel others see you. It is also about songs and music but I won’t spoil that part.

There are, in my opinion, not enough sci-fi novels for children. This is an excellent entry to that category for 8+ to read on their own or, even better, to enjoy as a bedtime shared read.

Christopher Edge has also created an out of this world book soundtrack to go along with the book. You can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0gcbXz0uHZePqLDMermKyJ

Elsetime by Eve McDonnell

On By @f33lthesunIn Children KS2Leave a comment

Elsetime is a time travelling story that will suck you in. It is set in both 1864 and 1928, with a backdrop of the danger and loss of life possibilities of the Great Flood of London on 6th January 1928.

Needle is a creative mudlark who finds treasure and makes items from them for his mother to sell. He can “see” the history of the items, and their owners, when he holds them. His father has also mysteriously disappeared.

Glory is a 12 year old orphan, with only one hand, who pretends to be older to get work making fine items for the mean Mrs Quick, in Frippery & Fandangle Emporium, to help her sister pay the rent and buy food. Unfortunately they lack finesse and fall apart.

Neither know of the other’s existence (although they both know a helpful crow called Magpie/Dust) until Needle finds treasure that, being from the future, makes his hand burn. This leads him to discover a hag stone through which he finds he travels through time to a London that is both familiar but different.

Needle and Glory end up working together, thanks to the crow engineering their meeting, to try to save the people who they think will perish in the flood. This is difficult as no one seems ready or willing to listen to their wondrous tale.

We are taken on a journey with Needle and Glory through time as well as the development of their friendship, which is not without its misunderstandings, to a high octane conclusion on the night of the flood. A twist in the tail left me with lots to ponder once the reading was done.

I love endpapers in picture books and hardbacks. They are rarely found in paperbacks so it was a lovely surprise to find the crow illustrations by Holly Ovendon inside the cover. Holly’s cover and illustrations throughout the book are a joy.