Seventeen-year-old Micah, enters the wyrmeweald full of hope to return home having made his fortune. But this is a land where wyrmes, fabulous dragon-like beasts, roam wild and reign supreme. In Wyrmeweald man is both hunter and hunted – and Micah may never return alive, let alone a hero…He soon finds a chance to prove his worth when he meets with Eli, a veteran tracker, and together they defend a rare whitewyrme egg and its precious hatchling.

But the fledgling wyrme has its own guardian in the shape of the beautiful, brave and dangerous Thrace. Thrace and Micah should never mix – but the magnetism between them is strong. Together they join forces on a mission to rescue the hatchling – and seek vengeance for lost loved-ones.

This is a truly immersive fantasy epic: full of thrilling, high octane action; powerful romance and a cast of credible, colourful characters.

Eric is involved with a big experiment in Switzerland, looking to explore the earliest moment of the universe. But, there is a group of people who don’t think this experiment should go ahead and are planning to sabotage the Grand Switch-on. Will they suceed? Whose side is Reeper on this time? And why does he want to speak to Annie and George so desperately?

Fans of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus books will devour this book – a cracking adventure brimming with magic, intrigue and a treasure trove of characters that the reader can’t help but fall for. We find everyone’s favourite irascibly insolent djinni serving at the court of King Solomon in 950 BC Jerusalem, where he is causing his customary chaos and must help a girl assassin sent by the Queen of Sheba to steal the all – powerful Ring of Solomon. The comic relief is perfectly timed, the dialogue sharp and snappy and the fiendishly clever plot perfectly handled with Jonathan’s trademark flair and command of language.

Thrills, chills and a danger-spiked finale – this is one of the publishing events of the year.

A Review By Tamsin

 The sun is out(ish), the holiday packing is planned, uniform grown out of for another year; yes, its Summer. Time to try and persuade the little ones to keep reading.

Usborne Early Readers

This time last year, I bought all 18 books in the Usborne early readers scheme and my (then) 5-year-old, read his way through them over the holidays. This was a set of small books numbered according to their reading level, but are all about right for a 4-5 year old just starting out. The stories were all faintly ridiculous – rock bands formed by grizzly bears, cows in cars and so on – and a little contrived, presumably to ensure that the required phonics element could be included; they are really not much different from the Oxford Reading Tree stories. This has the misfortune to make them just a little bit ‘schooly’ which some children might find a bit off-putting. As a parent I was just very glad to see them; schools do tend to just leave you with a gaping reading gap at this age. Is it possible to be too young for a book list? Usborne have published a new range of books for this year, based on the same reading scheme, but with different stories. The books are priced at £4.99 each.

DK Readers

So, a year on, and here I am again, but this time with six-year old who can read well and is usually happy to do so. But could I find something to compete with Nintendo? Well, yes actually. DK (Dorling Kindersley) publish a range of ‘Readers’ for younger children. They are banded levels 1-4 and I would suggest that level 1 is appropriate for a good reader at just-finished-Reception age, although as ever, it depends on the child. These books are very different from the Usborne ones, for a start they are almost all non-fiction, or based on characters such as Marvel Comics Heroes and Star Wars.  The books are very well targeted at the interests of a young child: we bought books on volcanoes, the journey of a whale, the history of chocolate and dinosaur excavation, as well as Star Wars and Pokemon. The books are set out like many children’s non-fiction books, with little boxes of extra information, loads of photographs and an extra facts section at the back. The DK books are generally £2.99 or £3.99 (some of the level 4 books are £4.99). 

Let Me Read

These are rather traditional, cute, old-fashioned books. If your child prefers a traditional story, then the Let Me Read series offers a great range. The books are all re-tellings of traditional folk or fairy tales such as Rumplestiltskin, Goldilocks and the three bears and the Elves and the Shoemaker. We have a limited supply of this range, which we have on offer at just 99p per book. Again, the books are organised from level 1-4, with 4 being about right for a child moving from year 1 to year 2. 

Magic Tree House series

For slightly older children, or for a little variation, there are some fabulous books being published. I can thoroughly recommend the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne in which brother and sister, Jack and Annie, find a tree house which takes them back in time to more or less anywhere they want to go. They have adventures with Dinosaurs and Mammoths, Vikings, Ancient Greeks and they get to attend an Egyptian funeral and travel up the Amazon – amongst many other adventures. The writing style is accessible but exciting and the subjects are chosen because of their interest to children.  As an introduction to reading and also to history, it doesn’t get much better than Mary Pope Osborne. I would suggest that these books are for children aged 4 to about 7 for reading-with or reading-alone. The books are priced at £3.99 and there are 25 + books in the series, with subjects that range from St Patrick’s Ireland, to the sinking of the Titanic.

 With so many really beautifully written and well-thought out children’s books for this ‘new to reading’ age group, there is really plenty to keep those young minds active.

A Review By Zoe Boulton

  I read the back cover of this book after a customer ordered it in, and so taken with it that I decided to read it myself- but not the customer’s copy I hasten to add. My immediate thought was that it reminded me of The Hunger Games, which is a huge favourite here in Warwick Books. I was surprised to find that this title was published 15 years before the Hunger Games, and I discovered afterwards that it is required school reading in North America.

 The Giver is about an eleven year old boy- Jonas, who lives in the Community. This is a place where everything is safe, where there is no violence or pain, where children grow up in 2 child families, where everybody is allocated a career based on the abilities they demonstrate, where everybody is encouraged to talk about their feelings. As the novel progresses the Community takes on an ever more sinister tone as Jonas is assigned a career that makes him question his world.

 This really is an excellent novel, I read it in an evening. It is a little short in comparison to current dystopian-type children’s and teenage novels, but the shortness of it was quite refreshing. It is extremely sinister in places, it may be a little too upsetting for some children, and the ending is the bravest I have seen in children’s fiction for a long time. Really excellent.