Luck by Alison Prince - Barrington Stoke Book 7

The title, cover and blurb do not give much away about this book. But the first line gives you a big clue as to the sort of read it is going to be; "My mum is a slag."

As well as domestic drama, Luck deals with gangs, robbery and car accidents, and also fits in sub-plots on immigration, bereavement and broken homes. It does all this in 53 short pages, many of which have illustrations. Amazing.

The illustrations by Patrick Morgan are worth a mention, they complement the hard-edged writing perfectly, and there is a breath-taking double page spread that works brilliantly.

A short, but great book, for older readers, about not blaming your luck when things go wrong; "It wasn't bad luck. It was stupid."

Competition Time

I have spotted a few competitions to try:

Bounce into Books

We have just missed the week long Bounce into Books festival (in particular I missed Tommy Donbavand at my local library), but there is still time to enter their competition. They are looking for the most peculiar facts about your neighbourhood to be included in a new book Yorkshire: A Very Peculiar History. Sounds like fun, closing date is 28 March 2010.

Harriet Goodwin

Next, do you like the idea of appearing as a character in a book, well author Harriet Goodwin is offering the chance to be in her next book, The Extraordinary Legacy of Elvira Phoenix. A great opportunity, closing date is 31 March 2010

Sheffield Libraries Readers Card

Finally, and this is more for older readers, Sheffield Libraries' new reader’s card scheme lets you get free coffee, but also the opportunity to win prizes. It is a pilot scheme running up until 18 April 2010, which I presume is the closing date.

Game Boy by Alan Durant - Barrington Stoke Book 6

Game Boy was recommended to me by a Volunteer Reading Mentor as a good choice for reading partnerships, and it's hard to disagree.

I think the reason it works well is that, rather than chapters, the book has levels just like a computer game. Sometime it is hard to read a book over a period of weeks, as happens with our reading partnerships, but with Game Boy it would be fine. The plot can be recapped in seconds and off you go on another exciting level.

Books as computer games is quite a trend at the moment; fast-paced episodic adventures to keep readers interested with lots of potential for sequels. I read a review of The Enemy that made this link, and I think the Maximum Ride books follow the same pattern. Game Boy was ahead of the curve, written in 2002, with two sequels, Game Boy Reloaded and Game Boy Galactic coming more recently.

Blade by Chris Powling - Barrington Stoke Book 5

Blade was published in 2005 but seems incredibly relevant today with so many tales of knife crime in the press. The Barrington Stoke website, gives the Interest Age for this book as 12+, and although it could be read by younger children the subject matter feels very edgy.

It's a short book; some pages only have a few one-sentence paragraphs. This can look like poetry, but, in fact, just keeps the story moving at a very quick pace.

The morals and behaviour of the heroes are not clear-cut. This gives lots of potential for discussing how to deal with the situations encountered, and makes it a great book to read in a partnership.

Reading Leader Reviewers for Random House

I am really pleased to have received an offer from Random House Children's Books, they have sent me a nice package of books to review on this blog. Rather than review them myself I have passed them on to the Reading Leaders we trained at King Ecgbert School, these guys are the target audience and so are better able to review them than me.

The books they will be taking a look at are:

• Monster Republic: The Divinity Project
• The Toymaker
• Barnaby Grimes: Phantom of Blood Alley
• The Immortals (Edge Chronicles)
• Loot (Lady Grace Mysteries)

Once I get the reviews back form the Reading Leaders at King Ecgbert School, I will post them up here.

Exciting stuff, I'm looking forward to hearing about these brand new books.

Fox Friend by Michael Morpurgo - Barrington Stoke Book 4

Michael Morpurgo is Reading Matters patron, so I felt it only fair that I review one of his several Barrington Stoke books next.

Fox Friend is a delightfully written, short book. Morpurgo is a master of his craft, and each sentence is a perfectly judged. As a result the emotions and atmosphere of the story based on a Devon farm are deeply felt, but the text is so easy to read.

There is a nice overview of the Morpurgo supported Farms for City Children charity, which adds another degree of realism to the book overall.

One of the main threats to the Fox Friend is a hunt, which dates the book a little, but the lovely story and dramatic ending more than make up for any such downsides.

Reading Differences

I picked up an interesting leaflet last week, all about the The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) project Reading Differences. The leaflet states:

"Reading different books – stories, poems, picture books and traditional tales set in different cultural contexts – opens windows on to other worlds, showing how other children grow up, get along with family and friends and cope with everyday life and extraordinary events"

The focus is on introducing children and young people to a broader range of literature from around the world, I think a lot of the ideas are relevant to any type of reading, and are all really just methods for talking about what is being read. The leaflet sets out four ideas to think about:

• Researching the background of the book, looking up maps is a good place to start, but anything that puts the book in a wider context would be good.
• Interpreting pictures, maps and pictures develop the atmosphere of the book and can be good places to explore the geographical and historical settings.
• Reading aloud, alerting reading partners to different voices, will bring the stories to life.
• Draw on knowledge of similar stories, some of the exotic stories may not be quite so different to those in modern soap operas.

Finally, there are some recommended books that look great:

• A World of Poetry
• Sheep Don't Go to School: Mad and Magical Children's Poetry of Eastern Europe
• Eye of the Wolf
• One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (Oxford Story Collections)
• East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon

Lots more books are listed on Reading Differences annotated book list.

The Number 7 Shirt by Alan Gibbons - Barrington Stoke Book 3

The author Alan Gibbons, who writes for Barrington Stoke supported us at our Reading Leaders event in December, he was great speaker and signed a whole stack of books for us. I thought it was only fair I covered one of his books in my ongoing weekly project.

I am not the biggest football fan, but I know roughly who's who. I also know a lot of the children we read with are much bigger followers than me.The Number 7 Shirt is going to be for them, assuming they can, at the very least, tolerate a book about Manchester United!

Encouraged by personal pep talks from five classic wearers of the Manchester United number seven shirt, Jimmy Beech gets himself together and goes all the way with the Manchester United Academy. It's an inspiring story. The messages the legends provide are all based on real situations, and chapters all end with a page of facts about each star. So although Jimmy's journey is pure fantasy, it all feels very grounded and very motivational.

My only worry is that any book like this goes out of date, it is not a big deal but all the kids will spot that, Ronaldo, has now moved on, and is no longer "United's current number seven". Don't let that put you off, it is going to be spot on for many new readers.

Finally, here's Alan's signature, to prove I'm not making it up:

Reading Leader's Celebration | Sheffield, December 16 2009

As promised in my previous post about the great results of our Character Profile activity, here are some photos from our celebration event which took place on 16 December at Sheffield Town Hall.

As well as the fabulous author Alan Gibbons, Councillor Andrew Sangar, people from Barrington Stoke, Reading Matters employees and Sheffield Council personnel, the most important people in attendance where the staff and Reading Leaders from Sheffield schools:

• Handsworth Grange School
• Heritage Park Community School
• King Ecgbert School
• Silverdale School
• Stocksbridge High School

It sounds like Alan Gibbons has had a busy month, that is set to continue. He is writing a new Barrington Stoke book, The Dying Photo, based on a blurb written by James Pybis of Our Lady's and St Philomena's Primary School in Liverpool, as part of The Book Factor project. I first read about this on the Write Away website, so thanks to them.

Picking on Percy by Catherine MacPhail - Barrington Stoke Book 2

Second week of the year, second of my mini reviews of Barrington Stoke books. We use some audio of a Reading Mentor and her partner reading Picking on Percy by Catherine MacPhail in some of our training sessions. So I have heard the first few pages many times, but I am always concentrating on how the reading partnership is going, and not really focusing on the book itself.

Picking on Percy turns out to be incredibly similar to Desirable, which I read last week, both are excellently plotted and written, with similar a subject matter dealing with life as an 'uncool' kid in school, and both have excellent illustrations.

The illustrations, by Karen Donnelly and Dylan Gibson respectively, add enormously to both books, extending and supplementing the stories perfectly. So here's a tip, if you ever attend one of Reading Matters training sessions and hear the Picking on Percy audio. The pictures don't get a mention at all, this is definitely something the reading mentor could use to help their pupil partners understand and get the most out of the book.