His Dark Materials , Phillip Pullman

For those of you who have heard about Phillip Pullman you would probably have heard that he is an amazing author. Reading a couple of his books I thought he was a good author but maybe amazing was an exaggeration. However, after reading Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass I realised that in actual fact he was more than good.
The triolgy follows the journey of Lyra Belequa who is only a child but she has an unknown responsibility that can hange the whole world and either bring it to hope or to destruction. She gets herself caught in sticky ends but with determination and pereseverance manages to get herself out with the help of her daemon and her friends.
For those of you who love fantasy you will love this book. Maybe The Golden Compass film wasn't all that but the book that it came from is fantastic; you have to give it a go.

Chandra by Frances Mary Hendry

Looking at the cover you can sort of guess a little about what will happen in the story. When I first looked at it I knew it was going to be about a child bride. Chandra at eleven gets married to a boy called Roop (at the age of sixteen).She is full of joy when she meets him as he seems like such a lovely boy and a caring husband. However when she goes to live with his family things aren’t as they seem.

This story is a real eye opener of what happens in some societies and is a fantastic and gripping novel.

At last the final ceremony arrived. They rose to their feet her money helping Chandra up, for she was stiff with sitting for so long. In a blare of trumpets and drums, a chorus of chanted prayers and blessings, Roop led her seven times clockwise around the sacred fire. When they sat down again, she sat on her husband’s left; she was married.

If this sounds good to you give it a go.It's short and straight to the point and has you completely absorbed.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

“Enter freely and of your own will”

These are the words written at the back of the book Dracula written by Bram Stoker. When Dracula comes into mind you always think that it’s going to be a story about a scary vampire going around killing people and then they turn into vampires and so on and so forth. However this book not only offers this but in a more original way. This story has never ending twists and turns in the plot and if your like me and enjoy reading books with suspense and thriller or maybe even a bit of horror this book is definitely for you.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girls went on her knees, and bent over, fairly gloating. The was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat.

Sounds good doesn’t it. Do you dare to read on? Go one you won’t regret it.

I like to recommend this book because it is full of misunderstanding.

This book is called high school musical 2 by Peter Barsocchini.


Goodbye, classroom! Hello, summer! But for Troy, Gabriella, Chad and Taylor, this vacation is no day at the beach; they're all working at a country club founded by none other than Ryan and Sharpay's grandfather! And with the club's annual Midsummer Night's Musical right around the corner, Sharpay's competitive instincts are sizzling. If she can manage to win the Star Dazzle Award just one more time, the country club will name it after Sharpay, and it will be hers forever. But this year, Sharpay faces some tough competition?Gabriella! To have any hope of coming out on top, Sharpay knows that she'll need a secret weapon.

She dumps Ryan and starts wooing Troy to be her new partner. Gabriella is less than thrilled that Troy has fallen under Sharpay's spell. How could he do that to her? Things are heating up on the lawns of high society. Will Troy and Gabriella realize that they're meant to be? Or is it already too late for them to sing one last song together?

I like to recommend this book because when i just read the first chapter i wouldn't stop reading it.



This book is called High School Musical by Peter Barsocchini.



This book is about a high school basketball boy called Troy Bolten. His dad is the coach of the wildcats basketball team. On New Years Eve Troy had to go to a party, he thought it would be so boring, but eventually it wasn't. He had to sing a song in the party with a girl called Gabriella Montez. He knew he couldn't sing, when he sang Gabriella sang as well, everyone turned there heads to see who was singing. Troy and Gabriella forgot there nervousness and started to sing more boldly, they realised they had a talent.



It was time for Troy to go back to his school, he had a championship to win in two weeks time. There was a new girl coming to Troy's class, Troy couldn't believe his eyes, it was the girl who sang with him on New Years Eve, Gabriella couldn't believe her eyes as well. so they decided whether to join the school musical or not . On the other hand Sharpay and her brother Ryan hated Gabriella and was part of the school musical. Troys teammates got fed up of troy having to sing so Gabriella's friends and Troy's teammates decided to break the relationship, so when Troy and Gabriella broke up every one was depressed, Troys teammates decided to rejoin Troy and Gabriella.



When the basketball championship game and the school musical Audition was on the same day Gabriella's Friends and Troys Friends planned to set a fire drill while the basketball game was on, so Troy and Gabriella sang so beautifully in front of the whole school, and they won the basketball cup and the musical, Troy and Gabriella were so thrilled.

Checkmate by Malorie Blackman

Checkmate concludes the story of Callum, Sephy and their daughter, Callie Rose. For those of you who have read Noughts and Crosses and Knife-edge will know that this book does not disappoint. For those who haven’t read the books I won’t say too much to spoil it for you but just that you do not know what you have been missing. For those who love romantic novels or novels about prejudice and discrimination, then this book and the two before should have a place in your hands.

I like to recommend this book because it is full of mystery and excitement. This book is called Holes by Louis Sachar.

This book is about a boy called Stanley Yelnats, the reason why his name was that because it spells the same way backwards and it was names after his father. Stanley was arrested of something he didn't do, the police thought he stole a pair of trainers by some one famous, bot really when he got out of school he say they hit him on his head out of the sky. So the judge gave him a choice, either go to jail or live in a boys camp which you have to dig a holes each day, 5 metres high and across. So when he stars digging the first day he was so tired, gradually the days past and he got skinny and strong.

He met a friend called Zero and they both ran away, they climbed a mountain called The gods thumb, on the top there was water and onions to eat. Next they climbed down to dig an hole and Stanley however dug out a treasure chest. It said his name on it and he gave half of it to his best friend Zero.

Empire of the Sun

Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

The book was the subject of an oscar-winning 1987 film directed by Stephen Spielberg (and starring a very young Christian Bale).

Here is the opening of the novel:

WARS CAME EARLY to Shanghai, over-taking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese bund.

Jim had begun to dream of wars. At night the same silent films seemed to flicker against the wall of his bedroom in Amherst avenue, and transformed his sleeping mind into a deserted newsreel theater. During the winter of 1941 everyone in Shanghai was showing war films. Fragments of his dreams followed Jim around the city; in the foyers of the department stores and hotels the images of Dunkirk and Tobruk, Barbarossa and the Rape of Nanking sprang loose from his crowded head.

To Jim’s dismay, even the Dean of Shanghai Cathedral had equipped himself with an antique projector. After morning service on Sunday, December 7, the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the choirboys were stopped before they could leave for home and were marched down to the crypt. Still wearing their cossacks, they sat in a row of deck chairs requisitioned from the Shanghai Yacht Club and watched a year-old March of Time.

Thinking of his unsettled dreams, and puzzled by their missing sound track, Jim tugged at his ruffled collar. The organ voluntary drummed like a headache through the cement roof, and the screen trembled with the familiar images of tank battles and aerial dogfights. Jim was eager to prepare for the fancy-dress Christmas party being held that afternoon by Dr. Lockwood, the vice-chairman of the British Residents Association. There would be the drive through the Japanese lines to Hungjao, and then Chinese conjurers, fireworks and yet more newsreels, but Jim had his own reasons for wanting to go to Dr. Lockwood’s party.

Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman

The intensely moving sequel to Noughts and Crosses.

Sephy a cross,one of the privileged ones in society gives birth to a daughter who has a nought father.
Jude is a nought.The bitterness inside him blames Sephy for the losses in his family and has absolute hatred for her kind.
The sequel to the Romeo and Juliet like Noughts and Crosses takes a different turn unlike the prequel Knife Edge is the book of Hatred and if you thought there was a lot of hatred in Noughts and Crosses think again because that was the book of love.
Sephy has a baby Callie Rose and decides to live with Callie's grandmother Meggie McGregor Callum and Jude's mother.However now that the truth has come out about Sephy's life will she be able to cope and how will Jude take it that Sephy is living with HIS mother.

This is as exciting as the first book and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Noughts and Crosses

A thought provoking love story that adds racism and prejudice into it is a recipe for an engaging book.Winner of the Lancashire Children's book awards Noughts and crosses is definitely a book that I would recommend.
This book is about a black girl Sephy daughter of the most respected politician and about a white boy, Callum who is one of those in an under privileged society.Yes in this book the black people are in charge and the white people are not.
Sephy and Callum are childhood friends and say that even through thick and thin they will stay together.However the hierarchy gets too tough for some to handle and so the question is through thick and thin, will Callum and Sephy still remain Friends?
This book offers so many twists in the tale so for someone who doesn't like a soppy love story but one with a lot of strong emotions and twists and turns, this is the book for you.

The Breadwinner

Recommendations come at a highly profound cost. Seeing as everyone has a certain view of the world and how everything goes about it. Recommending a book with true emotion and depth is everything a person needs to relish themselves into, and that is exactly what I'm
doing.

The Breadwinner caught me from the first moment I read it. This book follows the life of Parvana, a young girl living in Afghanistan during it's Taliban rein and the difficulties that the ever increasing war has brought upon her. Her family care about and love her, but one Taliban abduction left her life torn and shattered in a way that no teenage girl would ever imagine. Her father.

Between the time that it took for the family to hit realisation, and the time it took them to understand, they had already fallen into the state of poverty. Minutes seemed like hours, and hours seemed like days.

But as time ran out for hope and wishes, someone had to do something. Parvana, with a heart of stone and a mind of matter, had to be the one to lift her life up.

With extreme circumstances and a brave heart, Parvana soon realised that life was for living, and she was never going to give it up.

Losing the life you had before was never going to be easy, but;

Dressed as a boy in the market, I soon found out that I was not watching the life of this poor young girl, I was her.

Parvana is the breadwinner in the market.

And The Breadwinner is a truely amazing insight into what happens in places of war and anguish.

Capturing the life of an eleven year old girl, Deborah Ellis is one author that I have to say, may wonder into a topic which none other has tried to explore before. The minds of children and young adults are hard to capture and maintain, but Deborah achieves this with no extra help or power. The trilogy carries on, and I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to carry on reading. Since reading this in year six, I have always been aware that someone out there is always less better off than I am, and I can not recommend it enough.

Avenging Angel

I like to recommend this book which is called Avenging Angel by David Belbin,

This is a review about it:

This book is about a boy called Angelo who was riding his bike and suddenly he saw a car coming so fast towards him but he was too late, the car knocked over his bike and he fell on the road with his bike on top of him, and car drove away. It was a hit and run accident. All Angelo said before he died was the word 'blaze'.

His sister Clare cannot rest until she finds the truth who ran over him, so she tells her friend PC Neil. He finds two suspect, one of them had a colour green car that Angelo was killed with and the other had the same colour car and there was a bike shape mark on the car but when both of them was in court they both was proved innocent.

After two weeks she saw a group of young gang of Angelo's friend and one of them name was blaze, so she finally found the culprit.

'Carrie' by Stephen King

I like to recommend a book and film called 'Carrie' by Stephen King. Here is my review on the book:

The book is about a girl called Carrie White, who is no ordinary girl. She has a gift called 'Telekinesis' this enables her to do things with her mind. The story starts off with Carrie in school in the school showers, something unusual happens, all the girls mock her. A girl called Christine Hargensen was the main ringleader and the starter of all the other girls mocking her. Another girl called Sue Snell who was part of this shame felt sorry for Carrie. Later in the story Sue Snell asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross to ask Carrie to the school prom. This is Carries dream, she rejects at first then she finally agrees. She tells her mother, her mother is an absolute freak she is so religious.

And throughout the story you would learn that on several occasions her mother has sent her to a tiny cupboard, which she calls the prayer cupboard. Carrie begins to prepare for the prom; she makes her own prom dress. Only of she knew the prom would take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night. Christine Hargesen and her boyfriend Billy Nolan switched all the prom winners’ cards to make Carrie and Tommy win prom king and queen. When they were going up to the stage, Christine and Billy were hiding underneath the stage with a rope in their hands leading to a bucket on the ceiling full of pigs blood, the blood splattered all over Carrie. Everyone started to laugh; to their horror she stood up using her gift she locked all the doors and windows of the prom hall. She set the entire hall on fire causing everyone to scream for his or her lives.

After everyone was burnt Carrie left, leaving a trail of pigs blood. As she was going home she was causing destruction all the way. She went home destroying everything as she entered; her mum was sitting in the kitchen with a knife. Carrie told her mum she was going to kill her, her mum said lets pray and began reading religious things. Carrie killed her mum then took her body to the prayer room and the whole house collapsed upon them. In my opinion Stephen Kings imagination is vast, he knows how to engage the deepest sympathies of his readers. This book is a horror book, and it can truly make the flesh creep and cringe.

Coram Boy

The harsh realities of 18th century life, of slavery, of prejudice, of tragedy, of corruption, of the haves and the have nots are woven together incredibly intricately and yet quite simply told too. Rest assured this book will have a significant impact on any teenager; and you may well find it impossible to put down...

It was a well-deserved winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award in 2000.

'A fine lady went to Stowe Fair. She was pregnant for the first time and, keen to know what the future held for her, she consulted an old gypsy woman.
'"Why, my dear, I do believe you will have seven babies," said the gypsy woman studying her hand. The fine lady went away and thought no more about it.
'When the time came for her child to be born, a midwife was summoned to attend the labour. "What have we here?" she exclaimed as she delivered first one baby, then another and another.
'"Oh no!" cried the young wife, remembering the gypsy's prophecy. "That can't be so!" She wept. But sure enough, one by one, seven little baby girls were born and laid into a basket.
'The fine lady was upset fit to die. "I don't care what the gypsy prophesied; I will only keep one baby. Take the other six away," she begged the midwife. "Drown them in the river, but whatever you do, don't tell my husband," and she pressed a purse of silver into her hand.

To download and read the rest of the first chapter for free, click here.

The Brief Facts; Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.

Everyone has been waiting for the arrival of Harry's final journey, and sicne I woke up at 7o'clock in the morning on Saturday the 21st to get this book, I thought I might as well share my views on how brilliant Harry's ending was.

This is not a fully pledged review like your average one.
I have chosen to make it very thin, as not to reveal too much. I am sure people who have read it will agree with me.
I am only just giving you the facts that may help you understand the story. It took me a while to fully understand the many plots and twists. Once you do, you will also feel the way I do.

If the Half Blood Prince left you with many questions, be sure that your answers will be revealed.
The wonder of the Horcruxes has been enbedded in many minds, including my own. Know very well that the magnificent story plots reveal these. We were left with the knowledge of seven horcruxes. This was revealed very thoroughly by Dumbledore before his death.
The Horcruxes played a huge part throughout this book.
A Horcrux being this; An object that gave Voldemort the capability to place part of his soul into safe keeping. The horcruxes were mostly valuable items to Voldemort. Whether they were entwined in his life as a young student at Hogwarts, or something that was somehow involved with him deeply.
They could be hidden, anywhere. As we found out in book six.
I am only giving clues/facts that we already know from the past books, for I want to give a chance for those who haven't finished it yet.

Slytherin's Locket (enclosed) is the first locket that Harry destroys in this book, since it was left off from the last book. But with what I am not saying.
During the last six books, two of the horcruxes were already destroyed. Tom Riddle's Diary (Chamber of Secrets) and Graunt's Ring (Half Blood Prince), the one Dumbledore had the pleasure of wearing.
The remaining four will slowly reveal themselves, one clue to help solve some; Hufflepuff.

The idea of the Hallows intrigued me very much, it proved that J K Rowling was more intelligent than I thought she was. Clever enough to place side by side this one question; Hallows or Horcruxes? I will not explain the Hallows, for I believe it is one of the more important sides of the story, and it is for you to unveal.
The clue for this one; The cover. At the very top of the spine. That is all I will say.

Two deaths? J K Rowling knew that these deaths would effect us all. It shocked me also when one of my friends told me before I had read the part. It seems sad, that we all suspect the main characters, who I will not announce, to die. But it is even more upsetting when we find out the people who did die, who gave their life to save one person. Prepare yourselves, death may mourn your minds as well as the characters.

Despite all of these large plots, the journey that Harry, Ron, Hermione and co. go on is the best. Love, tradgedy, failure, sucession, just some of the things you will feel.
You will truly feel the power of Lord Voldemort, and the hate and anger he brings to the world of magic. You will see the mind of the 'boy who lived' and understand why his journey has been such a long and tiring one.
I enjoyed it so very much. More than I imagined. I plunged my heart this book for three whole days just to find out the glorious ending that came across Harry. It does also upset me, that there will not be another story to intrigue me anymore. I feel a sense of loss, for over these past ten years or so, I have always had something to look forward to.
I give my praise to J K Rowling, a brilliant author and one that we should all praise for years to come. This is by far the best book, the one that carries the answers and the burden to our questions and hopes.
I do hope you all love this book, for one thing can be sure; Harry is truly, the boy who lives.

Brick Lane

Mymensingh District, East Pakistan, 1967

An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began - began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly - her mother Rupban felt an iron fist squeeze her belly. Rupban squatted on a low three-legged stool outside the kitchen hut. She was plucking a chicken because Hamid's cousins had arrived from Jessore and there would be a feast. 'Cheepy-cheepy, you are old and stringy,' she said, calling the bird by name as she always did, 'but I would like to eat you, indigestion or no indigestion. And tomorrow I will have only boiled rice, no parathas.

She pulled some more feathers and watched them float around her toes. 'Aaah,' she said. 'Aaaah. Aaaah.' Things occurred to her. For seven months she had been ripening, like a mango on a tree. Only seven months. She put those things that had occurred to her aside. For a while, an hour and a half, though she did not know it, until the men came in from the fields trailing dust and slapping their stomachs, Rupban clutched Cheepy-cheepy's limp and bony neck and said only coming, coming to all enquiries about the bird. The shadows of the children playing marbles and thumping each other grew long and spiky. The scent of fried cumin and cardamom drifted over the compound. The goats bleated high and thin. Rupban screamed white heat, red blood.

Hamid ran from the latrine, although his business was unfinished. He ran across the vegetable plot, past the towers of rice stalk taller than the tallest building, over the dirt track that bounded the village, back to the compound and grabbed a club to kill the man who was killing his wife. He knew it was her. Who else could break glass with one screech? Rupban was in the sleeping quarters. The bed was unrolled, though she was still standing. With one hand she held Mumtaz's shoulder, with the other a half-plucked chicken.

Mumtaz waved Hamid away. 'Go. Get Banesa. Are you waiting for a rickshaw? Go on, use your legs.'

Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with a man considerably older than her - a man whose expectations of life are so low that misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor: more able to deal with the ways of the world, and a better judge of the vagaries of human behaviour. She makes friends with another Asian girl, Razia, who is the conduit to her understanding of the unsettling ways of her new homeland.

To read a review of Brick Lane by Monica Ali, click here.

Martyn Pig

'Did I hate him? Of course I hated him. But I never meant to kill him.' With his father dead, Martyn has a choice. Tell the police what happened - and be suspected of murder. Or get rid of the body and get on with the rest of his life. Simple, right? Not quite. One story leads to another. Secrets and lies become darker and crazier. And Martyn is faced with twists and turns that leave him reeling. Life is never easy. But death is even harder.

To download a free extract from this Carnegie and Branford Boase prize winner, click here.

To find out more about the author, click here.

A Swift Pure Cry

A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd is a beautiful, lyrical novel about teenager, Shell, whose life begins to fall apart when her mother dies. Tired of looking after her younger brother and sister and bored by the routines of school and church, Shell skips school and hangs around with her friends smoking and cracking jokes and looking for chances that will confirm their growing up.

But what follows is not a simple transition into adulthood but the tragedy of Shell’s hidden pregnancy and the stillbirth of her baby, amid the hypercritical and chaotic thinking of the small Irish community in which she is growing up. No wonder this was also the winner of a prestigious prize this year - the Branford Boase Award 2007.

Click here to download a free extract from the novel.

The best ever Carnegie award winner!!!

This week, this year's Carnegie Award winner was announced. The Carnegie award is the country's premier prize for teenage fiction. The 2007 winner is called Just In Case and was written by Meg Rosoff (who also wrote How I Live Now - last week's recommendation).

This is what the Carnegie judges had to say about the book:

A story that deals with anxiety, depression and coming of age that has real emotional resonance. This is a distinctive and outstanding book written in an intelligent, yet spare style. There is an ‘edginess’ to the way the author writes; the result is clever and bold. The character of the teenage boy is conveyed in an interesting way and is not at all stereotypical. This is a story of survival in the modern world that is utterly compelling.

Also, this week, the Carnegie panel looked at ALL the Carnegie award winners over the last 70 years, and decided on the ONE book which they felt outshone ALL the others: the Carnegie of Carnegies! And this prestigious and unprecedented prize went to Northern Lights, the first of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy.

An extraordinary journey into a fantasy world, it follows Lyra, accompanied by her daemon, Pantalaimon, on a quest to find Lyra's friend, Roger, who has disappeared. Their travels lead them to the bleak splendour of the North where a team of scientists are conducting unspeakably horrible experiments. The novel is soon to hit the silver screen, with The Golden Compass due in cinemas in December.

You can download an EXTRACT from both of these prize-winning novels by clicking here.

To view the whole list of the Top 10 Carnegies EVER, click here.

...everything changed because of Edmond.

My name is Elizabeth but no one's ever called me that. My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice. Even my life so far has been plain. More Daisy than Elizabeth from the word go.

But the summer I went to England to stay with my cousins everything changed. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed lots of things, but I can't remember much about life before the war anyway so it doesn't count in my book, which this is.

Mostly everything changed because of Edmond.

And so here's what happened.

• Click here to read the rest of this extract from How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.
• Click here for an excellent review of the novel.
• Click here to read about the responses to the book by three different Reading Groups, including one from a secondary school in Debden, not far from Leyton.