L.H. Johnson's Blog, page 29

Malory Towers: New Class at Malory Towers: Four brand-new...

Malory Towers: New Class at Malory Towers: Four brand-new Malory Towers by Enid Blyton My rating: 3 of 5 stars Malory Towers is having a moment. The past couple of years have seen theatre adaptations, news of the rights being sold to the BBC, and the publication of this: four new Malory Towers stories from […]

Flash by Joyce Stranger

Flash by Joyce Stranger My rating: 3 of 5 stars I have been longing to reread some Joyce Stranger for a long time. I wasn’t sure which title I wanted to start with, or indeed what many were about, but I wanted her back in my life. And when it came down to it, I […]

Dancer In The Wings by Lorna Hill

Dancer In The Wings by Lorna Hill My rating: 4 of 5 stars The more I read of the authors I read, the more I become convinced that there is a fine line between ridiculous and genius. So close and yet sometimes, so very much one or the other. It is the problem, I think, […]

Princess Anne by Katherine L. Oldmeadow

Princess Anne by Katharine L. Oldmeadow My rating: 2 of 5 stars Princess Anne by Katharine Oldmeadow is a pleasant enough diversion from the world, but it was fairly unremarkable. It reads like a sort of Sara Crewe / Abbey Girls / Pollyanna mash-up, which is delightful but not the sort of thing I’m ever […]

A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley

A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley My rating: 5 of 5 stars It’s interesting how you can sometimes come to the right book at the wrong time. The first time I read this book, I was in the basement of a dusty university library and I was late for my shift. I skim-read and […]

This Is A Dog by Ross Collins

This Is a Dog by Ross Collins My rating: 4 of 5 stars There’s a lot to love about this vivid, bold and deeply emphatic takeover of a picture book by a dog. It is nominally ‘My First Animal Book’; a Ladybird-esque introduction to a series of animals, but that’s not good enough for the […]

The Key To Flambards by Linda Newbery

The Key to Flambards by Linda Newbery My rating: 2 of 5 stars I have a lot of time for the work of Linda Newbery, and KM Peyton is something of a legend for me, and so the thought of them coming together on this project was something special. The Key To Flambards is ‘Flambards […]

Dobbin And The Silver Shoes by Elizabeth Clark

Dobbin and the Silver Shoes: And Other Stories by Elizabeth Clark My rating: 3 of 5 stars This isn’t the first time I’ve come across Elizabeth Clark; I reviewed The Farmer And The Fairy a while back and enjoyed her greatly. She’s a classic sort of storyteller, somebody who delivers stories that feel slightly anachronistic […]

How To Be An Astronaut And Other Space Jobs by Dr Sheila Kanani and Sol Linero

How to be an Astronaut and Other Space Jobs by Dr Sheila Kanani My rating: 5 of 5 stars How To Be An Astronaut isn’t just a ‘space’ book, but rather a ‘careers but in space’ book. It’s a unique twist for a perennial topic in children’s non-fiction; space, the Romans, the Tudors and animals […]

Brave Deeds For British Boys by Charles D. Michael

And now for something completely different… I don’t often cover ‘boy’s own’ books, because I only have so much nerdiness to go around, but every now and then something slips through the net. The latest one was Brave Deeds For British Boys by Charles D. Michael (c. 1913) which I picked up on the very […]