England (UK)

Voices From The Second World War

The Second World War was the most devastating war in history, resulting in up to eighty million deaths and causing the map of the world to be redrawn. Now, more than seventy years after peace was declared, a variety of people who lived through the war share their memories with children so that their experiences will never be forgotten. In this compelling collection, pilots, evacuees, resistance fighters, and navy sailors, as well as survivors of the Holocaust, prisoners-of-war camps, and the Hiroshima bombing, tell their stories, passing on their personal recollections of historical events to a new generation. The stories in Voices from the Second World War were collected by children from all over the world who met with people who wanted to share experiences from the war. These stories, which take place from the outbreak of war to the Hiroshima bombing, capture the spirit and courage of a generation of people affected by World War II.

The Day War Came

A powerful and necessary picture book – the journey of a child forced to become a refugee when war destroys everything she has ever known. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, war came. Imagine it turned your town to rubble. Imagine going on a long and difficult journey – all alone. Imagine finding no welcome at the end of it. Then imagine a child who gives you something small but very, very precious … When the government refused to allow 3000 child refugees to enter this country in 2016, Nicola Davies was so angry she wrote a poem. It started a campaign for which artists contributed drawings of chairs, symbolising a seat in a classroom, education, kindness, the hope of a future. The poem has become this book, movingly illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, which should prove a powerful aid for explaining the ongoing refugee crisis to younger readers.

Featured in WOW Review Volume XII, Issue 2 and Volume XI, Issue 2.

The Freemason’s Daughter

“Saying goodbye to Scotland is the hardest thing Jenna MacDuff has had to do– until she met Lord Pembroke. Jenna’s small clan has risked their lives traveling the countryside as masons, secretly drumming up support and arms for the exiled King James Stuart to retake the British throne. But their next job brings them into enemy territory: England. Jenna’s father repeatedly warns her to trust no one, but when the Duke of Keswick hires the clan to build a garrison on his family estate, it seems she cannot hide her capable mind from the duke’s inquisitive son, Lord Alex Pembroke. Nor her growing attraction to him. When he begins to return those forbidden feelings, she finds that she’s thrust into a precarious position– keeping her newfound friendship to the duke’s son a secret from her father, while concealing her father’s treason from an increasingly attendant Lord Pembroke. But there’s a covert plan behind the building of the garrison. Will Jenna decide to keep her family’s mutinous secrets and assist her clan’s cause? Or protect the you man she’s falling for and keep him safe? No matter which she chooses, someone will pay a deadly price”–Jacket.

The Boy Who Went To Mars

On the day that Stanley’s mom takes a work trip overnight, Stanley decides to leave planet Earth. But when his spaceship touches down again in the backyard, a young martian crawls out, proclaiming to Stanley’s dad that residents of Mars don’t wash before dinner, eat their vegetables, or brush their teeth. It just so happens that martians tend to act out in school, too. . . . With whimsy and sympathy for a familiar dilemma, Simon James ushers us into the coping fantasies of an imaginative, sensitive kid — and shares the pleasure of his sheepish reunion with a most accepting family.

Hide And Seek

When their dog goes missing, Cy and Poppy play hide-and-seek in the woods to distract themselves from feeling sad. Poppy counts to ten and looks for Cy, but she can’t find him anywhere. She keeps thinking she’s found him, but it’s never him. Then there’s a rustling in the woods. Is it Cy. . .or something else? A reassuring tale of sibling love with surrealist artwork by author-illustrator Anthony Browne.

Mortal Heart

Annith has watched her gifted sisters at the convent come and go, patiently waiting her own turn to serve Death. But her worst fears are realized when she discovers she is being groomed by the abbess as a seeress, to be forever sequestered in the rock and stone womb of the convent. Feeling sorely betrayed, Annith decides to strike out on her own.

Dark Triumph

Sybella’s duty as Death’s assassin in 15th-century France forces her return home to the personal hell that she had finally escaped. Love and romance, history and magic, vengeance and salvation converge in this thrilling sequel to Grave Mercy. Sybella arrives at the convent’s doorstep half mad with grief and despair. Those that serve Death are only too happy to offer her refuge—but at a price. The convent views Sybella, naturally skilled in the arts of both death and seduction, as one of their most dangerous weapons. But those assassin’s skills are little comfort when the convent returns her to a life that nearly drove her mad. And while Sybella is a weapon of justice wrought by the god of Death himself, He must give her a reason to live. When she discovers an unexpected ally imprisoned in the dungeons, will a daughter of Death find something other than vengeance to live for?

Grave Mercy

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others. Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

There’s A Dragon In Your Book

Encourages the reader to manipulate the book to take care of a little dragon that has hatched inside–and to try to put out a fire after the dragon sneezes.