I love the set up of this book.

This little book of poetry is written as if by two school pupils who have been paired together for a poetry writing assignment.

They very slowly and timidly become sure friends, learning a lot about each other, their differences, their similarities, and the world.

The book strongly questions and explores racism and a few other societal issues but in a very gentle and artistic way.

A simple and beautiful way to introduce foreign tales and culture to children. Stories like this are easy for children to pick up and understand, and this book perfectly adds in small amounts of Hispanic language and cultural artwork.

Having studied this story in Latin GCSE I appreciate the effort of making this a story suitable for children to understand.

It is simply a very long and very confusing epic!
To be able to shorten and simplify this tale to make it child appropriate is a feat this book does well.

I really enjoyed this little book, but I also think it could have been so much more.

The story is that of a modern day red riding hood, who goes out to find a wolf. But of course there haven’t been wild animals in the last remaining forest for a long time.

Red riding hood finds out that the animals need more trees to survive and wants to help to make the forest better again.

The story is very sweet, a wonderful piece for the classroom with ways to link all get the curriculum, but especially for science or English.

I just wish that the story had developed a little further, and the ending had been a little happier. But I suppose maybe that might be the whole point...

I’ve found another gem!

A have a soft spot for rhyming which really does help in my love for this book, but it was actually immensely funny and clever.

A spacey twist on the classic story, Cinderella is a space mechanic who dreams of fixing rockets. After the usual mess of running from the prince and being found again, she refuses his hand in marriage and is appointed as royal mechanic instead.

The language is wonderfully witty, whilst also being complex enough to make children ask questions and want to find out more about space. A great resource for the classroom.

A beautiful collection of classical European fairytales told through the mind of a modern day European.
The stories follow the traditional format of a fantasy tale with strong moral (each of which can be found as a brief introductory scented W at the beginning of the stories) but with an healthy dose of wider inclusion and diversity in characters and settings.

I have of course heard of this book before, but it had never really come up on my radar. I suppose, as I wasn't much of a reader until secondary school (where I started reading books for much older audiences than my age), I never really read many children's classics.
I was asked to read this book ready for my Year 2 English Studies, and I loved it! I will be reading again, so will probably make some edits, but first impressions:

The story was relatively obvious and easy to predict even for a child (although I had expected the baby to die in all honesty...), however, I felt it was very well written and enjoyable even in it's simplicity. In fact, something about the simplicity of it helped to give it that classic fairytale feeling.

Considering it was first published in 1998, I loved the image of masculinity shown by the main character and his father. It's rare that I read a children's book with a male child protagonist, and find myself smiling at their empathy, gentleness, and curiosity to learn. I thought that Almond did a good job at still balancing those traits with the football, and rough-games that are the 'classic' boy's playground pastimes, to still allow any child to fully engage with Michael, and maybe even learn how to better express that emotional, creative side he shows.

The heavy topics it centres around are handled beautifully, and with a creativity that will definitely help adults to explain, and children to explore, the emotions and worries throughout.

I honestly can't wait to re-read a little closer to September, and really dig into it a little more!

I absolutely adored this story.
It was gripping, action-packed, and original.
I'm a big fan on fantasy books anyway, so this was exactly to my taste, but I felt the story touched on perfect amounts of morality, action, mystery and humour.

The characters were well developed, not overly irritating but with realistic flaws and actions. The morals were sweet and true to life, and the plot line felt fulfilling and progressively unfolded at a natural pace.

I would definitely consider this as a great recommendation for primary aged children, although it does have small sections that might cause distress for younger children. I would even recommend this novel as a class focus piece as it would be perfect to work with as a cross curriculum teaching resource!