Children's Books > Jacqueline Wilson Children's Books > 5 GBP to 9 GBP

Advantages: Lovely illustrations, catchy story
Disadvantages: Maybe a bit too long for a younger child

The Princess and The Wizard - another wonderful book by Julia Donaldson. This is another one of my daughter's faves although perhaps the story is a little bit long for her at the moment but she loves the pictures, especially the glittery ones. It's the story of Princess Eliza, who gets captured & whisked away (on her 7th birthday of all days!) by a wicked wizard who likes turning people to stone. Luckily before she is taken away, her fairy godmother ...
...colour and changing her shape'. The wizard isn't impressed and replies 'changing her colour and changing her shape will never help Princess Eliza escape'. So Princess Eliza gets seven chances to escape and each day she changes herself into something new, such as a blue fish, yellow chick, green grasshopper... But the wizard always finds her and takes her back to his castle to do some horrible work for him. On her final chance to escape, Eliza realises ... Read review

Advantages: magical, easy to read
Disadvantages: none

This is the touching story of a young boy called Bertie told by his widowed wife after his death to another young boy called Jack after he finds himself in her garden after running away from boarding school (the same school Bertie went to) Bertie grew up in Africa where met his "Butterfly lion" but had to leave him when he got sent to England to go to boarding school. I don't want to give too much of the story away but i think any children (or ...
...which would be easy as the print is large and there are only 127 pages which contain some non-coloured pictures(by Christian Birmingham), which help illustrate and capture the magic of the story wonderfully. I got made to read it for my Uni course, but i am so glad it was this book as its such a beautiful story and had me actually crying in parts! This is the first Michael Morpurgo book i have read, but i will certainly be reading a few others ... Read review

Advantages: Sweet story of love and family
Disadvantages: None!

...is beautifully written and illustrated. I think this book is popular with children as well as adults because of the fact that the story is universal and recognisable to all. The book tells the story of Billy and his Mum. Billy gets later and later for nursery as he is distracted by playing with his toy rabbit, rather than getting ready to leave. His Mum gets increasingly annoyed with him and when he drops his lunchbox in the rain and it bursts open, ...
...because of it's positive message. I think it would be a great book for PSHE because it explains the importance of telling the important people in our lives how we feel about them. It would be a good book for getting children to talk about their feelings and sharing in circle time how they be more considerate to people both at home and school. I also think this book could be lovely on tape perhaps recorded by important people in a child's life, such ... Read review

Advantages: The next in a heavenly series for the vamp fiction fans
Disadvantages: Out of character, out of sync and out of it's depth

...about the details here. Breaking Dawn has been an entirely different beast. I've looked forward to this book for months and had to begin reading it as soon as I could. I felt the beginning was garbled, the events ploughed through as fast as possible, like the author had to get certain events over and done with but couldn't make it so meaningful as in the first book. Edward and Bella have moved on, to one of the possible natural next steps, lets ...
...New Moon kept the candle alight, Eclipse gave it a longer wick but Breaking Dawn has drowned the flame and I think Stephenie Meyer will struggle to regain some of her loyal flowing if the next book does not move back onto the safer ground upon which Twilight was written. ... Read review

Advantages: Its great fun
Disadvantages: you'll end up reading until the end of the series

...of unfortunate events. Book - the ninth: The carnivorous carnival. Just a warning Only buy this book if you own or have read the 8 previous books in the series otherwise it wont make sense: Book 1 - The bad beginning Book 2 - The reptile room Book 3 - The wide window Book 4 - The miserable mill Book 5 - The austere academy Book 6 - The ersatz elevator Book 7 - The vile village Book 8 - The hostile hospital This book, like the other books ...
...to go back and read the previous paragraph to understand what happened, a character may pop-up somewhere in the second half of the book which is an important character, then have to flick back to the first half to find out who he/she is. I first discovered the series in year 5 (aged 9) when my teacher read The bad beginning to the class and i got stuck to the series and bought all 11 books. This book is 286 pages long. This book is about the Baudelaire ... Read review