“So. It looks like I’m moving to Liverpool. I know. I can’t wait believe it either. My parents have agreed to let me give it a go. I’ve been offered a fantastic job at the theatre where I did my work experience and the brother of the woman I worked with – hi, Lola! – has a house where I can rent a room.” Anna is about to embark on the most amazing adventure. She has a job, a house share and a life to envy in the city of culture, Liverpool. Or that is what it would seem, however when Anna takes the plunge and uproots her life, nothing…

Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls reinvents fairytales, inspiring children with the stories of 100 heroic women from Elizabeth 1 to Serena Williams. Illustrated by 60 female artists from every corner of the globe, this is the most-funded original book in the history of crowdfunding. *** I knew as soon as I first heard about it that Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls was my kind of book. I can’t remember if I was pregnant with Spike or if I had already had her but I knew that this book would be something I’d be getting for me to read then pass on to her. This was my first reading of the…

“It was Flo’s first day at nursery. She had a packed lunch and a new bow.” When Flo starts nursery, she makes sure she is pleasant and polite. She takes with her a new bow and a packed lunch in a bucket. She soon discovers that buckets are made to go missing. Friends are made to be found.  *** This was quite possibly the cutest little picture book I have ever read. Its about penguins at nursery, one of which is on their first day, and how they make friends. Its the perfect book to introduce to a young one starting nursery who is a little scared or wary of…

“The First Call  The green phone  on the wall in the hall hardly ever rang.  Anyone who wanted to speak to Mom called her cell.  Sane with Angela.” When 7 year old Joe answers the phone, he doesn’t expect to hear his brothers voice. 10 years his senior Ed has been gone a little while, and the news on the other end of the line is not good. Ed has been locked up, and they are convicting him of murder, he’s on death row. 10 years later Ed’s execution date has been set, and this might be the last summer they ever have together.  *** I have always been a…

“‘Happy fifteenth birthday, genius! Just think this time next year you’ll have a first-year Cambridge First and a bunch of mates who might just keep up with you. Love, Gerry'”  Nick is 15. He isn’t a genius, he’s just starting Cambridge next month because he ‘works hard’. He is uprooting the life he and his dad have in London, away from everything he knows, because he has to live within a 3 mile radius of the College, but can’t live in dorms because of his age. He and his workaholic dad will be just fine though, things will carry on as they have in the last 4 years. With Nick…