Stories by Conan Doyle, Mansfield & Wilde

It was a book you wanted to take on a lazy getaway and spend a sticky afternoon reading: Stories for Summer lettered in gold on a blue leather hardcover depicting a girl near the water in pastel shades. I bought it for the authors: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield and Oscar Wilde. OK – …

Book review: “Between Worlds: Folktales of Britain & Ireland” by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Fifty folktales – Irish, British, Welsh and Scots – illustrated and bound in a stunning hardcover edition you want to treasure for years. What could be better? Only having the folktales retold by a master storyteller like Kevin Crossley-Holland 🙂 This lovely book, beautifully illustrated by Frances Castle, features fifty tales in six categories: magic …

Book review: “Outcast” by Rosemary Sutcliff

I suppose I was destined to become a huge Rosemary Sutcliff fan. Not only are most of her novels set in Roman Britain (YESSSSSSS), but she also created one of my earliest and biggest fictional crushes. (After nine years and three readings, I’m still not over him.) She’s one of those authors I've come to …

Book review: “Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis

No, I was never big on sci-fi or dystopia. I’m a devourer of fantasy and historical fiction, but quite frankly, science fiction used to upset me. In the past five years, I’ve probably read six novels in that genre. But this year something changed, because I’ve read four sci-fi books already. Rather than being totally …

Book Review: “Missing May”

Missing May by Cynthia Rylant won the 1993 Newbery Award, and sat on my tentative wish-list for several years. Recently we found it secondhand 😀 It was truly beautiful: comfortingly familiar, but also different to anything I’ve ever read. Check out the back cover to see what I mean: Since Summer was six years old …