Charis Hughes

Fire Spell by Laura Amy Schlitz
Foggy Victorian London; a rich girl with a distant family; two poor orphans with no family at all; and a blousy, but kindly landlady with a…
Posted 7/01/2013 in Reviews

An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo
The prolific Michael Morpurgo is well known for his animal stories, and for tales dealing with conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to the…
Posted 1/12/2010 in Reviews

Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet
High in the mountains lies a plantation which is workplace to its female tea pickers, yet playground to one young girl, Tashi, and the troop…
Posted 1/09/2010 in Reviews

Frogs Do Not Like Dragons by Patricia Forde
When 5-and-three-quarter-year- old Lola locks herself in the bathroom one day it takes more than her family to coax her out. It even takes…
Posted 1/06/2010 in Reviews

Time Quake by Linda Buckley-Archer
The final instalment in the Gideon trilogy begins with the foppishly dressed aristocrat Lord Luxon, transplanted from his stately English home…
Posted 1/04/2010 in Reviews

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
Vampires, warlocks and runes collide with Nintendo DS and New York garage bands in Cassandra Clare’s popular Mortal Instruments series, though…
Posted 1/12/2009 in Reviews

The Crowded Shadows by Celine Kiernan
This second book of the Moorehawke trilogy follows directly from the events of its highly – and justly acclaimed predecessor, The Poison…
Posted 1/09/2009 in Reviews

Treasure Fever! by Andy Griffiths
Andy Griffiths, the Australian author of the long-running Just! sequence of stories, as well as the spectacularly titled The Day My Bum Went…
Posted 1/06/2009 in Reviews

The Box of Delights by John Masefield
Kay Harker’s Christmas trip home from boarding school is permanently derailed by a mysterious old man he meets on the train, who warns him…
Posted 1/04/2009 in Reviews

The Sky Inside by Clare B Dunkle
Given the worrying number of science-fiction scenarios which involve people poisoning the Earth and retreating underground, into space or…
Posted 1/04/2009 in Reviews

Pip: The Story of Olive by Kim Kane
Olive is a small, pale, rather lonely 12-year-old with an extraordinarily busy and successful single mother and two major problems in her…
Posted 1/12/2008 in Reviews

The Roar by Emma Clayton
Futures don’t come much more dystopian than that which awaits Britain in Emma Clayton’s first book. Following an ‘animal plague’ which causes…
Posted 1/09/2008 in Reviews

The Roar by Emma Clayton
Futures don’t come much more dystopian than that which awaits Britain in Emma Clayton’s first book. Following an ‘animal plague’ which causes…
Posted 1/09/2008 in Reviews

The Way I See It by Nicole Dryburgh
This autobiographical story begins with instructions from its now 18-year-old author not to feel pity, sympathise or cry while reading it. By…
Posted 1/04/2008 in Reviews

Boobela and the Belching Giant by Joe Friedman
This second instalment of the series that began earlier in 2007 with Boobela and Worm takes us on four more adventures with the girl who also…
Posted 1/04/2008 in Reviews

At the House of the Magician by Mary Hooper
A certain boy wizard has recently re-introduced the idea of the ‘philosopher’s stone’ to the world’s attention, but there was a time when the…
Posted 1/12/2007 in Reviews

Larklight by Philip Reeve
Art and Myrtle Mumby are typical Victorian children, growing up lonely and motherless in their shabby ancestral home of Larklight. Myrtle…
Posted 1/04/2007 in Reviews

High in the Clouds by Paul McCartney
This tale of Wirral the Squirrel (a good-hearted woodland creature whose forest home is destroyed by developers and thus resolves to find the…
Posted 1/04/2007 in Reviews

Secret of the Sirens by Julia Golding
Ever looked at your dog whining as you leave the house and thought, ‘I wish I could tell him I’ll be back by six’? This thought seems to have…
Posted 1/12/2006 in Reviews