The Anti-Boredom Book of Brilliant Things To do – Andy Seed

Warning: this book will cure all boredom! Pick which pet is worse: a vampire bat, a dead worm or Godzilla; decide what you would do if you were Prime Minister; discover some yucky things that people eat around the world… and much more!

This witty and wacky book is bursting with laugh-out-loud facts, games, quizzes and things to do for hours of fun. Say goodbye to long journey blues!

I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book from the publisher. I thought it might entertain my son for a bit. That turned out to be a bit of an understatement. He’s had it a week and has hardly put it down. It’s gone everywhere with him – Granny’s house, childminder – and he’s been delving into it at any opportunity.

The Anti-Boredom book is jam packed with quizzes, jokes, games, facts and heaps of other interesting things to do to entertain boys and girls alike. Aimed at 7-12 year olds, it has plenty of ideas for occupying their time when stuck somewhere a bit boring, like on a long car journey for example. Most games can be played without even the need for pen and paper, and it’s not much bigger than a regular size paperback so it’s easy to pop in your bag ‘just in case’.

The majority of ideas in the book work best if there are two or more people. This will be great for siblings, but as my son is an only child I did receive rather a barrage of questions myself. This was really my only gripe with the book, and a somewhat petty one at that! However, if Andy Seed ever put his mind to creating an ‘entertain yourself, by yourself’ type book I would snap it up in an instant!

Overall I would thoroughly recommend this book. It’s fun, entertaining and educational in a weird way – who knew a saltwater crocodile weighs 6 times as much as a gorilla?!

My son’s verdict:

It is very good because it really is an anti-boredom book of brilliant things to do. It has lots of funny jokes, funny pictures and fun games. There are games you can play in the car like looking for road signs with the letters of the alphabet on, starting with a, b etc. We played it today but got stuck at Q until we saw Queen’s Avenue! There are good challenges like crossing your eyes, licking your elbow and singing in tune. There are mini-quizzes to see how fit you are or how square your eyes are! There’s also lots of interesting and funny facts too.
I have totally enjoyed the book, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever had. 5 stars. It could only be better if it was bigger!

By Isaac age 9.

Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens – Alex McCall

Why did the chicken cross the road?
TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

The city of Aberdeen in Scotland is being terrorized by giant robot chickens who want to peck out every last sign of human resistance. The streets are empty, the adults have vanished—and those left behind are fighting for survival.

Jesse and his friends are desperate to save their families and stop the feathered fiends. They hatch a master plan…but can a gang of kids REALLY defeat an army of angry robot chickens?

A hilarious, weird, and wonderful adventure from a cracking new author.

Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens is Alex McCall’s first book, and a totally bonkers, splendid, funny and mad one it is too.

It’s a post-apocalyptic novel with a difference – written for kids, it is light-hearted and funny, with lots of chicken-based puns throughout which I’m quite sure will keep kids chuckling (or groaning!) throughout.

12-year-old Jesse is the narrator and hero of the story. He’s still adjusting to life in Aberdeen under the rule of a bunch of enormous robot chickens, and the disappearance of all the adults. He pairs up with a mysterious girl known as The Ambassador to go in search of other groups of kids in order to fight the chickens and regain control of the city.

The tale is just as wonderfully ridiculous as you’d expect from its title, and I really enjoyed all aspects of it. As it is a kids book I was a little worried about the whole ‘apocalypse’ side of things, but the huge robot chickens aren’t actually murderous, they merely transport any children they catch in their metal stomachs, and take them off to cages.

Both Jesse and The Ambassador are likeable characters with their own unique flaws, and I liked the way they gradually revealed their secrets to each other during the book, explaining a little more about the characters.

Some parts of the book are a bit scary (c’mon, there’s an enormous metal chicken, twice as tall as you standing there slurping your mate down its gullet…), but the pace of the book is fast enough that any peril is soon dealt with and Jesse is back to cracking egg puns (see what I did there?).

This is a great quick read that kids are going to love, and it’s a very accomplished first novel too. All in all, highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, but all opinions are my own.

Black Chalk – Christopher J. Yates

Who knows better than your best friends what will break you?

One game. Six students. Five survivors.

In the intimidating surroundings of Oxford University a group of six friends begin to play a game — an elaborate variant on truth or dare, in which the loser of each round has to perform an embarrassing challenge. The eventual winner stood to walk away with a sizable prize, not simply the money that each had contributed to the pot from their student grants, but a substantial sum staked to them by a mysterious campus organisation known as the Game Society, provided that the students agreed to keep both the Game and its sponsorship secret.

But the game quickly assumes a life of its own: the stakes grow higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, years later, one player, who believed he had fled the Game long ago, discovers that it is far from over.

I picked up this book on the recommendation of my friend Jay (her review is here). Upon reading the synopsis I was immediately grabbed and expected a thrilling ride. I wasn’t mistaken.

This book is centred around 6 new friends who have just met in their first few weeks of university. Jolyon, Chad, Jack, Mark, Amelia and Dee get together to create a private game of dice and cards, with embarrassing forfeits to be performed by the losers. The Game is sponsored by the mysterious Game Soc, and as the rounds progress the challenges become more personal and more mortifying, resulting rather predictably in the gradual loss of trust and breakup of the friendships.

The narration of the book flips between the present, in the form of diary entries by an unnamed survivor of the Game, and past, the ‘confession’ as to what actually happened during that dark year. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book, trying to second guess which of the six appear in the present and what occurred during those key events that are mysteriously mentioned in passing.

Whilst I really enjoyed the story, I did struggle a bit to relate to the characters. They seemed rather one dimensional and underdeveloped. Although this is a story where the main characters are subject to many psychological issues, they don’t seem to develop or progress, and rather just suddenly change. Mark is a case in point, and I never quite ‘got’ his character. Jolyon too confused me, and I couldn’t always grasp the characters motivations.

Having said that, the book kept me gripped despite these flaws and I couldn’t help but keep turning those pages. All in all, this is a very accomplished debut novel, and I’ll look forward to seeing more from this author.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

DAY ONE The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. WEEK TWO Civilization has crumbled. YEAR TWENTY A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild. STATION ELEVEN Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan – warned about the flu just in time; Arthur’s first wife Miranda; Arthur’s oldest friend Clark; Kirsten, a young actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed ‘prophet’. Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, this is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything – even the end of the world.

Station Eleven tells the interlocking stories of Jeevan, Kirsten, Miranda and Clark, four separate individuals linked by one common factor – Arthur Leander, world famous actor. The web of stories takes place over the span of twenty years, both before and after the apocalyptic collapse of society due to a 99% deadly strain of Georgia flu.

Now, I do like a good apocalypse (!), I’ve read a few, and I have to say that Station Eleven ranks right up there with some of the best. I enjoyed the way the book began with the non-apocalypse death of Arthur, the lynchpin to the rest of the characters, and then jumped around in time to allow us to see how life changed so drastically for the survivors. Despite these jumps around in time, at no point did I feel confused – the story is well laid out, with lots of little teasers and clues to both past and future events.

The characters were generally well developed. I felt a certain affinity with Kirsten, just 8 at the time of the collapse, who watched Arthur die on stage and later became obsessed with his life, searching abandonded buildings for gossip magazines that might contain pictures of him and his family.

I felt that Jeevan started as a very strong character, but seemed to become sidelined part-way through the story. I was expecting him to become more involved later in the plot, but that didn’t seem to materialise and I was left feeling slightly disappointed that we didn’t see more of him in a central role.

Conversely, Clark, an old friend of Arthur’s, doesn’t properly appear until nearly a third of the way through the book, although he is mentioned in passing a couple of times before that. He eventually becomes quite an important character, and I wish we’d seen him a little more of him in the earlier parts of the story.

Having said that, Station Eleven was one of those books that I didn’t want to put down – I read it late into the night until I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more, simply because I couldn’t bear to wait to find out what happened next. There’s not much higher praise you can give a book than ‘un-put-downable’, even if that’s not a proper word 😉

I’ve deliberated over my rating for a while. It’s not a 5* as I only give that rating to books that in my view can’t be improved. Neither is it a 4* – it’s way better than that. So I’m going to go for a good solid 4.5*, and say that this book is highly recommended if you like a nice apocalypse, a good dystopian, or just a clever interweaving of characters and events over a period of time.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, but all opinions are my own.

PENGUINPIG – Stuart Spendlow, illustrated by Amy Bradley

PENGUINPIG is a picture-book story about a little girl who reads of an exciting creature known as a penguinpig on the Internet. Filled with delight and intrigue, she decides that she must go and find one.

However, her parents are far too busy to take her and so she decides that she will sneak out and find the adorable penguinpig all on her own. Carefully, she follows the instructions from the website – but does she find her delightful penguinpig?

I was lucky enough to win a signed copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. It’s a gorgeous little picture book with a target age of around 5-7. As my reluctant reader son is just 9 I figured it might be a little young for him, but he enjoyed it nevertheless and sat and read it very happily, giggling away to himself. He enjoyed the rhymes and said it was very funny and the pictures were really good.

The whole story is written in rhyming couplets, which will make for a wonderful out-loud story time for little ones, and the illustrations are second to none. Bright and bold, they really bring the story to life as we follow a little girl who discovers a penguinpig on the internet and sets off to the zoo on her own to find it. Her parents are simply too busy to help her, and I did have to have a secret (but guilty) chuckle at the following lines:

“Mum!” I shouted, “Dad!” I cried,
“You’ve got to see this site!”
“We’re very busy, darling,
We’ll look tomorrow night.”

Ahem.

It’s great to see a book with such a strong message about modern technology (don’t believe everything you see on the internet!) aimed at young kids. I think this book is going to be suitable to be read to pre-school children too – younger and younger children have access to the internet now with the advent of iPads and 3G phones, and I think starting internet education early is going to be key to keeping them safe as they get older.

Huge congratulations to Stuart Spendlow and Amy Bradley for producing a really wonderful, funny and positive book. I highly recommend this for anyone with young kids with internet access, but also for libraries, schools and pre-schools too. 5 stars.

If… – David J. Smith

If… A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers

If the Solar System’s planets were shrunk down to the size of sports balls, and Earth were the size of a baseball, what size would the other planets be? If your lifespan was represented by a pizza divided into twelve slices, how many slices would represent your time spent in school? These questions and more are explored in this innovative and visually appealing book about very big concepts made accessible when scaled down to kid-friendly size.

This is a lovely non-fiction kids book full of facts and figures about size and scale. If the Milky Way was the size of a dinner plate, how big would the solar system be? If the 3.5 billion years of Earth’s history was reduced to 24 hours, when would modern humans appear? Questions like this are dealt with in this book, allowing kids to reduce difficult concepts into more manageable and understandable metaphors.

The full colour, full page illustrations are wonderful and really help to consolidate the facts in the text. I feel this is a book that’s worth spending a bit of time over, maybe just concentrating on a few concepts at a time, as it can be a little heavy going all at once. It takes a little time even as an adult to wrap your head around some of it!

My 9 year old son read about half of it in 20 minutes or so before getting slightly overwhelmed. He enjoyed the astronomy sections the most. I think this book would be great in a school library, or as a reference guide for certain school topics. It’s probably not one to sit and devour all in one sitting.

At the end of the book there are some notes for parents and teachers to encourage discussion, with suggested activities to go along with some of the subjects broached. This is a great touch and would certainly aid understanding of tricky topics in a very visual way.

My son’s views:

Good points: has lots of information in it and has good pictures to explain it.
Bad points: it has too much information.
Would you recommend it? If you like books about good information then it would be a good book for you to buy.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and my son’s 🙂

I Need a New Butt! – Dawn McMillan (illustrated by Ross Kinnaird)

A young boy suddenly notices a big problem — his butt has a huge crack! So he sets off to find a new one. Will he choose an armor-plated butt? A rocket butt? A robot butt? Find out in this quirky tale of a tail, which features hilarious rhymes and delightful illustrations. Children and parents will love this book — no ifs, ands, or butts about it!

I asked for this book from NetGalley at the request of my 9 year old son who loved the title and the look of it. Having read it, I’d say it’s actually aimed at kids a bit younger than him. It’s a very cute picture book with some wonderful illustrations, ideal for story time (but probably not for bedtime as I suspect far too much hilarity would ensue with repeated use of the word ‘butt’!).

This rhyming story is very sweet, but slightly odd – the boy is searching for potential replacements for his bum, which has a crack and therefore needs to be replaced… Ok, I can go with that, but the ending is a bit strange, and neither I nor my son realised it was the final line, and both turned the page expecting more, which was rather disappointing.

Here’s what my son thought:

Good points: it rhymed and it was very funny because he was a bit stupid thinking that his bum was broken. The pictures were funny.
Bad points: the ending was a bit weird.
Would you buy it? Yes, because it’s quite a funny book.
Rating: 4/5

I’d recommend this book for the young and young-at-heart, and anyone who thinks bums and farts are funny (pretty much anyone in my social circle then 😉 ). The illustrator has really done this book justice, and I’m pretty sure the little’uns will love it.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own, apart from those of my son, which are his 😉

Stars of the World Cup – Illugi Jökulsson

World Soccer Legends

Everything you need to know about most exciting clubs and the best players on the planet.

Learn all about twenty-eight of the best players competing for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, from unstoppable scorers like Messi and Ronaldo to crafty playmakers like Iniesta and Modric, and ironclad defenders like Philipp Lahm and Thiago Silva.

Get the inside scoop on their strengths and weaknesses heading into the showdown in Brazil.

See incredible action shots of their on-field wizardry.

I requested a copy of this book from NetGalley as I thought my 9 year old son might enjoy it, and oh boy was I right! As soon as he got his hands on it, he was gone for a good half an hour, and this from a boy who usually only reads under duress.

Having finally managed to get a look at the book myself (!) I have to say, it’s really great, and ideal for kids who are into football. It details 28 World Cup stars, their background, nicknames and good and bad points. I like the fact that it’s clear some of the stars have come from very underprivileged backgrounds, showing that anyone can make it in football if they have the talent.

With stars such as Rooney, Messi and my son’s favourite, Neymar, there are plenty of well known names (even for me, and I’m really not bothered about football!) to investigate. Each double page spread is devoted to a different player, with gorgeous full colour photos of each in an ‘action’ shot – much better than a series of posed photos.

Here’s what my son says:

Good points / bad points? It had lots of information about the players but it didn’t have a player from every single team.
Who would like it? Football fans age 7-10.
Should I buy it? Yes, because it has lots of good facts about lots of different players. The pictures are very good because they are mostly of them shooting, except for the goal keeper who was saving a goal.
Rating: 4.5/5

Personally, I feel this book is suitable for a wider audience than my son! Because of the quality of the pictures, even early readers would like this book, and I suspect football fans up to the age of 12 or so would still enjoy reading the facts on each player.

Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, but all opinions are mine (and Isaac’s!).

Touched – Joanna Briscoe

A chilling, deeply creepy Hammer novella by Joanna Briscoe, author of the acclaimed, bestselling novel, Sleep With Me.

Rowena Crale and her family have moved from London.

They now live in a small English village in a cottage which seems to be resisting all attempts at renovation.

Walls ooze damp, stains come through layers of wallpaper, celings [sic] sag.

And strange noises – voices – emanate from empty rooms.

As Rowena struggles with the upheaval of builders while trying to be a dutiful wife and a good mother to her young children, her life starts to disintegrate.

And then, one by one, her daughters go missing …

Ok, first off, let’s be honest. The preview ‘blurb’ sounds great – really up my alley, but honestly, could the person who wrote it not have run it through spell check first? It’s never a good sign when the preview contains a spelling error. So, having noted that, I was duly worried about how the actual book would be produced. However, I needn’t have concerned myself. This novella is well produced, with no weird spelling or grammatical issues (that I spotted, anyway!). I don’t know about you, but I do find that very off putting in a story.

The tale itself is a rather elegant ghost story set in the sixties, with several different areas of focus – oh, how to explain without giving away spoilers?! Well, I shan’t. I’ll just say that I really enjoyed this novella and found it a little different to most standard ghost stories I’ve read in the past.

I thought that the start of the book seemed to jump around a bit and I found it a bit of a struggle to stay focused on it. I did read this over the course of a few days and I have to say that my brain wasn’t begging me to pick it up again at any opportunity, like with some books. Having said that though, the second half of the book seemed to settle down and I enjoyed it a lot more. I particularly liked the character of Eva, a rather eccentric little girl with a lot of personality, who was very well written.

Overall, this is a great little novella, certainly worthy of a read if you enjoy ghost stories or tales of a supernatural flavour.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free e-copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. However, all opinions are my own.

Diurnal – Kim White

A deeply affecting and elegantly written short story, Diurnal paints a vivid portrait of a family whose lives are haunted by loss and shaped by grief.

After a fatal accident takes place in their backyard, Susan and Brian decide to try, one last time, to start a family. Against the backdrop of destruction of the natural world, the menace of high-voltage transformers, and unsettling signs and omens, Susan bonds with her unborn child, recording her hopes for him in the diaries she has been keeping since childhood. When the pregnancy ends in tragedy, Susan struggles to maintain her sanity. In her determination to remember her son and build the family she has dreamed of, she sacrifices the relationship she was meant to have with her daughter.

 

This is a gentle and poignant short story. The first half is narrated in the first person by Susan, a jewellery maker desperate for a child after a series of miscarriages, and follows her from events just before the pregnancy up until the birth.

Although I personally did not really take to Susan as she often seemed unnecessarily angry or rude to others around her, I can understand why she was like that. I also felt that the second half of the story, narrated by Susan’s daughter, lacked something. Maybe it was the big jump in timeframe, or the fact that neither the daughter or the husband seemed like fully formed characters, but I didn’t enjoy the second half of the story as much as the first.

Having said that, I did enjoy the story overall and would recommend it as a nice quick read.