Excellent Reads

THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE By Jacqueline Kelly 352 pp. Square Fish. $7.99. (Ages 9 and up) ISBN 9780312659301 Rating: ? Stars       I came to read this book because my mom had bought it from America. She had read some of it first. She thought it would be nice if I read a book about a girl born in the same place as herself, Texas, and liked that it talked about evolution and nature.       You might be wondering what this book is about. It is about a girl called Callie. She turns into a naturalist, but then faces the problem of what she is expected to do. The moral off this book is that it’s not really fair that girls are expected to be house wives. The truth is that some girls want to do other things for their life. I completely agree with the author’s point. This book teaches you about naturalists and how a long time ago in Texas girls weren't allowed to be naturalists but had to be housewives. A naturalist is a pe...

If you're a writer, and even if you're not, you've probably heard the phrase, 'write what you know.' Some people will tell you it's good advice. Some people will look at it as a rule and argue ways to break it. I find it useful and yet sometimes I also find it difficult advice to follow. It's impossible, especially if you write fantasy or science fiction to always write what you know. And yet, even then it's good advice for writing believable characters, compelling details, and for walking that narrow line between sense of wonder and suspension of belief. Wide Open is contemporary fantasy set in the present day US. There are ghosts. There's magic. Hallie, the main character is a soldier who is returning home from Afghanistan. Those are not things I know. Though some of them are things I can know, that I can research. But there are also things in Wide Open that I know or have known or almost know. A friend once told me that the better piece of...

GRACE By Morris Gleitzman 192 pp. Puffin. £6.99. (Ages 12 and up) ISBN 9780141336039 Rating: ? Stars We borrowed this book twice from the library but the first time I didn’t read it because I was busy reading other books. You may think that I finally started reading this book because it had a really cool cover or because the name sounded exciting. If you did think one these things then you are completely wrong because the front cover was only a picture of a girl and the name of the book was the name of the girl, Grace. The reason I read this book was actually because I had been to the Red House Book Awards and he was one of the people that might have won the award, so I thought it must be a good book then and decided to read the book. You are probably wondering what the book is about. It is about a girl called Grace who starts doing what she calls ‘sins’. In her church the dad always gets the blame. Because of this her dad gets expelled, which means he has to go away and never gets...

RUNNING WILD By Michael Morpurgo 196 pp. HarperCollins. £6.99. (Ages 8 and up) ISBN 9780007267019 Rating: 5 Stars       Michael Morpurgo is FAMOUS. Michael Morpurgo is so famous that at today’s book fair everyone was shoving past each other to try and find one of his books. However, “Running Wild” sat on my shelf for over a year unread. It is by Michael Morpurgo and I am not interested in most of his books, unlike most people in my class who have his whole (or nearly whole) collection. Michael Morpurgo’s books are less appealing to me for three reasons: most of them are about domestic animals, most of them start off with an adventure but then they quickly detour into drama before getting on with the story, and because he uses some description that is not needed.       This book was set in the Indonesian rainforest. It is about a boy named Will who is saved from a tsunami by a very unusual elephant called Oona. Will has to ...