ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell 144 pp. Penguin Group. £8.99. (Ages 13 and up) ISBN 9780141182704 Rating: ? Stars This book is set in a future when animals are much cleverer than now. And because of their cleverness, the pigs started a revolution against the humans. Pigs could speak fluently in English unlike the other animals, and that gave them the power to be leaders. But, the story that follows only happened a few years after that... Their first leader, Old Major, was kind and fair who knew animals should be equal. But when Napoleon became the leader it was very unpleasant. He made a rule that allowed the pigs to have better food and that forced all of the other animals to work crazily hard every day and night. That wasn’t enough, Napoleon wanted more power. He decided to kill his brother, Snowball, so that he would be the only leader. Snowball was admired because he came up with a clever idea to build windmill. Sn...
THE MOON'S REVENGE By Joan Aiken. Illustrated by Alan Lee. 32 pp. Red Fox. Out-of-print. (Ages 4 and up) ISBN 9780099750109 Rating: ? Stars Seppy is the seventh son of the seventh son. He's seven when the story starts. Seppy helps his father build carts and carriages for his work. He wants to play the fiddle and he wanted to be the best fiddler in the world. He has a sister called Octavia and six older brothers. He's only aloud to practise the fiddle on Sundays and holidays. He plays the fiddle to stop bad things happening. He had to go barefoot for seven years. The second character I'm going to describe is the beast. The monster has seven feet. From far away it looks like a horned whale. The monster had two horns on its head. The monster was wearing seven shoes, which where Sep's shoes from when he was one to seven. It smelt damp, sickly rotting and weedy like flowers that had been in water for too long.The monster was very frightening.
