At the start of this book an important question is posed – do you believe in magic? However, what follows does not try to convince the reader one way or the other. Instead, the book opens up the rich history of magic. It is a truly wide-ranging exploration, with beliefs and magic systems from every continent discussed.
A chill blast opens this book, as we enter a world that has only known winter for twelve years, and where no child has been born in this time. There is a sense of desperation around a ceremony of fire lighting created to restore the usual cycles of nature. The villagers are looking for hope wherever they can find it, but quiet and cautious Quill is probably the last person they would expect to discover it in.
Milly McCarthy is back, and chaos is following closely behind! After previous disastrous attempts to find a hobby, Milly is enjoying her role on the local GAA team. When her coach retires, her dad steps in to make sure Milly doesn’t lose this outlet for all that energy we can feel pouring off the page. However, it soon becomes apparent that there is also a dire need for new team uniforms and equipment. The whole community comes together to find a solution, and with Halloween just around the corner, a haunted house fundraiser seems a perfect fit, with Milly helping to lead the charge.
In this instalment of the Nightmare Club series, O’Sullivan inhabits the voice of Annie Graves, master of ceremonies of a spooky sleepover society, where the price of admission is a scary story, and it’s Jack’s turn to tell his.
The unicorn land of the UNIverse is not a place that humans often get to visit, but Neon found her way in through a magic portal and also discovered that she was part unicorn. However, these are not your usual unicorns. It turns out those horned horses we know and love are simply propaganda designed to keep humans ignorant of the UNIverse.
We might expect the Swamp Dragons of the title to be the antagonists of the book, but Ivy’s foe in the third book of the Ivy Newt series takes a most unexpected form following a bubble bath gone awry. Ivy must face an enemy with a schoolyard bully malevolence that is more intimidating than any mythical creature, though there are also some fearsome beasts to face. Ivy does so with bravery and ingenuity, the help of friends old and new, and surely cheered on by anyone reading.
Tasha and her parents have moved to live with her grandfather in a remote valley. The novel opens with her experiencing her first snow and it is more wonderful than she had even imagined. The magic of snow is hard to imagine, but Anderson evokes it beautifully, spreading a chill throughout the pages of this wonderfully wintry tale.
