August 2021 Reading

This is not a sponsored review.
I didn't receive anything for writing it. 
Any links are not sponsored either.
I won't be compensated if you click on them.

I’ve decided to do a monthly round up for everything we’ve read each month. Himself focuses on science articles and forums and news, so he’s not getting a section – books only!

It’s a bit late this month as I got distracted by all the back to school fun and games.

Large boy

Cookie and the Most Annoying Boy in the World by Konnie Huq

It was good, about a girl who wanted a pet cat but wasn’t allowed. She goes to the pet shop every day to look at it, then one day a new kid comes to her school and buys the cat she wanted. She tries to get into her favourite TV show through a school competition and she needs a partner so they make friends.

Large boy would recommend this to 7 to 9 year olds.

The Danger Gang by Tom Fletcher

It was really good, about kids who have cool super powers because they get struck by lightning and then they do cool stuff. For example, they steal back a weather ray made by one of their parents, who’s an inventor, after a business they used to work for stole it. Blah blah blah.

I think all kids who like Tom Fletcher books would like this too.

The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked, The Taylor Turbochaser, Head Kid, The Parent Agency, The Person Controller, Future Friend, and AniMalcolm by David Baddiel

These were all good. Large boy read them all one after the other, borrowed on the library app, in about two weeks flat. He liked them because they were silly, funny and weird. He won’t tell me all their stories because there are too many to explain.

Other things

• Baby Aliens Got My Teacher! by Pamela Butchart
• My Head Teacher Is a Vampire Rat by Pamela Butchart
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Race Against Time by Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Me

The Brigandshaw Chronicles by Peter Rimmer

I’ll be honest, for a long time I was a bit lost as to where I was in this series. Kindle can be confusing. My Kindle said I was at 30% but I wasn’t sure if I was 30% of the way through book 1 in the boxset of the first three books, or 30% of the way through the boxset. When I reached the end of the book it became clear that I’d been 30% through book 1 and there was a lot more to go.

Anyway, this is definitely an epic with a capital E. A massive story spanning years and generations and geographies. It was compelling and really drew me into the character’s lives.

Set in London and South Africa in the main, before the Boer war, it chronicles a few families’ ups and downs and their adventures through adversity and upheaval. The backdrop of frontier Africa shone a light on a period and place in history I knew little about. If you love a BIG story, this definitely for you.

I got the first three books free with Kindle Unlimited, so I know that there’ll be another month’s reading round up sometime in the future entirely dominated by the next in the series.

Small boy

Small boy is just 6. He’s just started year 2 having learned to read over the last two years with the marvellous Read Write Inc phonics scheme. It’s brilliant and he’s made huge progress since we began home learning back in March 2020, especially through the spring of 2021.

In December, he read his RWI and other school books plus a couple from the library. Then, at Christmas, large boy realised he hadn’t got his brother a present and went to fetch some books he’d grown out of… and now small boy gets a proper book review of his own. It was slow going and he needs help with non-phonetic words that he hasn’t learned yet (cancel, circle, automatically, build, though….etc but the list is getting shorter) but he was so proud of himself reading proper “grown up” books. He’s only just back at school so hasn’t brought home a book yet, but I think we’ll just review the chapter books here.

A Super Weird Mystery: Danger at Donut Diner by Jim Smith

Small boy picked this out at the library last month and was reading it to us after he’d had a chapter of the Ickabog each night, then on for a bit longer on his own. It’s been so sweet listening to him muttering to himself and sounding out the long words by himself, giggling at the awful jokes, and criticising the characters’ decision making. He’s taken his time working through it, having started last month. He finally finished, reading to himself. I’m not sure what happened at the end but I suspect the good guys won and the bad guys learned a lesson.