Lucien is seriously ill but when his dad brings him a notebook and he goes to sleep holding it he is transported to a city called Belleza an opposite Venice.
Belleza is 400 years behind Lucien’s England the lagoon where Belleza is has the Duchessa under threat.
Lucien has to keep up with his cancer in his world and life in Belleza.
I liked this book because it was fantasy and it is so exciting and mysterious
You will have to read it to find out all the secrets of Belleza the city of masks.
9/10
This is the fourth in this series, and I read it to see what the fuss was about (and also to get through another book quickly 
) These are easy reads in my mind, and obviously intended to be slightly educational. I just skipped over the gps location bits as there was no real need for it – I’m not a visual reader in that I don’t make mind pictures of where I’m at, so it didn’t make any difference to me to know what the locations my hero was visiting.
Speaking of the hero, I found him rather grating. Not much of a challenge when basically all you do to trek around a continent is pull out your dad’s credit card and charter helicopters, cars and so on. And the hordes of villains chasing him were remarkably incompetent. But I’m probably judging this against novel standards and thinking that this is rather tame – perhaps if I revisited a Willard Price type book I’d find it much in keeping.
Having to do a puzzle at the back of the book before I could read the final chapter was very annoying. Or it would have been, had I not looked at the puzzle and just known the answer straight off – it seems to me that the gps locations are well known enough that for most adults the answers are just general knowledge.
I can see that for some children these books may well entertain and amuse, but for my avid readers they just caused roadblocks and snags. And I’d warn against packing them as holiday reading unless you are going somewhere you have ready internet access, as you can’t read the final chapter and conclusion without it.
This book was sent to us free by the publisher Top That! Publishing as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on my main blog, Making it up.
This book is about a pharaoh who is awoken when two greedy historians who open his coffin and try to find his treasure he is saved by a family and they try to help.
I loved the story it was funny and I thought the pharaoh was really cool and his behavior was really funny.
I give this book 10/10
I read this book as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.
This book is about two children. The girl gets pajamas for her birthday but these are cosmic pajamas.
They end up in the middle of a battle. They have to work hard to save Santa and Christmas itself.
I realy liked the story. It’s good and quite funny, it is a good book. I give this book 10/10
I read this book as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.
This book is told from two perspectives, the bird Dinnah and the boy Mark. It’s about a family who find themselves in some sticky situations.
I loved the story, it made me laugh out loud and it’s a good book.
I give this book 10/10
I read this book as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.
This book is about a girl called Ella.
She lives with her mum and stepdad. At the start her mum is pregnant, after giving birth she goes into a coma and the story is about how Ella copes with the baby, her dad, step dad, mum, friends and enemies. She does a whale project, which helps her to keep going while everything else is confused.
I really liked this book becuase the story was really nice and I felt connected to Ella but they said something that is not true: “can I stop school too ” “no silly its illegal” that is not true at all.
I give this book 9/10
This book was sent to us free by WHSmith as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.
This is the second book in the Astral Legacies series – you can check out the first book reviewed here.
This book is about Asha, who is a 16 year old girl, living in Kolkata (Calcutta). Asha has a very hard life, having worked from age 5 in a factory sewing clothes, being educated by her father in her rest time so that she can read and write.
Asha is selected by the tigers and a stroke of good luck allows her to take on the quest. She is chased, caught and escapes – you’ll have to read the book to find out the rest.
I thought that this book was written differently to the first in that this girl seems to have easier tasks than the boy did, and she seems to get caught more, and I wondered if that was because she is a girl. I wasn’t very happy about this, and it made me less impressed with the book.
Doing the quiz at the end of the book took nearly as long as reading the book – as I like to read in bed, I can’t look up the gps as I go along which spoils the whole story. I think the gps would be better as a back up.
Having said all that, I still really like the story. I give it 7 out of 10.
This book was sent to us free by the publisher Top That! Publishing as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.
This is the first book in the Astral Legacies series.
This series of books is linked to a website where you put in gps codes to find the place names to finish a puzzle to read the last chapter online.
“Aliens are watching Earth and they will exterminate the human race unless the seven artifacts that make up the Astral legacies are returned. now the world’s only hope lies with seven chosen children who must find the missing items. if they fail humankind will be destroyed!”
Marshall is the first chosen child. At the age of fifteen he has to travel around North America going to each place to get the names to find the last place.
I liked the story and it was a good book but I felt that it was interrupted by the gps codes because I came across them too much and I thought that maybe they should be a back up. (For example put puzzle questions or clues in the story and put the gps codes in so that you can look up the answers if you can’t work out the clues.)
I give this book 7/10
This book was sent to us free by the publisher Top That! Publishing as part of a challenge our family is doing to read 100 books in January to try to raise money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped. You can read all about the challenge and our progress on Sodalite’s main blog, Making it up.