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giveaway

Twelve nights by Andrew Zurcher – cover reveal and giveaway!

6th January 2018 by Jax Blunt 29 Comments

Note, post contains affiliate links.

book cover for Twelve Nights - dark blue night sky with stars, old fashioned hot air balloon, figures in the basket are silhouetted against the full moonPre order at Amazon

Kay and her little sister, Eloise, never imagined that their standard icy Christmas Eve in Cambridge would be the start of a twelve-night odyssey . . .

Kay’s father is working late – as usual. Fed up, her mother bundles her daughters into the car and drives to her husband’s Cambridge college to collect him herself. But when they arrive, the staff claim that nobody by his name has ever worked there . . .

Kay is puzzled by her mother’s reaction – silent tears, not anger and confusion. And what is even more puzzling is the card on her pillow when they return home:

Will O. de Wisp, Gent. F.H.S.P. and Phillip R. T. Gibbet, Gent. F.H.S.P. K.Bith. REMOVALS.

That night, Kay is woken by voices at her window: the voices of Will and Phillip, the Removers. But they are not human. And Kay shouldn’t be able to see them. Except she can . . .

I love getting my reading year off to a magical start, and Twelve Nights by Andrew Zurcher has all the right ingredients to do this. (I confess I haven’t read beyond the first chapter yet, but that was intriguing…) I was very happy to be involved in the cover reveal on twitter (although I’m embarrassed to admit that I forgot to ask who the cover illustrator is when I was dealing with the emails on my phone, so I can’t share that. Will add in when I track them down!) The book is available for pre order on Amazon (and I’m sure other bookshops) and is due out April 5th 2018.

I’m also very happy to be giving away what was described to me as a ‘lovely bespoke, wrapped copy’ of the book – entry through the rafflecopter widget below. The very best of luck to you all. (Full terms and conditions in the widget, but be aware that giveaway is limited to to 18+ with UK addresses, and prize will be sent direct from the publisher.)

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Filed Under: Book club, current, giveaway Tagged With: Andrew zurcher, giveaway, Puffin books, UKMG

Win one of two Peppa's Laugh & Learn Laptops!

16th June 2017 by Jax Blunt 9 Comments

I know I’ve been quiet here for a little while, but I’m back with a burst of blog posts today, starting with this fabulous giveaway, with two chances to win Peppa’s Laugh & Learn Laptop!

(I’m just too good to you. Doesn’t this look fab?)

Want to learn more about it? Check out the video.

The blurb: Little ones can get busy on their very own laptop. With a lovely chunky design, it has fun shaped buttons and a backlit screen to help children engage with the toy and answer different questions and challenges. Peppa’s Laugh & Learn Laptop features four different games modes to help with colours, numbers, letters and word recognition. The cute laptop also has a lift-up lid and carry handle for play on the go!

• Helps with early number and colour recognition

• Builds communication and vocabulary skills

• Hand-eye co-ordination

• Imaginative play

• Suitable for ages 2+

• Available to buy for £17.99rrp eg Amazon link (affiliate)

More about Peppa Pig Electronic Learning Toys (although I’m guessing most parents of young children will have come across these before anyway).

Peppa Pig fans can look forward to joining Peppa on her adventures with the fun educational learning range from British toy company, Trends UK. Whilst having oodles of fun, the new Peppa Pig Early Learning Toys include lots of activities that help pre-schoolers develop early learning skills including understanding colours, communication, phonetics and numeracy skills through interactive play features.

Colourful, tactile and easy for little hands to use, these engaging toys inspire and educate children to learn letters, numbers, shapes and colours through a variety of fun games and puzzles with Peppa Pig!

Available from retailers now, the Peppa Pig Electronic Learning Toys are suitable from 18 months and over.

Other toys from the Peppa Pig Electronic Learning Toys range include:

Peppa’s Alphaphonics™ Campervan

Peppa’s Laugh & Learn Alphaphonics™

Peppa’s Flip & Learn Phone

Peppa Pig’s Sing & Learn Microphone

Just get on with the competition you’re saying! It’s all in the rafflecopter widget below. Good luck!

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Filed Under: giveaway Tagged With: early learning, giveaway, Peppa's Laugh & Learn Laptop, Peppapigela, TrendsUK

Wishbones by Virginia Macgregor

30th May 2017 by Jax Blunt 3 Comments

Wishbones by Virginia MacGregor

Buy at Amazon (affiliate link)

Feather Tucker has two wishes:

1)To get her mum healthy again

2) To win the Junior UK swimming championships

When Feather comes home on New Year’s Eve to find her mother – one of Britain’s most obese women- in a diabetic coma, she realises something has to be done to save her mum’s life. But when her Mum refuses to co-operate Feather realises that the problems run deeper than just her mum’s unhealthy appetite.

Over time, Feather’s mission to help her Mum becomes an investigation. With the help of friends old and new, and the hindrance of runaway pet goat Houdini, Feather’s starting to uncover when her mum’s life began to spiral out of control and why. But can Feather fix it in time for her mum to watch her swim to victory? And can she save her family for good?

Wishbones is a book with an interesting premise – instead of it being the teenager with the eating disorder, it’s the parent. I found Feather to have a really strong voice, and I’m pleased to be hosting an extract from Wishbones as part of the blog tour today.

***

I was born seven weeks premature. An incubator baby.

Tubes stuffed up my nose, eyes screwed shut, looked like a tiny wrinkly vole.

I wasn’t meant to survive.

When the nurse put me into Dad’s arms for the first time, he said: She’s light as a feather. That’s how I got my name.

Kids at school think it’s funny, the boys especially.

Featherweight champ, they say.

Quack quack, they chant, waddling with their feet turned out.

Tweet tweet, they chirp, flapping their arms.

I was so small that doctors came up from London and peered at me through the incubator walls and journalists

sneaked onto the ward to ask questions and take photos.

I wonder whether that was what made Mum hospitalphobic – the scare she got from me being so small. And then

I think about her other phobias too and where they came from, like her leaving-the-house phobia and her swimming

phobia and her running-out-of-food phobia.

You were the tiniest baby Willingdon had ever seen, Dad’s told me more times than I can remember, like I’d won a prize. Anyway, it’s all turned out to be what Miss Pierce, my History teacher, calls ironic, because people say the same thing of Mum now – except the opposite: that she’s The Biggest Woman Willingdon Has Ever Seen. People sometimes ask me if I’m adopted. I know what they’re thinking: how can someone so small belong to someone who takes up as much space as Mum?

People are still really interested in Mum and her weight and the fact that she hasn’t come out of the house in years. Last summer, I found Allen, a reporter from the Newton News, hiding behind our hedge with his camera angled at Mum’s bedroom window. He said he’d give me a hundred pounds if I let him take a photo. I told him to get lost, obviously.

Anyway, Mum’s been chubby ever since I’ve known her, it’s just the way she is. What’s more important for you to

know is that she’s the best mum in the world. A mum who’s funny and clever and always has time to listen and doesn’t obsess about stuff like homework and being tidy – or eating vegetables. And although she’s a little on the large side, she’s beautiful, like proper, old-fashioned movie-star beautiful: long, thick, wavy hair, a wide, dimply smile and big soulful eyes that change colour in different lights – sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green and sometimes they’re a brown so light it’s like they’re filled with flecks of gold.

Whenever I think about Mum and how awesome she is and how close we are, I realise that there can’t be many

daughters out there as lucky as me.

So Mum being overweight has never mattered to me. As far as I’m concerned, there are a million worse things a mum can be.

That is, it never mattered until last night, New Year’s Eve, when everything went wrong. Really, horribly wrong

***

If that’s whetted your appetite for the rest of the story, I’m not surprised. It’s one of those books that you find yourself just reading a couple more pages of until suddenly you’ve read it all. If you’d like to win a copy for yourself, enter via the rafflecopter widget below, and good luck!

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Filed Under: Book club, giveaway, It's where it is Tagged With: HarperCollins, Virginia MacGregor, Wishbones

The Inventory 3: Black Knight by Andy Briggs.

22nd April 2017 by Jax Blunt 6 Comments

Buy at Amazon (affiliate link)

Dev and his friends are back with more mind-bending tech in this third instalment of the Inventory series. This time they are tasked with training new recruits to defend the Inventory’s incredible inventions. But will they be ready for action before Shadow Helix’s next strike?

First of all, why not catch up on Small’s thoughts on book one and book two of Andy Brigg’s The Inventory series? Now that you’re all set, you’re ready to hear what he thought of book three, Black Knight, aren’t you?

We’re going for a slightly different format this time around. Small is currently up to his neck working on a game for a competition submission so I’m trying a Q & A format on him.

Me: Tell me a positive about the book.

Him:

Me: OK, that was a bit too unspecific wasn’t it? Let’s try a different tack. Is there a sense of continuity from the previous books? Or do they stand alone?

Him: There’s no need to scan back – the required details are explained that you can just pick up and go without reading the previous books.

Me: Would you recommend this book to a friend?

Him: I would, but I would suggest reading the first two first to get the full story, it’s worth it.

Me:

.

. You have coding to do don’t you? Off you go then.

Hm. Not sure that worked an awful lot better than locking him in a room to write a review. Sorry Andy! if it’s any consolation, next child is nearly old enough to take over reading this series… (contemplates trying to get Smallest to write reviews. Cries.)

Anyway, to make it worth your while being here, a giveaway.

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Filed Under: Book club, current, giveaway Tagged With: Andy Briggs, Black Knight, MG, Scholastic, the inventory, UKMG

Harper and the Night Forest – review and giveaway.

23rd March 2017 by Jax Blunt 53 Comments

There’s a book for everyone that they remember from when they start to read, I think. For Smallest it looks like it’s going to be Harper.

We’ve had the first Harper book on our shelves for a couple of years, and she’s been completely uninterested, despite the shiny silver cover and the lovely pictures. It wasn’t a picture book you see – illustrated yes, but not in colour, and that didn’t make the grade. But when we were invited to take part in the blog tour for book 3, I decided it was worth another go, and got Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella down and took it into the bedroom.

I was sneaky that night. I started off by reading just one chapter, and they are a little bit cliff hangery and when I stopped, Smallest couldn’t resist and kept reading for herself.

Which led to this wonderful moment, when she read him to sleep. (Apologies for the quality of the photo.)

You don’t get a whole lot better than that to be honest.

Since then, we’ve finished book 1 and we’re on to book two Harper and the Circus of Dreams. The books seem to be the perfect balance of excitement and thrill without any real scariness (Smallest can be a nervous child at times!) and the pacing is perfect for a couple, or three, chapters an evening. They are beautifully illustrated – I would love to see a full colour edition though, I think that would be just gorgeous.

And today I’m actually taking part in the Harper and the Night Forest blog tour, and as part of it I’ve three copies of that book, book 3 in the series to give away.

see at Amazon (affiliate link).

Smallest hasn’t got up to this book, so she can’t review it for you I’m afraid, but I snuck a peek ahead, and I can confirm that it’s just as beautifully written and illustrated, and full of magical, musical, adventure as the previous books. I do have to say that of all the books that Smallest could have fallen in love with, I can quite see what it is about Harper that’s done it. It’s got everything – friendship, a wonderful world, lyrically described and a lovely heroine with her sidekick, Midnight the cat. Excellent books for a 7(ish) year old to enjoy.

The books are written by Cerrie Burnell (twitter), she until recently of CBeebies fame, and illustrated by Laura Ellen Anderson (Website / Twitter)

Book info

Title: Harper and the Night Circus

Author: Cerrie Burnell

Illustrator: Laura Ellen Anderson

Release Date: 2 nd March 2017

Genre: MG Adventure

Publisher: Scholastic UK

Format: Paperback

Harper and her friends get to visit the City of Singing Clocks right by the mysterious Night Forest. It is rumoured that a magical Ice Raven whose song can melt hardened hearts lives amongst the ebony trees. With the children’s help The Wild Conductor plans to capture the mythical bird and create the greatest orchestra ever known. But Harper soon needs to decide who actually needs their help the most…

If you’d like to win your own copy of Harper and the Night Forest, enter via the rafflecopter widget below – don’t forget to comment on the blog as the mandatory entry. (Please don’t panic if you’re a first time commenter and your comment is moderated, it’s an anti spam measure, and I’ll be along to fish it out of moderation in a bit 🙂 Good luck!

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Filed Under: 2017, Book club, current, giveaway, review Tagged With: Cerrie Burnell, Faye Rogers, Harper and the Night Forest, Laura Ellen Anderson, MG fiction, Scholastic UK, UKMG

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