Hannah Moffatt - SMALL! - Book Review - Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books

 

This is one of the most original stories you will read this year. Small! is the debut book by Hannah Moffatt and will be published by the giant story machine (Mikka) from Everything with Words. It will be available to buy from the 16th of June 2022. This book is a masterclass of storytelling; it stands tall with its humour, silliness, and total chaos. It is a story about Harvey (a small boy with a big heart in a GIANT world) who is expelled from school after accidentally setting fire to his headteacher's trousers. 

ARE YOU READY? It's time to strap on a pair of STILTS and walk into the swamp and the land of giants, although you might need to hold your NOSE first! Harvey has to look for a place where he can belong. He finds himself in the strangest of places - Madame Bogbrush's School for Gifted Giants. This book is a GREAT adventure story; a MAHOOSIVE mystery riddle needs to be solved to save the school from being closed by THE BEASTLY SCHOOL BOARD. However, it is also a journey about finding friends in the most UNLIKELY of places. 

I loved every page of this book. It has a BONKERS plot that will entertain everyone. In fact, as I write this book review, I have an infectious smile glued to my face as I reflect on the crazy storylines. It is a great family read to enjoy and savour over a cup of bogweed tea and SWAMP FISH sandwiches. The book is a great illustrative delight due to its black and white illustrations by Roy Walker. They work in perfect harmony with the story by adding a new dimension. 

This book tackles issues of friendship, bullying and how to deal with parents who divorce or separate. It is sensitively done and just adds a little emotion to a big story that is high on laughs and first-rate rule-breaking. It's a delight to read a creative, heart-warming, and imaginative story that also contains massive amounts of silliness. 

This book has everything you need to make it a favorite read for everyone. It contains a fortune teller in the cellar, a giant's guide to grunting and the great ring mistress of the unspeakable circus. It stands out from the crowd and on the bookshelf because even though the title on the book cover is SMALL! the text is so SOOOO BIG. Anyway, it's time to join the party and have a big guffaw so grab a copy this summer and enjoy one of the best reads of the year. 

Martin Howard (Author), Chris Mould (Illustrator) - Alfie Fleet's Guide to the Universe - Blog Tour Book Review

Step this way people as the UNIVERSE is now open for business. This is the second installment in Martin Howard's brilliant Alfie Fleet's series and has been given the title Alfie Fleet's Guide to the Universe. It is guided superbly by Chris Mould's expertly produced black and white illustrations and maps showcasing the narrative. This book is out in all galactic bookshops especially on OUTLANDISH, WINGSPAN and other holiday hotspots destinations around the globe now. You don't have to wait to join and enjoy this amazing adventure, so pick up a copy now.

Back in business with the Unusual Cartography Club or the UCC to its members, Alfie and Professor Pewsley Bowell-Mouvemont and Derek are travelling to far-flung planets. They are in search of the best holiday destinations for us to visit and fleece us out of our hard-earned money. They'll make sure you buy a gift from the gift shop on the way out! But don't worry,  I hear they are doing a roaring trade in Chris Mould's model Sheds which are made out of smelly socks, bits of fluff and, the all-important, blunt pencils.

Whilst exploring the narrative, you can expect to bounce along at an average pace on Betsy the Moped.  In other parts of the universe, time might vary so check the reader's ability and how many hands they have. On the FLEET, Unsuality Scale is a whopping eight and a half - it definitely tick-tocks with fizz and many moments of fantasy craziness. I can guarantee that you'll enjoy the journey immensely whilst holding on to your trousers as you fight off a bunch of pirates in ladies' clothes.

The peril in this adventure is a high octane nine on the danger twonk scale as you find yourself part of a sword chopping adventure. However, this involves none other than green, bogey-eating monsters and grog-swigging seadogs. All mixed in with many BAD PIRATE jokes. The biography of the Chosen One will become an outer planet classic that exhumes a bad smell of language as the windup translator malfunctions. The ingenious creativeness is only as good as the great scum baskets in the plot which are both cheesy and smelly. Lots of trout-waggling maybe encountered to give the reader a sense of character whilst falling over a knobbly knee.

This is a book that readers will not be reluctant to read as they are driven through a fantasy narrative by aliens or a mouthful of fruit. The book has a satisfying crunch with a fantastic array of characters that could have their own spin-off movies. The language is definitely aimed at children with the introduction of many nonsense words. However, the only thing you'll need for protection is a suit of armour and lots of emotional support.

On this website, we rate all the books. We show you the best, not too bad, and never-go-there-in-a-million years. However, this book is one to definitely give a spin, or even place it in your sock drawer with Chris Moulds Model shed! You'll look to revisiting and rereading this book time after time. Thanks for reading - I'll see you on the next voyage.

Guest Post: Andy Seed - Prankenstein On Tour - Total Write-Off: Fiction vs Non-Fiction (Halloween Day)

Welcome, Andy Seed, to Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books to celebrate the publication of the third book in the Prankensteinseries which was published on October 6th by Fat Fox Books. The story sees our hero, Soapy Thompson, having a fun time on a world cruise along with his friends from Estonia, Arvo and Loogi (the 'twince'). All is going well until some modern-day pirates board the ship and kidnap Soapy's mum. 

This is a brilliantly illustrated (Richard Morgan) silly adventure full of fun and trouble aimed at readers 7 years and upwards. Here is Andy's Post Total Write-Off: Fiction vs Non-Fiction.

Most children’s authors write made up stuff and some write true stuff. The made up stuff (i.e. stories) comes under the boring label ‘fiction’ and the true stuff (i.e. fact) has the completely useless title of ‘non-fiction’. If ever there was a phrase to send children to sleep, someone has found it and attached it to a whole sphere of publishing. To make matters worse the label is absurd: how can you define something by what it’s not? ‘Coffee or non-coffee, madam?’ 


I’m one of the few authors who writes both novels and factual books for kids and because they are so perceived to be so different you might think it’s almost like having a split writing personality. With fiction there’s a blank page and the author is the creator of people, places, events – the controller of time, space and, well, everything. With non-fiction there’s a known world out there: a box of information into which you dip and select and then weave into some kind of paper presentation, probably with pictures and diagrams and facts and figures. 


Except that it’s not that simple. Most of the time fiction writers work within the real world and need to do lots of research to ensure that their tale has plausibility and a convincing setting. My most recent novel Prankenstein on Tour may be a funny romp about a prank-playing monster who sends a world cruise into meltdown but it still needed to be set on a ship which reads like a real ocean liner and the characters needed to visit real places with buildings and details described as they really are. 

So, fiction writers must check their facts too, a lot of the time, and therefore blend imagination with reality. Of course if you’re setting a story on Planet Mooku in the year 3028 then it’s a different game although your spacecraft will still have to obey the laws of physics and the galaxy you’re in must make sense to the reader. 

In the case of Prankenstein on Tour, it’s the third book in a series and I really enjoyed the fact that I could re-visit previously created settings and work with established characters, injecting humour and fun into the story. In the book, the central character Soapy Thompson, aged 12, is overjoyed when his dad wins a world cruise for five and even more excited when his best friends, the detective-like Estonian twins Arvo and Loogi can come along too. The problem is cheese. If Soapy eats any he turns into an uncontrollable prank-crazed beast. Normally there’s no cheese at his house but here on a giant cruise ship… 


So, what about writing non-fiction? Well, for a start it doesn’t just cover facts. My own non-fic children’s titles, such as The Silly Book of Side-Splitting Stuff which won the 2015 Blue Peter Best Book with Facts Award is mainly factual but contains jokes, riddles, silly names, poems and lots of other content that was created rather than researched. 

Children sometimes ask me if it’s harder to write fiction and usually I say it is because you have to create a whole world and then make the characters in it take us on a journey which will draw us in powerfully. Yet there’s a huge imaginative process in the writing of factual content too. There are a million ways to do it and more. Take the fact that the tiger is the largest of all cats. How can that be presented? Written in a dull sentence, yes, but a picture would help. A photo? What about a comparison with another animal or a human? A diagram? Some kind of snappy graphic? Instead of telling its weight in kg, how many 5 year-olds might it weigh the same as? (18 using averages) and so on. There’s a different kind of process but it’s still highly creative. 


There are places where the two worlds collide too, of course: biographies and true stories for a start. So maybe fiction and non-fiction aren’t so different. But pleeeeease, let’s have a new label for the latter.