Review; The Wonder Girls by J.M.Carr

 

The Wonder Girls is an exciting adventure yarn following a rag-tag group of girls in pre-war Briton, as they endeavour to outwit the evil Black Shirt’s plans to abduct ‘Aryan’ looking children and, sell them to the Nazi party in Germany.

The book starts running and gathers pace as it races from the 1936 march of the British Union of Fascists known as the ‘Black Shirts’ in London to fictional Hampshire town of Nettlefield, as streetwise foundling Baby and her sister Fingers race to save mysterious golden-haired Sophie, who they witness get kidnapped. At Nettlefield the two sisters meet Gin a teenage aspiring actress and Brian a tomboy with Downs Syndrome who live in a disused railway carriage. The four girls quickly become fast friends, together they follow the main suspects and concentrate their search for Sophie on the town Orphanage and the undertakers. Soon they cross paths with 14 year old want-to-be mechanic Ida whose mother has just passed away.

Baby tries to warn Ida that her ‘Uncle’ Mr Underwood the undertaker and the Matron of the orphanage Mrs Buller are planning on taking Ida’s, blue eyed blonde haired, sister Bonnie, but Ida resists their help. When Bonnie is forcibly removed from Ida care, she realises that she needs to embrace the eclectic band of girls and work with them to save her sister and stop her and other Aryan children being smuggled out of the country and sold to Hitler. 

As with every good adventure yarn, nothing is that easy and it takes every ounce of their combined ingenuity, skills and help from new friends to outwit the Black Shirts.

The Wonder Girls is a delightful adrenaline filled adventure that shines a light on a very dark aspect of British history whist bring a good dose of fun with it eccentric cast, yet not shying away from difficult themes. In The book J.M. Car expertly balances the emotional personal stories of the individual characters and peril whilst maintaining a historical setting that is so real it is almost tangible. 

However the true beauty if this book is while it is exploring historical events it is actually commenting on modern society. From the head on racism of the Black Shirts felt most by Baby whose from Indian decent, to accepting neurodiversity with Brian’s character, who also hints about gender choice. Feminism and equal rights for women is high on the gender too, with Ida wanting to defy society’s expectations and become a mechanic. It also unites people from the whole spectrum of society from Upper Class Vir’Gin’a to middle class Ida right through to the socially less acceptable street urchin’s Baby and Fingers and Brian with her disability.

The Wonder Girls under the guise if historical fiction is actually preaching acceptance, togetherness and solidarity, a strong message for today’s society – unity. For the Wonder Girls like society is stronger than the sum of its parts.

Celebrations & Thanks as Last Chance Hotel - is picked as Waterstones Book of the Month - Nicki Thornton

We have been amazingly proud of Nicki Thornton, who writes for this blog, who had her first middle-grade novel, The Last Chance Hotel published this summer.


Her murder mystery set in a magical world has enjoyed the support of many independent bookshops with a special limited edition of the first print run and was supported by many Waterstones booksellers, who placed it in their summer promotions.

We would like to celebrate today that The Last Chance Hotel has been chosen as Waterstones’ Book of the Month for the deliciously spooky month of October by offering a giveaway of two goodie packs of a signed copy and signed bookmarks.

To win just let Tweet us @BookshelfSpace with tag #TLCHGIVEAWAY and let us know what enchanted sidekick you’d choose if you were investigating a magical murder! The competition closes on Halloween 31st of October at 10am GMT.


Thanks to everyone at Waterstones – and indeed to booksellers everywhere - for such brilliant support of The Last Chance Hotel.

Beetle Boy – M. G. Leonard - Middle Grade Story Sack

Today we are continuing our Story Sack feature with a story sack complied especially for Middle Grade readers, and constructed around M.G. Leonard’s hugely successful Beetle Boy. Being for older readers, we have consciously played with the traditional format of the Story Sack to make it appeal to more mature children, and also endeavoured to make it exciting for boys in particular. This is made really very easy because the novel Beetle Boy is such a riveting read, with so many themes running through, that it is really a very easy book to base a story sack around. 

So firstly a very quick blurb about Beetle Boy supplied by my ten year old son:

Beetle Boy is a fantastic and exciting book all about a boy called Darkus who discovers huge beetles that have had experiments done on them, and learns that a creepy lady is trying to capture them. Darkus’s father has gone missing so he goes and lives with his uncle and together with his two friends and his new pet rhinoceros beetle they join forces to save the beetles and find his dad.

So for this story sack, we picked a non-fiction book Explore Natures: Beetles and BUG, which does exactly what it says on the tin, with lots of beautifully full colour photographs and illustrations. 

Traditionally story sacks come with soft toys, but with this one being for Middle Grade readers, we decided that they would require something a bit more grown up, so the soft toy has been replaced by a beetle in resin, and a bug hunting book plus a kit comprising of scrapbook, looking glass, compass and binoculars to assist with the finding of bugs in the local area, identifying them and recording the findings. 

Another must for story sacks is a game, so with this one, I’ve opted for the beautiful and educational Bug Bingo, BUT there are many different games which would also be very appropriate, plus fit smaller budgets such as: Bug Top Trumps, or the vintage classic Beetles, or the more recent strategy game Hive.

This displays that story sack can be utilised to inspire older children to read, and are not exclusive to Key Stage One. This Beetle Boy story sack has a blend of fiction, exciting and educational activities and non-fiction reading, all of which are things that appeal to middle grade children and to boys in particular. Why not try compiling one your self or even seeing if you can turn a young reader into a Beetle Boy or even a Beetle Queen!

Thank you for stopping by, and please drop by again for more Story Stack ideas, coming up in the next few weeks we have; YA Story Sacks, Story Sacks on a budget and Biography Story Sacks.

Congratulations Nicki Thornton on winning the 2016 Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition

Today we at Space on the Bookshelf, we are celebrating one of our own, the lovely Nicki Thornton. You may know that all us blog authors, at SOTB, are also writers of children’s fiction and are all aspiring to be published. The road to publication is a tough one, with many hurdles and stiff competition, and bucket loads of rejection.

Nicki is a true trouper and has been writing for a long time, she’s is no stranger to the hardships writers face, but she’s had some fantastic achievements along the way. Nicki made the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition Long-List way back in 2012, with her middle grade novel The Sleeping Beauty house.

Then earlier this year, Nicki got a further accolade as her Novel, ‘The Firefly Cage’ was Honorary Mentioned in the prestigious SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Anthology. 

‘The Firefly Cage’ then went on to win Nicki the 2016 Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition! This is no mean feat, as the competition is open international and has thousands of entries every year, and has to impress no less than ten judges!

We are immensely proud and uber-excited about Nicki’s achievements, and are looking forward to her book being published in 2017.

I hope you will join us at SOTB in congratulating Nicki on this fantastic achievement.

CONGRATULATIONS 

NICKI!