‘The Karate Princess’ is about a princess called Belinda. She’s the youngest of sixteen princesses, and the only one who isn’t very pretty. Her father sends her off to find a husband and she has to compete against lots of other princesses to win the Prince.

Belinda is sent on a quest with another princess who isn’t very nice. Luckily Belinda is trained in karate which helps her on her mission.

My favourite character was the royal painter. He was nervous and very funny. I also thought Belinda was cool, especially when she does her karate!

There aren’t many pictures in the book, which I didn’t mind, but the drawings of the characters weren’t anything like I imagined the characters to be in my head.

I quite like Jeremy Strong, his books are funny and make me laugh so I was looking forward to reading this. I thought ‘The Karate Princess’ was a good book, the story was a clever idea and I liked that it had a bit of a twist.

3 and a half stars

_ King Arthur is dead and his evil nephew Mordred looks set to take over his throne. That is until a girl called Rhianna Pendragon turns up. Rhianna is King Arthur’s secret daughter and she sets off on a quest to find The Sword of Light, the first of four very important weapons. Merlin has brought Arthur’s body back to Avalon so he can be reborn. Arthur needs the weapons so that when he is reborn he can fight Mordred and reclaim his kingdom. But Mordred will do everything he can to stop Rhianna from helping her father.

This is the longest book I have ever read by myself, it is 469 pages long!

I loved the maps at the beginning of the book, I always think it’s a good idea to have maps. It’s really fun to look back at them and see where the characters are.

This was a brilliant new story about King Arthur. It’s a really good adventure with great characters. My favourite character was Alba, who is Rhianna’s horse, she’s always after apples! I also liked Elphin, the Prince of Avalon, who’s always arguing with Cai, a squire of Camelot. They can be very funny.

I will definitely be reading the next book in this series when it is published. I hope Katherine Roberts has finished writing it!

5 stars

_ This story is about a boy named Luke who meets a ghost in his bath called Ellie. The ghost is looking for someone called Charlie, who used to live in Luke’s house. Charlie was supposedly killed when the Titanic sank (which is when Ellie died), but he didn’t, he actually died three years later in the First World War.

Luke had to do his history homework on something Victorian and he can’t decide what to do, until he finds out that Ellie was a Victorian! I thought it was really good to have some history in the story, especially the Titanic, which sank one hundred years ago.

Ellie can only be seen if there’s water around. I thought this was a very clever idea and is different from in other spooky stories.

I really like Jeremy Strong stories; my favourite of his books is ‘My Mum’s Going to Explode’. I thought this book was quite good, but not quite as good as some of Jeremy Strong’s other books.

This book says it has a glow in the dark cover, but it didn’t work for me!

3 and a half stars

This book contains ten of the wonderful Winnie the Pooh stories by A.A. Milne. This is the second volume about Pooh Bear, it was first published in 1928. It’s the book that Tigger first appears in and when Pooh Sticks is invented (a game which I love playing with my brothers).

I really love these stories because they are very funny and I like the characters. My favourite characters is Pooh, I like him because he makes up many funny hums and poems. Pooh’s best friends are Piglet and Christopher Robin. I also like Rabbit and Eeyore. Rabbit is very bossy and likes to order people around which makes me laugh. Eeyore is always glum and sad and he thinks everyone else doesn’t care about him.

There have been films and television series made based on the Winnie the Pooh stories as well as lots of other books written about the characters, but by different authors. I’ve always liked the Winnie the Pooh films, but these original stories are the best. I really like reading them to my Daddy. My brothers also really like this book, it always makes us laugh. I think you need to be at least five to really understand all the funny jokes in this book, especially Owl’s bad spelling!

This book is great for girls and boys of any age, my Daddy loves it as much as I do!

5 stars
 

_ In this Beast Quest story Tom and Elenna are stuck in the evil wizard Malvel’s realm Gorgonia. They were looking for the purple jewel that they need to return to their homeland of Avantia. Their adventures lead to them battling an old enemy, Seth, who Malvel turned into a scorpion man called Sting as a punishment. Malvel has cunningly planted the jewel Tom and Elenna need in Sting’s tail.

‘Sting The Scorpion Man’ is number 18 in the Beast Quest series. I liked the picture on the front cover, it looked very cool and made me want to start reading straight away.

I thought it was very clever how the writer used the character Seth again but changed him into something else. I was very surprised by the ending, it was not what I expected at all, but it was very very good and I really enjoyed it.

I liked this book very much. The Beast Quest stories just keep getting better and better. I’ve read lots of them now but never get bored of them! I think Adam Blade is one of the best writers ever.

5 stars

‘The Beasts in the Jar’ is the first in the Greek Beasts and Heroes series. In this book Atticus the Greek storyteller goes off on a ship with his donkey to go to a storytelling festival on the slopes of Mount Ida near Troy. On the way he tells tales of Greek myths and legends.

At the beginning of the book there’s a map showing where Atticus travels during the story. I thought this was very useful and interesting.

The tales in this book include Pandora’s Box, which is the story the book is named after, and many other wonderful myths such as the tale of Icarus. It has lots of pictures in it, I like the ones of monsters!

I love all Greek legends and I think this is a very good version for children, even my little brothers could understand it. We read it during our lessons at home. I was always so excited when the time came to read it. Lucy Coats is a very good writer of children’s books. I think the Greek myths are more for boys than for girls.

4 and a half stars

‘Infernox The Firestarter’ is the second in the Alien Invaders series. In this book all the action happens on a jungle planet called Zaman. A boy from Earth called Cosmo has been sent on a mission by G-Watch, the galaxy’s security force. He needs to defeat five alien invaders sent by the evil outlaw Kaos. Infernox is a firestarting alien who is destroying the galaxy’s medicine supplies. Maybe with the help of his friends Nuri and Brain-E, Cosmo will be able to defeat the alien.

I really like the quantum mutation suit which lets Cosmo turn into any alien he wants, and his sword made out of the power of the universe is awesome! I do think G-Watch should have added some armour onto the Cosmo’s suit to protect him a bit. It’s great that Cosmo learnt to fly his spaceship, a Dragster 7000, by using a computer game.

I think Infernox was a very good idea for an alien invader. He causes lots of devastation very quickly. It would be cool if he had a secret hideout, like a volcano.

I like this series but I think Beast Quest is better. Infernox is my favourite character in this book, I like that he can hurl fireballs. I wonder why Kaos doesn’t just send all five of the aliens at the same time?

At the back of the book you get to read the first chapter of the next adventure in the series, this is a good way to get readers excited about buying the next Alien Invaders book. I’ll be reviewing number 3 very soon!

3 and a half stars

‘Arcta the Mountain Giant’ is the third in the Beast Quest series. In it Tom must free Arcta the Mountain Giant from the evil wizard Malvel’s spell with the help of his horse Storm, his friend Elena and her wolf Silver. His shield now contains some power from both Ferno the Fire Dragon and Sepron the Sea Serpent which should come in handy.

I think this beast is a very good one, especially because it’s blind-folded. He senses Tom as he’s not able to see him. I think Malvel should have put some sort of lock on him instead of the blindfold if he wanted to stop Tom from freeing the Beast.

The avalanches that Arcta creates were very cool. I really like it when Tom walked across the dangerous mountains with rock falling around him, I couldn’t stop reading until I found out what happened. I was very worried about Elenna and Silver when they get trapped.

This is a very exciting book, when I play Beast Quest with my brothers we always have Arcta in our game.

4 and a half stars

In this, the second in the Beast Quest series, Tom and Elenna go on an exciting adventure to find Sepron the Sea Serpent and free it from an evil curse which the bad wizard Malvel put on it. In this thrilling book Tom battles with the sea serpent, will he succeed in this underwater quest to defeat the evil wizard’s plans?

Sepron is a very scary beast, I like him very much. He’s the scariest monster I have seen so far in the Beast Quest books apart from Torgor the Minotaur [Beast Quest Number 13].

In each of the Beast Quest books Malvel just leaves Tom and Elenna to fight the beasts, I think he should do more to try to stop them. Maybe he could put protective spells around the beasts, which Tom and Elenna can only break by cracking a really difficult code.

I really like the illustrations in this book; they look really cool and are very detailed.

This book is pretty exciting. I am actually on number 13 of the Beast Quest series. I don’t think this is quite as good as the later Beast Quest books in which Tom has golden armour to help him; they just seem to get better and better.

4 and a half stars

Cosmo, a human boy from planet Earth, thinks he’s going on a galaxy tour, but then finds out that he’s to become the newest member of G-Watch [kind of like space secret agents] and has universe powers in him. He needs to use his powers to defeat Rockhead, the first of five aliens sent to attack the galaxy by the evil Kaos.

Cosmo was a cool character, I thought it was brilliant that he could fly spaceships and use his power to make a sword. He has a mutation suit which lets him turn into any alien he wishes, including ones covered in slime!

I really like the pictures in the book; they were a bit like Manga drawings.

Like with the Beast Quest series, there are 4 collectors cards in the book which you can cut out.

I think this is a very good book; it’s like a mixture of Beast Quest and Ben 10. On the back of the book it says it’s for 7+, but my brother, who is 6, really enjoyed it. I think this book is more for boys than girls. I can’t wait to start the next books in the series.

4 stars