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Things a Bright Girl Can Do

For bright young feminists everywhere, celebrating 100 years of Votes for Women

‘If you was my wife, I’d take a stick to you.’ When 17-year-old Evelyn witnesses a suffragette being jeered at and pelted with missiles, it sparks a pledge of solidarity with the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Her contemporaries, Nell and May, have different stories to tell but all three girls are raging at the confines of their metaphorical cages. Set in Edwardian London, where women’s lives revolved around home and hearth, Things a Bright Girl Can Do follows their personal quests to live by the motto Deeds not Words.

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The 1,000-year-old Boy

Who wants to live forever?

To the casual observer, Alfie Monk looks like an average 11-year-old boy. But Alfie can remember the last Viking invasion of England. He was there. As was his mum, Hilda, and cat, Biffa. A thousand years later and they’re still alive. Ageless, with a millennium of history and wisdom between them.

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Life Doesn’t Frighten Me At All

25th anniversary edition of this poetic guide to a fearless heart

What a magnetic duo. Maya Angelou, poet, memoirist and civil rights campaigner. Jean-Michel Basquiat, the street artist whose posthumous reputation has soared in recent years. Life Doesn’t Frighten Me At All is a poem of defiance, a lesson in vanquishing childhood fears. And in a lightning strike of inspiration, it’s been paired with a selection of Basquiat’s Neo-Expressionist paintings.

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Frankenstein

Stretch your teen with this school syllabus favourite on its 200th anniversary

‘The monster is the real hero of the novel. Discuss.’ One of the many thorny essay questions set to this perennial school syllabus favourite. Written at the dawn of science fiction, crackling with horror, and strikingly ‘fettered to grief,’ 2018 marks 200 years since Frankenstein’s publication, an ideal moment to review this illuminating young students edition. Read full Review

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Blame My Brain – The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed

An entertaining guide for teenagers and their long-suffering parents

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.

Or so said Socrates. If the great philosophers were moaning about teenagers 2500 years ago, this surely indicates some curious features that are timeless and universal in the adolescent brain. Nicola Morgan takes a humorous and non-patronising approach to revealing the science behind the subject. Ambitiously aimed at both teens and their parents, it may be just what you’ve been waiting for.

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Astrid the Unstoppable

A resilient heroine sparkles in this prize-winning Norwegian tale

Astrid feels it is extremely important to sing when you’re skiing. Also a fearless ‘sledge pilot,’ Astrid spends many happy hours whizzing gleefully through her home valley of Glimmerdal. But her exuberance masks a brow-furrowing problem. There are no children to play with! Not only that, she lives unfortunately close to the ‘quietest holiday camp in Norway,’ run by an irascible gentleman who despises noisy children. What is the ‘little thunderbolt of Glimmerdal’ to do? Astrid the Unstoppable is Maria Parr’s second novel, and the 2009 winner of several prestigious prizes in her home country of Norway. Finally translated into English, it’s a must-read for fans of feisty girl adventurers.

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They Both Die at the End

Tissues at the ready for this emotionally charged YA novel

Is it true? Do they really die at the end? Well, the Grim Reaper certainly stalks through this book, but it’s also very much concerned with big, bold, shining life. Teenagers Mateo and Rufus inhabit an alternative New York City, one in which an agency known as Death-Cast informs citizens when their demise is near. Death will occur within 24 hours, exact means and time unknown. When this dark fate befalls Mateo and Rufus, they embark on one last grand adventure, to live a lifetime in a single day.

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Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of The Wizard of Oz

Toto the dog's charming version of events on the Yellow Brick Road

The Wizard of Oz is surely the most famous of American fairy tales. L. Frank Baum’s band of merry characters and their epic journey of discovery, is now enshrined in our popular culture. In this quirky re-telling, we examine eventsfrom the perspective of Toto, the dog. What is his uniquely canine take on this world of Munchkins, witchery, and magical shoes?

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Brand New Ancients

Electrifying performance poet finds the majestic in ordinary life

Calling every teenager that thinks poetry is boring! Shelve your prejudices and open your mind to Kate Tempest, who honed her craft ‘rapping at strangers’ on night buses and all-night raves. In Brand New Ancients, she has created a poem in the tradition of the epic myths, and fused it with a tale of urban angst in south east London.

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Bad Dad by David Walliams

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Bad Dad

High energy antics with a soft heart

BANG! WALLOP! CRUNCH! Bad Dad by David Walliams greets the reader with noisy fanfare. The hotly anticipated new book from Walliams tells the story of a father and son’s struggle to escape the clutches of a local crime lord, and right a shameful wrong. A riot of car chases and madcap schemes, does it deserve its runaway success at the top of the bestseller charts?

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