Category: Young Adult Reading

Stories!

A most welcome initiative from Audible to help entertain cooped up kids of all ages.

wordynerdbirdLeave a comment

Audible has released a whole bunch of audiobooks for kids and families absolutely free, called Stories.

There’s an extensive range of books for kids of all ages, from ‘Littlest Listeners’ to teens, and some excellent literary classics, too! 

What a fantastic opportunity for beating the lockdown blues! It’s great to see one of the big companies taking the initiative to offer something to help us all out by feeding our imaginations and entertaining our families. 

An Audible membership is not required, so anyone can use it.  As it is browser based, no credit card or personal information is needed to listen.  It works on phone, laptop and tablet.

Completely free #audiobooks for kids and families to #ListenTo while #stayinghome – fantastic! Thanks, @Audible!

The 2019 Golden Squirrel Awards

wordynerdbirdLeave a comment

Book Squirrel has announced the winners of the 2019 Golden Squirrel indie Book Awards. 

Just to make it clear, this is not a contest that people can vote on. This is an entirely subjective and preference-driven selection process. Book Squirrel knows what he likes, and that’s what he reads. When he reads, he always leaves a review. And on the Book Squirrel blog, he awards gold, silver or bronze acorns instead of a star rating system. 

At the end of the year, he chooses the best of the books he has read and reviewed, and gives some nice shiny awards to the wonderful authors who entertained and enlightened him in the past twelve months. 

This year, gold and silver awards were given to books in 20 genres, across a variety of age ranges, interests and styles. 

While Book Squirrel is fully committed to being as fair and impartial as a squirrel can be, so you can be sure that the winners of Golden Squirrel Awards are excellent reads, and worthy of recognition. 

Check out the winners here!



Book Review: ‘Tompkin’s Academy for the Extraordinarily Gifted’ by Tabi Slick

wordynerdbirdLeave a comment

This is a really good story with lots of twists and turns, some of which are absolutely heart-stopping. It’s the story of Izara and her journey of discovery of truth about herself and her twin brother, Kain, as they confront a world they had never dreamed of.
The story has some incredibly dark moments, so I’d recommend it for an audience of 16+ years of age, but it also has strong elements of hope despite the  odds.

The characters are relatable and very engaging. As a reader, I didn’t always like Izara or Kain, but that actually made them more believable and intriguing.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the number of regular typos in the text, which I found annoying: they didn’t really detract from the story at all, but I am a stickler for those things, and I did find it distracting.

The book ended on a cliffhanger, so it wasn’t satisfying in the sense of getting answers or resolution, but it definitely whets the appetite for the next instalment!
I want more of Tompkin’s Academy!

Four stars.