After their first graphic novel adventure, Phoebe and Marigold are back for another collection of comics.
In this collection Phoebe and Marigold write fan letters and Marigold babysits Phoebe.
We learn that shimmering is better than glimmering. Marigold gets into a grooming competition with the cat and Max outnerds Phoebe.
We visit Marigold’s home for the first time. Phoebe and Marigold attend a dragon Halloween party where I learned I need rainbow-flame jack-o’-lanterns in my life. We meet Ralph, a kid in Phoebe’s class who isn’t Max or Dakota.
Dakota is still cool and rubbing Phoebe’s face in it and Marigold took a short break from admiring her own reflection to reflect on her friendship with Phoebe.
After absolutely adoring the graphic novel format, adventure and introduction of a wonderful new character, Voltina the dragon, in The Magic Storm, this collection of comics felt like a let down. Christmas, Halloween and summer seem to be covered in the majority of the collections I’ve read so far and a lot of the themes and jokes are repetitive. The actual target audience may not have a problem with this but I’m eager for material that feels new.
I was especially disappointed that Voltina didn’t make an appearance in this collection, which meant adorably nerdy Max is essentially alone again. Yes, he sort of has Phoebe sometimes but she’s not a good enough friend to even notice he’s being bullied when it’s happening right in front of her face. He deserves better.
Thank you to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the opportunity to read this collection.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Marigold Heavenly Nostrils is no ordinary unicorn. She has Wi-Fi-enabled appendages. She’s the most enchanted babysitter of all time. She’s published numerous scholarly articles on the “shimmering” versus “glimmering” debate. She is, in short, a unicorn of many hats.
Phoebe and her exceptional hooved pal are back in this all-new collection of comics! Laugh alongside the lovable duo as they question the idea of “coolness,” gain a deeper appreciation for the power of friendship, and put off summer reading assignments for as long as physically possible.
Although I’ve had the best of intentions I haven’t studied science as an adult. I had an amazing science teacher in my first year of high school who inspired me and made me want to pursue a scientific career. This dream then disintegrated over the next three years as all my subsequent science teacher managed to inspire was the desire to sleep through their classes. While I still intend to one day be able to have an informed and intelligent conversation about string theory, I currently sit firmly in science nerd wannabe territory.
My wannabe status is probably what drew me to this book and its conversational tone and lack of complex mathematics equations makes it accessible to readers without prior knowledge of the scientific discoveries and theories it explains.
There’s a smorgasbord to enjoy within each of the seven parts:
Biological Things
Human Things
Terrestrial Things
Solar System Things
Fundamental Things
Extraterrestrial Things, and
Cosmic Things.
Given the bite size chunks of information each contain, they provide a taste of some of the marvels the universe has to offer. (Why, yes, it is almost dinner time. Why do you ask?! 😜)
While I learned enough about some topics to satisfy me I was able to narrow down some areas of interest to explore further. Each of the fifty chapters begins with a single sentence statement that may or may not give you a clue about what’s to come, followed by a quote and then several pages of explanation.
A lot of the initial statements are pretty incredible without any further explanation, for example,
“Today your body will build about 300 billion cells”.
Beginning the explanation the author makes a comparison to put this into perspective, noting that’s
“more cells than there are stars in our Milky Way galaxy.”
For those of us without scientific degrees, a cell is explained as
“a tiny transparent bag of gloop.”
Then you learn some amazing facts about your cells that should make you appear smarter than you actually are when you find a way to casually pass this information along to some unsuspecting bystander.
My favourite opening statements of the book were:
“You are born 100 percent human but die 50 percent alien”
“In the future, time might run backwards”
“The universe may have at least ten dimensions”
“Time travel is not ruled out by the laws of physics”.
My main problem with this book was its repetitiveness. I don’t mind when an author reminds a reader that a topic was previously explored in whatever chapter number so you can review that if need be but in this book some pieces of information were repeated almost verbatim. For example, in chapter 25, when talking about quantum theory, the author notes
It is fantastically successful. It has given us lasers and computers and nuclear reactors. It explains why the sun shines and why the ground beneath our feet is solid.
This is repeated in chapter 43, where the only difference is “our” becoming “your”. If you are only reading single chapters over a significant length of time or if you’re quoting a specific chapter to said bystander, this would not be a problem. However, if you’re reading from cover to cover, the multiple instances of repetition become tedious.
Thank you to NetGalley and Diversion Books for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Bestselling author Marcus Chown explores some of the most profound and important science about us, our world and beyond by examining some astonishing facts that reveal the vast complexities of the universe.
There is much about our world that seems to make perfect sense, and important scientific breakthroughs have helped us understand ourselves, our planet and our place in the universe in fascinating detail. But our adventures in space, our deepening understanding of the quantum world and huge leaps in technology over the last century have also revealed a universe far stranger than we could ever have imagined.
With brilliant clarity and wit, bestselling author Marcus Chown examines the profound science behind fifty remarkable scientific facts that help explain the vast complexities of our existence. Did you know that you could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube? Or that the electrical energy in a single mosquito is enough to cause a global mass extinction? Or that, out there in the cosmos, there are an infinite number of copies of you reading an infinite number of copies of this?
Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand is a mind-bending journey through some of the most weird and wonderful facts about our universe, vividly illuminating the hidden truths that govern our everyday lives.
Phoebe and Marigold carve pumpkins and Marigold plans a Halloween surprise for Phoebe. Todd the candy dragon provides the Halloween candy again this year and Dakota makes goblins cool when she starts hanging out with Blaartholomew. Marigold goes to the spa with her sister, resulting in unicorn withdrawal for Phoebe.
Naturally my favourite scenes were book related, especially when Marigold casts a Spell of Forgetting on herself so it feels like she’s reading a well read book for the first time. I need to learn how to do that spell! While I wasn’t a fan of the increased focus on nose picking I did enjoy the increased time spent talking about books.
This is the first collection where I’ve noticed a few pages repeated from previous collections. I wasn’t as wowed by this collection but am hopeful the next one, Phoebe and Marigold’s first graphic novel, will shake things up a bit.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Time flies in this fifth volume of Phoebe and Her Unicorn! Follow the lovable duo as they experience somewhat-spooky Halloween parties, ecstatic snow days, and looming summer reading assignments. Although the journey of growing up can sometimes be difficult, along the way Phoebe and Marigold discover something more enduring than goblin fads, unicorn spa vacations, and even a Spell of Forgetting – their one of a kind friendship.
Angela and Jonathan are foster carers who have also completed training to become specialist carers for “teenagers with complex needs”. The latest addition to their family is Melissa, who requires a short term placement. Melissa is a sweet, polite and seemingly young twelve year old, yet she has a history of running away from foster care.
While Angela and Jonathan have fostered children for several years, Melissa is the first “runner” that’s been placed in their home. They don’t know if she’s running from or to something and are given very little information about her history so they’re not quite sure what’s in store for them.
Though their experiences with Melissa are central to this book, Ryan and Marty, whose time in their home overlapped Melissa’s, are also discussed. Vicky, who I presume is the same girl in Angela’s previous book, Terrified, also appears briefly.
I vacillated between feeling like a voyeur, wanting to know more about this young girl’s life, and treating the story as fictionalised in order to assuage the intrusiveness I felt. I was glad to read that “Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy” although at the same time I knew the horror I would feel if I learned a foster parent (even using a pseudonym) had published my story without my consent, regardless of how much it had been altered to de-identify me.
Given the author states she has had no contact with Melissa since the final time she ran away, there’s no indication permission was granted by her for her story to be published, which concerned me. It also seemed incongruous to be consistently reading about how the author wouldn’t divulge private details about any of her foster children to current or prior foster kids or even her mother, who was babysitting them, when I was reading all about them (albeit de-identified) in a published book.
I’ve been hesitant to read books based on real foster care experiences because of my concerns about privacy but can also see their benefit, as they provide insight into this often hidden world. It was the recommendation from Torey Hayden, whose books I devoured in my early twenties, that made me finally bite the bullet.
Good foster carers really should be praised for their tireless efforts in providing stability and a safe place for some of the most vulnerable young people. I hope books like this spur people into action who have considered fostering, as more foster carers are always needed.
I was frustrated by the rules that foster carers were expected to follow in the 1990’s when the events of this book are said to have taken place; rules that are supposed to protect foster children but instead leave them vulnerable to additional harm. I can only hope this broken system has been changed for the better in the UK since that time.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bluebird, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Melissa is a sweet-natured girl with a disturbing habit of running away and mixing with the wrong crowd. After she’s picked up by the police, and with nowhere else to go, she is locked in a secure unit with young offenders. Social Services beg specialist foster carer Angela to take her in, but can she keep the testing 12-year-old safe? And will Angela ever learn what, or who, drove Melissa to run and hide, sometimes in the dead of night?
The Girl in the Dark is the sixth book from well-loved foster carer Angela Hart. A true story that shares the tale of one of the many children she has fostered over the years. Angela’s stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye, and sympathetic ear can make to those children whose upbringing has been less fortunate than others.
Matt Howorth’s Illustrations are everything in this book. They really made me feel the young girl’s grief, her determination to find a way to connect with her mother and the love they shared in the girl’s memories.
Grief is such a difficult thing for anyone to cope with, let alone a child who may not even really understand what death means, so books like this are so important. I love the sentiment that when you’re missing a loved one and they feel far away you can look inside your heart and feel closer to them by remembering the good times you shared.
While I loved the message I found some of the rhymes quite clunky. Some rhymes worked well but others didn’t work at all for me, for example, rhyming “be” with “countries”, “clouds” with “down”, and “glide” with “by”. Because of its tendency to sometimes rhyme and sometimes not I imagine it would sound awkward if I read this aloud.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
That’s Where I Find You is a heartfelt story about remembering a loved one. A beautiful reminder that no matter how much we might miss them, they’ll always be with us … in our hearts.
Is it a blessing or a curse, never to know how much time you have?
Let me start with this: I lovedEverless. I’ve been impatiently waiting for my library’s copy of Evermore to arrive as it was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. Maybe the pedestal I built for it was too high; I did enjoy it but I was also disappointed. It may have helped if I’d read the books consecutively; I had forgotten important parts of the mythology until I was reminded of them.
Sempera is the only land with magic, a land where time and blood are bound. The Alchemist and Sorceress have been enemies for multiple lifetimes and their story has become legend in this land. I couldn’t get enough of the mythology surrounding the snake and the fox in Everless and was eager to learn more. After so many minor excursions into the previous lives of the Alchemist I did enjoy the huge info dump at the end of the book, but I wanted more.
Liam, who was one of my favourite characters in Everless, lost his mystery and complexity in this book and I had trouble remembering what was so incredible about him. I liked Stef and Elias and am fairly certain I would have loved them if I’d gotten to know them better; unfortunately they still felt like acquaintances at the end of the story.
I’m wondering if I would have appreciated this story more if it was told in more than one voice. Jules didn’t make my top five favourite characters in either book but I would have loved reading even part of the story from the perspectives of Caro and Ina.
I am left with several unanswered questions that are bugging me, including: If Caro’s guards had Liam surrounded while he was frozen in time at the end of the book how did he get past them to find Jules? Why didn’t Jules show the stone Stef gave her to Joeb? Also, what happened with Stef? Her story felt unfinished.
If this had been the first book in the series I probably would have put it down but the residue of my love for Everless made me persevere.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Jules Ember was raised hearing legends of the ancient magic of the wicked Alchemist and the good Sorceress. But she has just learned the truth: She is the Alchemist, and Caro – a woman who single-handedly murdered the Queen and Jules’s first love, Roan, in cold blood – is the Sorceress.
The whole kingdom believes that Jules is responsible for the murders, and a hefty bounty has been placed on her head. And Caro is intent on destroying Jules, who stole her heart twelve lifetimes ago. Now Jules must piece together the stories of her past lives to save the person who has captured her heart in this one.
We first met Mia in Mia Mayhem Is a Superhero! when she learned she was a superhero and was going to the PITS – the Program for In Training Superheroes.
Mia has already learned the quick-superhero-change trick but now she needs to learn to fly, which sounds incredible but Mia is afraid of heights. I’d expected this book to focus on Mia’s fear and learning to overcome it but it seemed a bit too easy for me. She is distracted by mayhem when she’s flying and has help from an advanced flyer so that helped.
The kids who read this series most likely haven’t come across all of the superhero tropes before but I couldn’t help rolling my eyes when Mia’s best friend doesn’t recognise her because she’s wearing her superhero suit. I guess if it works for Batman and Superman then there’s no reason it shouldn’t work for Mia though.
Mia does learn about teamwork in this book and it’s lovely to see friends helping one another.
I’m definitely not the target audience for this series so I’m not sure how much my opinion counts but after really enjoying the first book in the series I’m not as keen to keep reading them. I might be expecting too much. For kids around this age group I much preferred Ailsa Wild’s Squishy Taylor series.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
When Mia gets placed in a beginner’s flying class with kindergarteners, she struggles and is ready to give up! But luckily, with help from her best friend, Eddie, and the superschool’s most talented flier, Mia finally learns how to get off the ground.
With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Mia Mayhem chapter books are perfect for emerging readers.
‘Maybe it would be best,’ she said at last, ‘if you left the Devil alone in his hiding place.’
This book had so much to love – a serial killer on the loose, a medieval castle with a dark history that’s now an asylum and a psychiatrist delving into the minds of the most notorious murderers in Europe, all steeped in folklore and mythology and set in the lead up to WWII.
I adored the settings, from the creepy castle to the shadowy forests and the bone church. The writing flowed well and it felt like the author had done a lot of research, particularly around Central European myths and legends, which I need to learn more about now that I’ve had a taste. I really enjoyed the blend of psychology and mythology.
Here am I and I here stay, for this is where Evil resides. Here am I and I here stay, for this is where the Devil hides.
The idea of having a front row seat (nestled behind the safety of the pages) when infamous criminally insane people told their stories was a big draw card for me. While I was interested in the backgrounds of each of the Devil’s Six, none of them gave me the chills I experienced when I first met Hannibal Lector so many years ago.
I found myself just getting into one of the Six’s stories and then it would be over; I’d want more but the story moved on. Each of the six could have had an entire book devoted to their story so sitting in on one session with their psychiatrist was never going to be enough for me. I was disappointed when I found some of their stories fairly predictable, especially the Vegetarian’s.
Has obsessing over more than 300 episodes of Criminal Minds finally ruined me? I am notoriously terrible at figuring out who did it and why, yet there’s been a disturbing recent development; I’ve been working out who did it early on and then spending the rest of the book hoping for a blindside that never arrives. It happened again here and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve magically levelled up in my ability to sniff out the clues from the red herrings or if it really was that obvious.
Thank you to NetGalley and Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group UK, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
In 1935, Viktor Kosárek, a psychiatrist newly trained by Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The state-of-the-art facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle outside of Prague, though the site is infamous for concealing dark secrets going back many generations. The asylum houses the country’s six most treacherous killers – known to the staff as The Woodcutter, The Clown, The Glass Collector, The Vegetarian, The Sciomancer, and The Demon – and Viktor hopes to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon known as The Devil Aspect. As he begins to learn the stunning secrets of these patients, five men and one woman, Viktor must face the disturbing possibility that these six may share another dark truth.
Meanwhile, in Prague, fear grips the city as a phantom serial killer emerges in the dark alleys. Police investigator Lukas Smolak, desperate to locate the culprit (dubbed Leather Apron in the newspapers), realizes that the killer is imitating the most notorious serial killer from a century earlier – London’s Jack the Ripper. Smolak turns to the doctors at Hrad Orlu for their expertise with the psychotic criminal mind, though he worries that Leather Apron might have some connection to the six inmates in the asylum.
Steeped in the folklore of Eastern Europe, and set in the shadow of Nazi darkness erupting just beyond the Czech border, this stylishly written, tightly coiled, richly imagined novel is propulsively entertaining, and impossible to put down.
Charlie Parker, who was loved by everyone (including his teachers), has died. The entire school has been deeply affected by his death at the beginning of Year 12. Well, everyone except Hamish and his only friend Martin. Hamish hasn’t been the same since a tragedy in his own family years ago and he thinks he knows what Annie, Charlie’s girlfriend and the prettiest girl in school, is going through.
Back then, I thought I was invincible. Back then, I didn’t realise children could die.
It’s a hard book to review for a couple of reasons. Most of the time I didn’t even like the main character, particularly when he kept ditching his only friend because someone more popular was suddenly paying attention to him. I also spent most of the book wondering why a specific character suddenly wanted to spend time with Hamish when they were polar opposites in most respects. This is explained towards the end but, although I liked the other character, I didn’t really take to their unusual friendship. I had guessed a big reveal early on so I didn’t feel the impact of that when it happened.
Some conversations work better in dark rooms where faces are hidden by the quiet.
At times it felt like I was playing YA Social Issue Bingo while reading this book (look at length of my content warnings list if you don’t believe me) but at the same time it was realistic because many high school kids really do have to deal with all of these issues and more.
I appreciated that this book highlights the fact that you really don’t know what is going on in other peoples’ lives. Behind the smile of the prettiest girl in school there could be a world of pain. Beneath the bravado of the star football player there may be secret shame. I wish that these kids had been given help for their problems or at least been able to tell a trusted adult instead of another kid who didn’t know what to do to help.
I loved that not only does the author live in the same county as me but we even live in the same state. For those of you living in America you will probably never understand how wonderful it feels to actually find your local area represented in a book when it happens so infrequently. Whenever I find a book by a local author I always relish all of the minor details.
In this book the distance between places was measured in kilometres and the temperature was in celsius so I didn’t have to convert any numbers in my head as I was reading. A character ate Vegemite on toast for breakfast. I love Vegemite! The beat up car one of the characters drives? I drive one of those! The tar melting on the road and sticking to the bottom of your shoes? Welcome to summer in Australia!
Once Upon a Nitpick: In chapter 15, Hamish and another character go to the beach. It’s specifically noted that the other character leaves his football in the car and Hamish has a little internal monologue about why this is the case, but on the next page Hamish takes a photo of the other person with the football on the beach. However they never go back to the car to retrieve it.
The sentences that addressed the reader only served to pull me out of the story and the repeated use of “As you know” irritated me. For example,
I guess I don’t need to tell you that Martin hated the beach. As you know, he couldn’t really swim, and he didn’t look too great with his shirt off.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Pantera Press for the opportunity to read this book. I’m interested in reading this author’s next book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
When Charlie Parker dies, it affects everyone who knew him. Everyone, that is, except for seventeen-year-old Hamish Day, the boy who lives on a cabbage farm and only has one friend. But Hamish soon finds himself pulled into the complicated lives of the people left behind. Among them is Annie Bower, the prettiest girl in school. As he uncovers startling truths about his peers, his perspectives on friendship, love, grief and the tragic power of silence are forever altered.
Meg’s own teaching experience has enabled her to delve deeper into the true nature of a universal high school experience. I Had Such Friends will speak to high school students/teenagers on a personal level, and foster important conversations among Australian youth, school and family culture on issues including abuse, failure and neglect.
With hard-hitting themes including unrequited love, abuse, neglect, sexuality, bullying, prejudice, death and suicide, I Had Such Friends is a poignant journey of self-discovery, grief and the tragic power of silence. A gripping look at adolescent pain with a narrative maturity that accurately reflects its YA milieu, I Had Such Friends resonates with young adult audiences and pushes them to reflect on their own ‘sliding doors’ moment.
There’s always been sporadic supernatural activity during the tours of Henderson Close. Occasionally visitors have experienced cold spots or seen shadowy figures, but when Hannah begins her new job as a tour guide the mysterious phenomena escalates. Hannah and her fellow tour guides, Mairead and George, are soon caught up in a series of events that they can’t explain. If anyone ever needed help from the Ghostbusters it’s this trio.
Oftentimes I’ll pick up a book that promises spectral encounters and I’ll eagerly anticipate the promised ghost, only to be disappointed that they show up right at the end. This book does not have that problem. Ghosts really did show up again and again. While I wasn’t scared I did look forward to each time something ‘spooky’ happened, including time slips and a little girl who would probably be really cute, if only she had a face.
I loved the way that historical Edinburgh came alive for me. As scenes in the 19th century were explained I could see them unfold around me, right down to the stench of the Old Town streets. I wanted to solve the mystery of who murdered Miss Carmichael and learn more about the girl with no face.
While I enjoyed finding out about the lives of the people who once lived in Henderson Close and its surrounds, I didn’t become emotionally attached to any of the characters, past or present. No matter what happened to the characters I felt like I was a passive observer, which appeared to diminish the impact of the horror they were experiencing. I appreciated the onslaught on supernatural activity but wonder if I would have cared more about what happened to our trio if more time was spent fleshing out their personalities.
I’m still not entirely clear about the sequence of events surrounding Mairead’s life and felt that the connections the characters had to Henderson Close were a bit flimsy overall. The ending seemed rushed and I’m left with unanswered questions. I would have preferred for a couple of Hannah’s family background scenes to have been deleted, especially the letter Hannah received from her ex (which I didn’t think added anything to the story). Instead I wish there’d been additional explanations as to why the story ended the way it did.
Thank you to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the opportunity to read this book. I’d be interested in reading more books by this author.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Ghosts have always walked there. Now they’re not alone …
In the depths of Edinburgh, an evil presence is released.
Hannah and her colleagues are tour guides who lead their visitors along the spooky, derelict Henderson Close, thrilling them with tales of spectres and murder. For Hannah it is her dream job, but not for long. Who is the mysterious figure that disappears around a corner? What is happening in the old print shop? And who is the little girl with no face?
The legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too real. The Auld De’il is out – and even the spirits are afraid.
Schizanthus Nerd 