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Julia Eccleshare M.B.E - Editorial Expert

Julia Eccleshare has a lifetime of working within children’s books as a critic, an editor, an author and a commentator. Apart from her current role with LoveReading4Kids as Editor-at-Large and as one of our editorial expert reviewers, she is Director of the Children's Programme at the Hay Festival and Chair and founder of the Branford Boase Award.

She is also Head of Policy and Engagement for Public Lending Right at the British Library. She is also the author or editor of a number of books including the Rough Guide to Teenage Literature, the fascinating and insightful Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter: Portraits of Children’s Writers, which is a celebration of a century of children’s literature, as well as Treasure Islands: the Woman’s Hour Guide to Children’s Books. She also spent some considerable time as a children’s fiction editor in UK publishing.

Latest Features By Julia Eccleshare M.B.E

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Latest Reviews By Julia Eccleshare M.B.E

Alan's Big, Scary Teeth
Glorious illustrations tell this story that is both nicely scary and neatly resolved. Everyone knows that alligators are scary! Right? Alan comes from a long line of scary alligators and, with his HUGE white and sharply-pointed teeth he has a happy time scaring all the other creatures in the pond. Alan takes great care of his teeth; he brushes them for at least ten minutes a day so that they look super-sharp and frightening. But, what the other creatures don’t know is that Alan has a very big secret…What will Alan do when everyone finds out? View Full Review
The Bumblebee Garden
Little Ben and his grandfather share a delight in their garden and especially, they enjoy watching the bees and thinking about what they bring to the plants and to our food. When Ben realises how much bees help to feed us he decides that he should make sure that we feed them in return! Grandpa shows Ben how to make a wild place in the garden where the queen bee can make her nest and how to plant wildflowers which will provide a feast for the bees. Together they watch throughout the year as the bees life cycle is played ... View Full Review
Elki is Not My Dog
When a stray dog turns up in the park where the children are playing they notice she is exhausted, thirsty and dirty. What her name is and where she comes from nobody knows. But the children call her Elki and soon she is sharing in their games in the park, eating ice cream when it is hot and playing in the snow when the winter comes. The children love playing with her and feeding her and sharing with her but, when they all go into their homes at the end of the day, no one knows where Elki goes. One ... View Full Review
Luna Loves Gardening
Award-winning Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho and illustrator Fiona Lumbers have created a beautiful new title to add to their delightful series about Luna and the community she grows up in. This time Luna shares her love of gardening. Working with her Dad and her grandparents in the community garden Luna not only learns about planting and tending plants to help them grow well but also about the importance of gardening for the insects who help to pollinate them. She also learns how plants come from all across the world and how each tells its own story. View Full Review
The Fights That Make Us
When Jesse reads her aunt’s diary she discovers that they would have had a lot in common. Jesse has just come out as non-binary and is struggling with the perceptions of others when she discovers that her aunt Lisa, who was a teenager in the 1980s, fell in love with her best-friend and became involved in the fight against the introduction of draconian LGBTQ+ legislation that was being passed into law at the time. Through reading the diaries Jesse finds herself drawn to her aunt and shocked by the reactions of a previous generation. Seeing her story through ... View Full Review
Thank You
Jarvis has created a delightfully surprising and wonderfully simple book of ‘thank yous’ that is beautiful, amusing and inspiring. It gives readers new ways of looking at and thinking about the natural world including sunshine and trees, and everyday objects such a traffic lights and a toothbrush! as well as some abstract concepts like ‘boots for knowing the way’. Full of talking points, this is a book to share again and again. View Full Review
Tom's Midnight Garden 65th Anniversary Edition
Francesca Simon, Guest Editor February 2021:  "I first read Philippa Pearce’s Tom's Midnight Garden as an adult, staying up all night to finish it, and sobbing at the end. It’s about Tom, sent away to relatives while his brother is sick, who discovers that when the grandfather clock strikes 13 that the modern world disappears and he is transported back to the magnificent Victorian garden which once existed at the back, and meets Hatty, the girl who once lived there. I envy anyone reading this book for the first time." This is one of the most touching ... View Full Review
When Creature Met Creature
This wonderful story about what brings friends together is beautifully expressed in John Agard’s poetic words and Satoshi Kitamura’s glorious illustrations. Creature-of-No-Words knows just what feelings he has from all the experiences of happiness, sadness or loneliness that he has. But he has no words to describe them. When he meets Creature-of-Words he suddenly has a friends who can give him the words to express what he feels. Sharing their skills brings great delight and richness to these two new friends. View Full Review
What We’ll Build
Award-winning Oliver Jeffers will capture the hearts and minds of children and adults alike with this story of a father and daughter making plans to build a world that will keep them safe in the future. Brimming with hope but not ignoring the possibilities that the world and what happens next in it will present challenges, What We’ll Build is founded in the mundane (almost!) as the father and his daughter assemble building tools including a hammer, saw and drill – and a pig! What they go on to build including a place to store love, ... View Full Review
The Blue Umbrella
A delightful picture book in which a tiny twist of magic enables a little boy’s small blue umbrella to grow big enough to shelter everyone from the heavy rain. Calling out to all the people he sees, the little boy brings everyone, young and old, in families or alone, under the umbrella’s shelter. Suddenly they are all friends and they all realise that talking and laughing, working and playing together makes life more fun. A warm message lightly told and beautifully illustrated. View Full Review
Alberta: A Cautionary Tale
Author/ illustrator Margaret Sturton pulls no punches in this entertaining and highly moral remaking of Little Red Riding Hood, one of the all-time favourite stories. Young Alberta does dreadful things at home. Whenever anyone tries to stop her she does a silly dance, smiles sweetly or just cries and cries. In other words, she’s a spoilt brat! But she meets her match when, defying her Mum, she climbs over the fence to follow a very interesting person she has spotted. That person is Red Riding Wolf who is out picking flowers for her grandmother while the lovely birthday ... View Full Review
Stitch Head: The Graphic Novel
Stitch Head, the curious, almost human creation of Professor Erasmus, has been captivating readers for over a decade. His quirky, features are near enough to human to be more charming than scary. Stitch Head’s fate is to remain in the background as his master the eccentric Professor Erasmus creates increasingly dangerous characters to inhabit the spooky Castle Grotteskew. He feels forgotten and abandoned. But then Stitch Head meets someone who want to make him a star. It’s a scary step but it means Stitch Head has the chance to change his life. What will Stitch Head ... View Full Review