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Andrea Reece - Editorial Expert
Andrea Reece has spent almost her entire working life in children’s books, first as publisher, latterly as consultant, project manager and critic.
She has reviewed for LoveReading4Kids since 2015, is editor of the leading children’s books review journal Books for Keeps and administrator of the Klaus Flugge Prize and Branford Boase Award.
She was children’s programme director of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival until 2023, spent three years as manager of National Poetry Day and works with CLPE on the CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Prize) and with The Full English on the Poetry By Heart national competition. She has judged children’s prizes including the Costa Children’s Book Award and Alligator’s Mouth Award.
Latest Reviews By Andrea Reece
With reading for pleasure amongst young people apparently declining at an alarming rate, books that match video games for immersive excitement are needed more than ever and Christopher Edge is just the writer to deliver. This stand alone follow up to his excellent first Escape Room adventure sees its protagonist Eden actually inside The Escape, the ultimate escape room and an online game. She has monsters to face, weapons to collect and puzzles and challenges at every step with an added level of danger: what happens if she loses the game? As we follow Eden and fellow player Ted, who ... View Full Review
As part of the celebrations for their 85th anniversary, Puffin Books are reissuing eight classic children's books in handsome clothbound editions, with colourful sprayed edges and matching ribbons (both bright pink in this case). They look special, very collectable and reader friendly too.
Alongside Charlotte’s Web (E. B. White) and Pig-Heart Boy (Malorie Blackman) is The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks by Katie Kirby. First published in 2021, it more than qualifies for the list, if nothing else for the sheer amount of pleasure it will have brought to readers.
As Nadia Shireen points out in the ... View Full Review
As part of the celebrations for their 85th anniversary, Puffin Books are reissuing eight classic children's books in handsome clothbound editions, with colourful sprayed edges and matching ribbons. They look special, very collectable and child friendly too.
Amongst the eight books is The Story of Tracy Beaker and Jacqueline Wilson’s indomitable and now iconic character certainly deserves her place in the collection.
As author Beth Lincoln points out in her foreword, when she first burst onto the literary scene in 1991, Tracy Beaker was a different kind of heroine. She felt real in a way that many that had ... View Full Review
As part of the celebrations for their 85th anniversary, Puffin Books are reissuing eight classic children's books in handsome clothbound editions, with colourful sprayed edges and matching ribbons. They look special, very collectable and child friendly too.
Amongst the eight books is Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney and how could it not be? It’s hard to think of another book character or series that has brought so much pleasure to so many young readers.
As Dapo Adeola points out in his special foreword, each of protagonist Greg Heffley’s journal entries (he insists it ... View Full Review
After a trip to the beach with Grandpa, Louie develops a terrible fear of sharks. Grandpa takes him to the lake instead of the seaside, but that doesn’t help, and Louie convinces himself that there are sharks in his paddling pool, bath, even the local park.
Wise Grandpa takes him to the library to learn the facts about sharks, and that helps a bit, but not much. What does make a difference, is Grandpa explaining that he used to be scared too and how he learned to live with his fear, and make sure it didn’t ... View Full Review
Large format, fully illustrated, many of the pages in cartoon strip format, this book is packed with information on a huge range of subjects, all of it presented in ways that are guaranteed to educate, entertain and inspire.
A look at the glossary gives some idea of the topics covered: words readers will come across include chromosomes, civilisation and coniferous, and that’s just the Cs, obviously. In four sections – Science and Medicine, People and Places, The Natural World and Oops! Accidents Will Happen! – readers learn fascinating stories of things humans have discovered.
These are explained via ... View Full Review
Moesha Kellaway follows up her award-winning and hugely popular book Slug Life with another funny, entertaining and informative slice of insect life.
In Ant Life we follow ant Anita as she tours her ant colony in the company of her hard-working sister Chantal to choose the ant job she wants to do. We visit the nursery, food store, even the queen’s bedroom learning a great deal about ant life along the way, before Anita decides rather than settle down, she’ll go travelling.
Now we visit ant colonies around the world, from the Amazon to Columbia and ... View Full Review
Welcome to Bearona, where little Ivy Holmes and her grandpa, the great detective, now retired, Bearlock Holmes, are ready to solve some mysteries.
First, what has happened to the rare Agave Bearona flower which has gone missing from the Botanic Gardens. Where is it, and who has taken it?
As they begin their investigation, readers are invited to help solve the case by working out the answers to a series of puzzles. The challenges include solving riddles, correctly working out a sequence, finding the path through a maze, and more fun STEM and logic tests all across attractive, colourful, graphic ... View Full Review
Whether you can’t wait for science lessons or are approaching them with trepidation, this lively introduction to physics will intrigue, entertain and inform you.
Our guides are Professor Albert Katzenstein, a cat, and his enthusiastic assistant Scooter the guinea pig. Via a series of comic strips accompanied by illustrated pages of text, they provide the answers to a range of fascinating questions, using physics. The questions range from how to see a magnetic field, how to split an atom to how to move at superspeed. In each case Scooter is – yes – the guinea pig, trying things ... View Full Review
There’s huge excitement at the palace and in Scallop City when Emerald’s mother and stepdad the king announce that they’re having a baby. Emerald’s stepsister Princess Delphina is particularly excited and can’t wait to play with the baby and dress it up. Emerald is less enthusiastic; in fact she even considers going to live with her dad. When the babies arrive (twins!) though, it’s Emerald who is happiest while Delphina feels left out and struggles to adjust. Fortunately, Emerald is there with her big sister skills to smooth ... View Full Review
Lionel is a rhinoceros, a very large rhinoceros. He’s so big in fact that he doesn’t fit on one page, he needs two.
His size, combined with his equally large levels of enthusiasm, is an issue when playing with his mice and bird friends. When he climbs on their bus, he squashes it flat, his voice drowns out the orchestra, and he gets so excited making holes in bagels in their baking session, that he pokes a hole in the page of the book. He does – and you can peep through it to follow his ... View Full Review
Pandora is off for a summer holiday with her parents. They’re in the front, bickering about directions, she’s in the back with her head stuck in a Detective Crow mystery story, her favourite reading. They’re heading for Puzzlevale but no sooner have they arrived, than Pandora’s parents vanish. To find them – this is Puzzlevale after all – she’ll have to solve a series of puzzles, and so does the reader.
There are 25 different mysteries in fact, each one including three puzzles, the answers to which need to be combined ... View Full Review
