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Joanne Owen - Editorial Expert

Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales. An early passion for culture, story and folklore led her to read archaeology and anthropology at St John’s, Cambridge, after which she led the UK children’s book team for a major international retailer, going on to market books for Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Walker Books, Nosy Crow and Rough Guides. She now divides her time between writing, travel writing, reviewing and hosting writing workshops.

Joanne is the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the Martha Mayhem series, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Puppet Master, and You Can Write Awesome Stories, a how-to guide to creative writing. She’s also worked on a major community story project for the National Literacy Trust (Story Quest), and a number of travel guides, including The Rough Guide to Responsible Wales and guidebooks to the Caribbean region. In additional, she’s an occasional chair of LoveReading LitFest events, and judge for the 2023 Branford Boase Award.

Latest Features By Joanne Owen

How to craft truly terrifying tales - three fearsome tips and techniques for writing spooky stories this Hallowe’en (and through the year).

Summer sizzlers for Young Adults – the best YA novels set in summer

20+ Brilliant Books Featuring Unforgettable Deaf or Hard of Hearing Characters for Deaf Awareness Week

Get creative with creatures! 3 awesome animal-themed writing activities for National Pet Month

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Latest Reviews By Joanne Owen

Specifically written for seriously struggling readers, Tanya Landman’s Killer is an involving work of super-short fiction that re-tells the tragic story of Gelert, the loyal royal dog of Welsh folklore. Boasting a terrifically tantalising opening (“Stones mark an old grave. An important one. Who’s buried there? A prince? A king? Read on. The answer may surprise you”) that’s all but impossible to put aside, the scene is set when readers are drawn into a cold, grey winter ahead of a bright spring that sees a prince saddle ... View Full Review

Showcasing the bone-deep power of short stories, Tanya Landman’s The Day Death Died is a fine piece of writing. Aimed at 11+-year-olds with a reading age of six, it’s also an incredibly arresting tale - chilling, thrilling and thoroughly thought-provoking as it sees a boy drive Death from his mother’s door, with unexpected consequences. “Jack and his mum lived by the sea. Mum was ill. Each day, she got worse. She got thin. Went to bed early. She got up later and later”. One day, Mum didn&... View Full Review

Brimming with illustrative panache, and fresh on the fancy vampiric coat-tails of Colin's Castle!, Holly Swain’s Colin’s Grandma is a fang-tastic feast of picture book fun. Colin lives in his “perfect vampire castle” with Duck. While the unlikely duo don’t always see eye to eye, they share a love of gardening, watching movies and trampolining. Today they’re focused on one task — making their castle spick and span ready for a visit from Colin’s Grandma. But Grandma prefers the cobwebs and throws away the vaccum cleaner, she sees ... View Full Review

With a classic “Nothing much ever happened” around here set-up, Phil Hickes’ The Last Day of October is a treat of haunted Halloween trickery. In this case, the setting is the small town of Column Falls in Oregon, where folks are festooning their front lawns with elaborate displays of spooky graveyards, robotic werewolves, raggedy ghosts and “pumpkins with eerie grins and shining eyes” while three friends, Cody, Dori and Sean, hatch plans for Halloween. Cody is set on looking for scares, and so the trio venture to the ... View Full Review

Readers who relish witchy fiction, historic fiction and contemporary fiction are all likely to be spellbound by Finbar Hawkins’ Ghost - a beautifully suspenseful supernatural novel in which the episodic narrative is shared between three female voices. Divided by centuries, the young women are united by loss, and their connections to ageless spirit magic and an ancient evil that must be laid to rest. In Britain in 60 AD, Aine flees her Roman enslavers, having previously seen a vision in water of “two girls, hands joined” and been issued with a task “to find what ... View Full Review

Originally published in 1978, Errol Lloyd’s Nini at Carnival is a joyous picture book classic that we’re delighted to see available in this beautiful new edition. Guaranteed to spark a warm glow of nostalgia in readers who remember it from their own childhoods, this timeless treasure will also charm a whole new generation of readers. In his afterword, author-illustrator Errol Lloyd shares the personal story that sparked his creation of Nini at Carnival, relating how he moved from Jamaica to London as a young law student in the mid-seventies, just as Notting Hill Carnival was bursting into ... View Full Review

Created in partnership with Historic Royal Palaces, Ghosts in the Walls showcases eleven spooky stories penned by an impressive roster of writers, among them Faridah ÀbíkéÍyímídé, Alexia Casale, Joseph Coelho, Catherine Johnson, Jasmine Richards and Sam Sedgman, with a foreword from Yvette Fielding, paranormal investigator extraordinaire, setting a fittingly foreboding tone. Between these pages, readers are treated to the arresting tale of the phantom Birdwoman of the Tower of London, accompanied by the creepy “click, clack” of ghostly ravens. Then there&... View Full Review

Steeped in mystery and slow-simmering suspense, Curtis Jobling’s Wyrdwood melds the menace of rural folklore (meet Twig Man, if you dare…) with a relatable modern-day context. In this case, when Kiki returns home from school to surprise her writer dad (who’s known as “The King of Creepy”) ahead of the Christmas break and finds a strange woman in her deceased mother’s place. An edgy ambience is evoked from the off, when Kiki’s train pulls into the end-of-the-line village of Merryweather-by-the-Sea and ... View Full Review

Miranda Moore’s A Beautiful, Terrible Thing is devastatingly impactful as it shares a story of beautiful life-changing first love and the ravaging emotional dilemmas that come in the wake of terrible loss. Nathan is smitten when he first see Cara in a café. Shattered by causing the death of a boy after running a red light and fiddling with his phone, her “fresh natural look” and “easy posture” immediately make him “feel a kilo lighter”. In the same ... View Full Review

Boasting beautiful, bright, characterful illustrations, Carly Gledhill’s Pencil’s Best Story Ever invites little ones to join Peanut on a joyously colourful adventure, as directed by Pencil the author. After Peanut packs his backpack with “all sorts of useful adventury things”, he embarks on a BIG ADVENTURE, with Pencil promising that this will be “my BEST STORY EVER”. As for the story within a story that unfolds, it begins with a very useful map that tells Peanut to head to THE SUPER SPOOKY FOREST. ... View Full Review

Angie Thomas’ Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Book of Anansi sees Remarkable girl Nic issued with an excruciating ultimatum. Filled with witty one-liners, fast-paced action and dazzlingly-conjured characters (not least Nic’s president Grandma and flock of flower- festooned aunties), it’s also powerfully propelled by African American history, folklore and lived experience. All of which amounts to an absolute slam dunk of a book. While preparing for the all-important exam that will see her start being schooled in using her Gift, Nic is haunted by dreams of being hunted ... View Full Review

Evocatively illustrated by Ross MacRae, Simon Lamb’s Mat o' Shanter: A Cautionary Tale is a wondrously unique reimagining of Robert Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter poem. Transposing the Scottish bard’s “middle-aged man drinking alcohol with his friends down the pub” to a boy drinking Irn-Bru with his mates, and replacing the original risqué witch with a girl named Lily, it dances with invention, and rounds off with a new cautionary twist on Burns’ original tale. We meet Mat o’Shanter, a Prestwick lad who&... View Full Review