Tag Dashe Roberts

The After School Crime Club / Sticky Pines: The Wrath of the Blob

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The After School Crime Club
Hayley Webster
Nosy Crow

Willow is a loner, she’s grieving for her beloved Nanna. Now she’s starting to feel a sense of isolation for no-one can fill the void left by Nanna who was a huge fan of 50s musical films especially Singing in the Rain, which is mentioned frequently throughout the story.

Then she joins an after school study group, at the local bookshop, The Book Box, and there all the other students are way more confident than she is; some are members of her year 6 class although they’ve never conversed. One is Tay Welding who intrigues Willow: she appears to be the school ‘bad girl’ but her nonchalant, I don’t care attitude rather appeals to Willow. She now begins to reflect on her social isolation and starts to feel she might just want to feel accepted and to fit in somewhere.

When some of the study group members take advantage of Willow, daring her to do things she knows in her heart are wrong, to gain membership of their club, she does so. However she keeps hearing Nanna’s voice questioning the choices she’s making and she feels increasingly conflicted.

Can she work out who her true self actually is? In so doing perhaps she can help her Mum process her own grief too.

Hayley Webster writes about the need for acceptance with sensitivity, honesty and empathy. I’ve not read any of her previous books but will certainly seek them out. This one is pitch perfect for older KS2 readers.

Sticky Pines: The Wrath of the Blob
Dashe Roberts
Future Human

This is the concluding story in the epic, action-packed, sci-fi adventure series: it’s at once wonderfully weird, funny and full of mystery, danger and risks.

Lucy Sladan races against time in an endeavour to save the world from total obliteration. Her friends, the Nagalons, are fighting to survive having been captured by Milo’s despotic father, largely because he considers them different and thus a potential threat, while Milo himself has been trapped in a huge impenetrable blob, which has been exposed following the draining of Black Hole Lake. Lucy though is an enormously brave, tenacious character who doesn’t stray from the path she believes to be the right one; she has some difficult decisions to make along the way and faces huge danger. As her friendship with Milo develops, the boy too has difficult decisions to make, for he’s conflicted between his father’s expectations of him and the feelings he has for Lucy

You will be on the edge of your seat from beginning to end of this thrilling series finale. You’ll find yourself thinking hard about some of the issues raised – particularly difference and acceptance, understanding and showing empathy – long after you’ve closed the book, but that’s what cracking writing like this should do to its readers.

Skeleton Keys: The Legend of Gap-Tooth Jack / The Thing at Black Hole Lake

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Skeleton Keys: The Legend of Gap-Tooth Jack
Guy Bass, illustrated by Pete Williamson
Little Tiger

If you’re looking for a darkly comic adventure story that’s full of mystery, monster chases, and outlandish ghoulish decapitations, (that’s also about friendship, fitting in and finding self-confidence), then accept the invitation of Keys – Skeleton Keys – and allow this character to tell his tale (actually it’s that of Gap-Tooth Jack) that he claims is a “truly unbelievable, unbelievably true’ one.

However, in order for this tale to be unfolded back in the past, it’s necessary to begin in the here and now with a second story and in particular with wildly imaginative, seven-year-old, Kasper. This lad conjures himself up an imaginary friend whom he names Wordy Gerdy. By all accounts (or rather our storyteller’s), this ghost of a girl possessed an amazing ability: once she has in her fragile fingers a pen, she can rewrite any story she cares to, or even as here, she doesn’t.

Oh! We must mention Daisy; she’s Skeleton Keys’ unimaginary partner-in-problem-solving without whom, our bony being storyteller might have been a has been.

Find out what takes place when a highly dangerous, ghasty, goulish unimaginary escapes into yesteryear. Can Jack thwart her malevolent game plan by joining forces with Mr Keys? Plunge into Guy’s spooky saga, full of terrific characters,

extremely quirky humour with Pete Williamson’s fangtastically spooky illustrations and find out. It will definitely make some superbly silly story sessions as a lower KS2 class read aloud.

For a slightly older audience is:

The Thing at Black Hole Lake
Dashe Roberts
Nosy Crow

We’re back at Sticky Pines, the small US town of weird events and secrets lurking in woods, for this spooky sequel to the Bigwood Conspiracy; and once again there are weird things afoot.

We get two perspectives on events, those of Milo and Lucy (currently not on speaking terms). Milo Fisher, loyal son of business tycoon NuCo president – a double-crossing guy; and Lucy Sladen, who’s determined to discover the truth about the mysterious, alien life, Pretenders of Sticky Pines, and protect them from the greedy NuCo company, set on exploiting every one of the town’s resources.

In the previous adventure it was Lucy who made the astonishing discovery but now it’s Milo’s turn, for there’s something very strange in Black Hole Lake; something that will put both he and Lucy in terrible danger. Danger that begins as Milo leaves a party early in order to avoid Lucy, takes a short cut and soon finds himself sinking into the lake and there are eyes watching him from below the surface.

Mesmerisingly brilliant fun., fast-paced with lots of twists and an abundance of ever-deepening mysteries, creepiness and with the philosophical good guy/bad guy dilemma underpinning the tale, this is a stonkingly good, enormously satisfying read.