Tag Mike Barfield

The World’s Last Mammoth and other Missing Marvels

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The World’s Last Mammoth and other Missing Marvels
Mike Barfield and Franziska Höllbacher
Templar

If you know a primary age child who thinks history is boring, try offering them this book. Divided into eight chapters, it looks at some of world history’s most mysterious marvels and amazing mysteries. Topics range from ancient civilisations, extinct animals, lost treasures, technologies, missing historical figures, mythical monsters and how people spend their non-working time.
Each chapter features comic strips.

Chapter 1, entitled The Magnificent Seven, revisits the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Only one – the Great Pyramid (on the outskirts of modern-day Cairo) still exists and also presented are other buildings past and present, and several statues.
The second chapter features Lost Leaders and you’ll meet – or perhaps you won’t meet the legendary King Arthur, (actually he reappears in the final chapter), Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, once a mighty Mongolian emperor (his body has never been located) famous for the number of people he killed in medieval times (around 40 million supposedly) and somebody I’d not heard of – Puyi who was made an emperor at just 2 years old – against his wishes I hasten to add. A wacky comic strip spread briefly outlines his story.

Have you ever wondered why the dodos met their demise? Or heard of another flightless bird, the Solitaire; they crop up in the third chapter. No matter which chapter you turn to, you’ll find humour aplenty among the missing marvels featured and it’s possible you’ll end up with aching ribs from laughing.

Add a copy or two to KS2 class collections and wait for the grabbing to begin.

Midnight Monsters / The Ultimate Spell-Caster

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Midnight Monsters
Helen Friel
Lawrence King Publishing

Billed as a ‘Pop-up Shadow Search’, this is a really clever take on the search for hidden objects book. To make it work you need these two things:
a) a largish blank wall, and b) a torch (the powerful kind is best).

Now, turn off the lights, stow away any screens that might be lurking (unless you happen to be using your mobile as a light source), place the book on a flat surface, open up the book, power on your torch and prepare to journey to five pop-up scene locations starting with the wild woods’ Therein, lurking among the branches are a jabberwock, a bigfoot, a werewolf, a dingonek and a headless horseman. (Brief descriptions of each are supplied).

Other settings are creepy caves, mysterious mountains, a misty lagoon and a haunted castle, in each of which hides five creepy creatures whose whereabouts you should seek among the shadows cast on the wall.

What a great thing to produce at a Halloween party; it will keep your guests absorbed for ages as they hunt for all those mythical beasties – a grandylow, a krampus, a tikbalan and a grootslang to name just a few.

Perfect after dark reading of the spooky kind: Spellbinding indeed.

The Ultimate Spell-Caster
Mike Barfield
Lawrence King Publishing

Can you imagine a magical book that offers potential witches and wizards more than 60 million spooky spells of the silly kind? No: then you definitely need Mike Barfield’s splendidly interactive, spirally bound volume that provides the means of doing just that.
If incantations are your thing then the five interchangeable strips presented in a variety of fonts, providing spooky or daft phrases along with the occasional contemporary one for good measure will keep you entranced for hours.
Here’s one spellbinding possibility:

And another: ‘Flap of cat and gum of boot, turn your dad into a self-propelling snot bottler.’

Embellished with speckled strips, luminous green endpapers and the occasional splattering of potion, the book has the appearance of an ancient tome.

Why not gather together with a group of fellow spell-casters suitably clad and have some fun conjuring up some weird and wonderful spells this Halloween.

Cackles and giggles guaranteed.