Flora & Ulysses - The Illuminated Adventures
by Kate DiCamillo
This is such a cute book! Everything about it is quirky - the story about a superhero squirrel called Ulysses, the brilliant illustrations (some in graphic novel format), Flora's hairstyle - well, she's not your average 10-yr-old girl in a story with long flowing blond locks. I mean, she's friends with a boy temporarily incapacitated by blindness following a traumatic incident (or so he says. And by the way, don't call him Billy. It's William Spiver.)
Well I can't reveal all of its wonderfulness to you, you must find out for yourself. It all starts off with a hoover...
The Forever Whale
by Sarah Lean
Hannah's granddad has Alzheimer's. Before it got too bad, he had taken Hannah out in his rowing boat, like he regularly did, and promised to tell her a story about meeting her grandma, some deer, and a whale. But then the illness took hold and he was moved into a home, and his eyes became empty - along with his memory. Hannah is determined to find out what granddad wanted to tell her. She decides to visit a local island which he often talked about, and film anything she can see, in the hope that this will jog his memory, and she can have her old granddad back. What she finds stirs up memories - and a few surprises - for everybody.
This is a beautiful story which I finished in one sitting. If you like this, also try Michael Morpurgo's Why the Whales Came.
Sarah Lean has also written two other wonderful stories - A Dog Called Homeless, and A Horse for Angel.
