5 Recommended Books for Advanced Readers
Build your child’s vocabulary and ability to deal with complex English sentences with this week’s recommendations for year 5 students.
“The most life-enhancing book you could ever wish to read.” Michael Morpurgo
Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people.
That is what happened to Anna in 1933. She was nine years old when it began, too busy to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe – starting with her own small life.
One day, Anna’s father was missing. Then she herself and her brother Max were being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany…
An enthralling adventure set in turn-of-the-century Vienna. From the author of the bestselling Journey to the River Sea.
In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants’ quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there, but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. And sure enough, one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door. After years of guilt and searching, Annika’s mother has come to claim her daughter, who is in fact a Prussian aristocrat whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling, spooky Spittal Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family . . .
Eva Ibbotson’s hugely entertaining The Star of Kazan is a timeless classic for readers young and old.
“Blackman’s absorbing but alarming novel deals with themes of racism and prejudice . . . Unforgettable” – Independent
“Stimulating and emotionally satisfying” – Financial Times
Sephy is a Cross – a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought – a ‘colourless’ member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses.
The two have been friends since early childhood. But that’s as far as it can go. Until the first steps are taken towards more social equality and a limited number of Noughts are allowed into Cross schools…
Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity by Noughts, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum – a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger…
A rare, moving story, beautifully written, and true in every way that matters. The Guardian
For any reader wishing to delve into the works of the great Victorian literary colossus, Oliver Twist is, without doubt, an essential title.
Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes – grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity.
Oliver Twist features some of the author’s most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sikes, Nancy and ‘the Artful Dodger’.
“The Jungle Book was one of those rare books that I felt I was actually living as I read it” – Michael Morpurgo
‘There is no harm in a man’s cub.’
Best known for the ‘Mowgli’ stories, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book expertly interweaves myth, morals, adventure and powerful story-telling.
Set in Central India, Mowgli is raised by a pack of wolves.
Along the way he encounters memorable characters such as the foreboding tiger Shere Kahn, Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear.
Including other stories such as that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a heroic mongoose and Toomai, a young elephant handler, Kipling’s fables remain as popular today as they ever were.
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