This week's Book of the Week won't be around until October but once again we wanted to make sure we squeezed in coverage before we disappear...

...and wow, what a book! If anything has lit a fire under children's publishing over the last few years, it's the real-life stories of youngsters who are making a stand against the way they see the world changing around them, their world in fact - as Generation Z answers the rallying call to mobilize and get behind some of the biggest issues facing our planet.

From injustice to climate change, from gun control to equal rights, kids are more than ever showing a level of intelligence, bravery and determination to make our world a better place for everyone to live in.

"Generation Brave" is a truly fantastic book, highlighting some of the youngsters who have become synonymous with ecological, sociological and political (but always peaceful) protest as they seek to raise the attention of the world to the plight of our planet and the people who live on it.


Ordinary kids often placed in horrific and extraordinary circumstances feature heavily in the book from the Parkland School Massacre survivors, to Thandiwe Abdullah, strongarming the power of social media and other means to bring their causes to the attention of the world with clear and evocative protest, bravely standing up to adults who quite often seek to subvert or silence these youngsters.


Books like this are so important to kids like my daughter, showing how ordinary kids such as her can make their voices heard and make their points count.

Sum this book up in a sentence: Brilliantly presented and wonderfully illustrated, this is a rallying call for all kids to stand up for what they believe in.

"Generation Brave" by Kate Alexander and Jade Orlando is out on 15th October 2020, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing (kindly supplied as a digital ARC for review). 

You may have a bit of a wait on your hands for this one but we couldn't wait to talk about it anyway, so here it is!

We've admired the "Phoebe and her Unicorn" series from afar for a while, pulling a couple of titles out of our local library for a look. My daughter has got to that age where she casts a cynical side-eye over anything that's pink, looks vaguely cute, and features either unicorns or llamas but absolutely raved about PAHU - and was delighted to get the chance of an early look at the latest adventure for Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils (because if you're going to name a Unicorn, you've gotta go all-in, right?)

Phoebe and her luxuriously maned pal are on a new adventure - this time in cyberspace! Imagine it, a virtual unicorn experience to match anything you can possibly imagine in the real or magical world. This is what Phoebe and Marigold find on a school visit to the Science Museum.

It sounds too good to be true, right?

There's also the small matter of a school talent show to navigate, and as usual Dana's humour is cute, funny but also whip-smart (with Marigold stealing practically every scene, of course!)


Dana's glorious skills in comic making hark back to the sort of strip-based stuff I fell in love with as a kid, and of course have shared with my daughter as her appreciation of comics has grown over the last few years.

Phoebe and Marigold's adventures also work in a good dose of very smart and very subtle character-building storytelling, ideal for younger readers looking for their first inroad into comics and solo reading, but also utterly brilliant for big pug-ugly grown ups like me who appreciate the finer points of Dana's humorous storytelling and illustrative strokes.

Sum this book up in a sentence: If you've ever loved stuff like Calvin and Hobbes, or Bone, then you're really in for a treat, this series shows absolutely no signs of becoming stale or irrelevant and this latest virtual adventure is one fine chunk of comic greatness.

"Virtual Unicorn Experience (Phoebe and her Unicorn Book 12) is out on 20th October 2020, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing (kindly supplied as a digital ARC for review)