Meet the Colour Monster; a little monster with a jumbled up whirlwind of feelings all tangled up inside of him, that is until a friend takes him by the hand and helps him sort though each of his colours and placing them in jar. These aren’t just ordinary colours though-they’re feelings! And Colour Monster needs to un-jumble them in order to understand them.
Each colour represents a feeling
I fell in love with The Colour Monster whilst at work and it’s such a beautiful story and explains feelings in a way that children can understand and visualise in their own minds, allowing them to explore their own feelings and those of the people around them in a fun and easy to digest way.
The story starts off with the Colour Monster being in a jumble of colours and emotions, his friend taking his hand and sorting the colours in to jars and exploring each colour and the feeling it represents, for example, yellow is the colour for happy like the sunshine, green is for calm like the leaves on trees and red is for anger and hot like fire. In the end, all of Colour Monsters colours/feelings are in jars on a shelf so he can see all his colours/feelings and knows what they are.
I helped my daughter make her own colour jars.
Author Biography
As a parent and an early years practitioner, The Colour Monster is a wonderful book as well as a highly supportive resource which supports emotional development with strength. It’s also useful for colour recognition and basic numeracy. I enjoyed the story as a parent and enjoyed watching the effect it had on my own child as well as those in my care. It was lovely to see and hear children using the colours to describe how they were feeling and was a joy to engage with them in their exploration and learning journey.
You can purchase The Colour Monster from a wide range of retailers now.
Anna Llenas was born in Barcelona. She graduated in Advertising and Public Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with a diploma in Graphic Design. Llenas has collaborated with other authors as an illustrator. The Colour Monster picture book is her first as both author and illustrator. (Taken from the Templar Publishing website)
A few moons ago, I hit the LIKE button on a picture belonging to Velvet Cole of Velvet Image, we had a natter on and off and out of the blue came up with most wonderful of whirlwind of ideas, and then we decided to get an indoor photo shoot organised so Velvet could work on her computer magic and explore her more creative side. For me, it was dream!
Two of my many selves
I’m not the most confident of people, and I’m not the most photogenic of people, but I’m ballsy enough (stupidly and eagerly brave enough for the non-British readers!) to give anything a go! So when I had a message one night asking how I felt about photographing with fire, my answer was sure! But only as long as my eyebrows remain intact! during our studio shoot we chatted, laughed, talked about ideas, learnt how to count slowly for long exposure shots (harder than you think with a camera involved!) and even managed to take some photos! I LOVED the time in her studio and planning an outdoor shoot (yes with fire. And smoke!) and the ideas we threw at each other.
Just a couple of crazy creatives throwing ideas and books around
I’ve witnessed Velvet’s wedding photography skills first hand and she’s even photographed my daughter when she was much younger (safe to say my daughter is a LOT more photogenic and much prettier than me!) so I felt comfortable with the whole process. Velvet was kind enough to share one of her favourite photographers/artists with me and she has now become a firm favourite of mine too. Velvets other work is just phenomenal and I’m so proud to be supporting this wickedly creative side of her and I simply can’t wait to get out and get snap happy again with her!
Artist Gemma Schiebe has recently collaborated with Velvet
Photography is an art form that is appreciated by many but also underestimated. I’ve seen so many amazing and jaw dropping portraits (of Velvet and other photographers) over the years but only now have I come to fully understand the process and the work that goes behind these incredible images. I can barely even work the camera on my phone or my computer so I really can’t even begin to imagine how deep the ocean of knowledge any photographer has! I feel very lucky being a part of Velvets project and can’t wait to see what she does next and can only hope to be involved and witness her growth in person
Velvet took some immense portraits of friend Angharad
I was sent this by the author via Rachel’s Random Reads in exchange for a review and I can certainly say that it was the most fun my daughter has had indoors for a while!
Owing to poor weather, busy schedules and darker evenings, during the week we decided to work our way through the first section with bits we could find in the house. The book is aimed at 5+ and my daughter is 3 and a half (the half is extra important you know!) so rather than drawing, we found items and took photographs of them and talked about them.
The currently much loved Knick knacks of my three and a half year old
I was hoping to take the book in to work to try out with some older children, but due to Christmas crafts being the main focus and then another county-wide closure, sadly I didn’t get the opportunity BUT I know it’ll be a big hit when we’re able to get around to it!
The book is in 8 sections; My House; My Stuff; Outside; People; Faces and Bodies; Nature; Eating; Birds, Insects and Animals. The aim is to fill each of the 9 boxes on the sections accompanying pages with drawings that match up to the subject (for example, in the My House section is a page on books and you’re asked to draw your favourite book covers or the different places where books are kept in your house. So my daughter and I went on a hunt for some of our favourite books, stacked them up in a big pile and talked about why we chose them-it really got us both thinking and talking).
This is when I realised that her favourite book is a copy of Terry Pratchett because “the monkey is funny!”
Owing to the various sections of the book, as a mum and a childcare professional myself, I find this to be the perfect resource for families and groups of children alike; if you have a fussy eater you can head to the Food section to get your child talking, thinking, handling and trying foods in order to do the activities. For the Outdoors section you get a chance to introduce children to parts of the outside world they may not have been exposed to yet. The topics will feed curious minds and start up conversations you couldn’t imagine having with young children, making it a truly valuable book which I feel belongs in every home, setting and office which focuses on children.
Author Biography
Lexi Rees was born in Scotland but now lives down south. She writes action-packed adventures brim
full of witch-doctors, fortune-tellers, warriors and smugglers, combining elemental magic with hints
of dystopia. She also writes fun activity books for children.
Her fantasy adventure, Eternal Seas, was awarded a “loved by” badge from LoveReading4Kids. The
sequel, Wild Sky, is available now.
She’s passionate about developing a love of reading and writing in children and, as well as her
Creative Writing Skills workbook, she has an active programme of school visits and other events, is a
Book PenPal for three primary schools, and runs a free online #kidsclub and newsletter which
includes book recommendations and creative writing activities.
In her spare time, she’s a keen crafter and spends a considerable amount of time trying not to fall off horses or boats.
I was so pleased to be a part of this blog tour, but unfortunately my review is a lot later than it should have been. I didn’t want to post a review based on how much I had read when it was my turn to publish as this book deserves so much more than that.
Mine is based in London in 1968 and we are educated in the ways of office, sexual and social politics. Lilly, the leading lady, has been an evacuee in the countryside and upon her return went to work in a factory as a seamstress but takes herself off to night classes in order to learn to become a typist. She literally works her way from a sewing girl up to a cashier in a solicitors firm in the city-this is where we actually meet her and pick up the story.
Lilly and Jack have been married twenty years, their eldest daughter is an unmarried, teenage mother living at home (unheard of and rather scandalous still in those days) and their youngest daughter is still in her primary school years. Jack works as a chauffeur and his brother is married to Lilly’s life long best friend. It should be a very happy scenario despite the scandalous teenager. But it is not.
The one thing Jack didn’t count on is his wife out growing him and their marriage (which, let’s face it, does happen all too often still) and we see Jack observing his wife becoming distant. While the one thing Lilly didn’t count on, is her undeniable and silent crush on her boss Leonard being reciprocated; a chance evening at the ballet and one small out-of-the-office job see this pair embarking on a passionate and wild affair where hearts are broken and lives are lost. Without giving too much away, it was tense and incredible and also very sad.
Normally a plot wrapped around a steamy affair isn’t my cup of tea (I’m no prude but romance isn’t for me right now and sex is just so off the table it’s unreal, and frankly, I could really do without the details) BUT the line that sold this title to me was “no happily ever after” and it clicked that this wasn’t your typical romance or office affair. And reading the end notes from Knight after the last chapter, it really hit you in the stomach that actually the story you just read was someone’s life and their experience.
Like I said, I don’t want to give too much away or spoil the book, but it seemed utterly complete when the very last pages were turned and it’s important, in fact, it’s vital to read the author note-but don’t be tempted to read it before the book or it’ll give away the plot!
They say never to judge a book by its cover, but the cover by picture of this actually lured me in somewhat and I avoid review pages like the plague when I’m presented with a read that may pique my interest, so I felt like this was going to be menacing, filled with crime and thrilling (like most of the books I’ve read this year) however it was not menacing, filled with crime nor thrilling (in the mystery sense) and I did have the occasional eye-roll moment (not because it was boring but because affairs are just eye-roll inducing to me) but it was still a bloody good read and I’m very glad I made the time to work through it! And all I have to say is well done Alison Knight. You are truly amazing.
AuthorBiography
Alison has been a legal executive, a registered childminder, a professional fund-raiser and a teacher. She has travelled the world – from spending a year as an exchange student in the US in the 1970s and trekking the Great Wall of China to celebrate her fortieth year and lots of other interesting places in between.
In her mid-forties, Alison went to university part-time and gained a first-class degree in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and an MA in the same subject from Oxford Brookes University, both while still working full-time. Her first book was published a year after she completed her master’s degree.
Alison co-manages Imagine Creative Writing with author Jenny Kane. She teaches creative and life-writing, runs workshops and retreats for writers as well as working as a freelance editor. She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
She lives in Somerset, within sight of Glastonbury Tor.
This is the second of Purcell’s novels I have read and it has certainly taken my breath away-even more so than The silent Companions did!
Dorothea, or Dotty, lost her mother at young age to an illness she didn’t understand as a child. She has undertaken the charitable role of being part of a board which oversees the funding and raising of a woman’s prison and often visits prisoners with keen interest to fuel her hunger for knowledge within the science of Phrenology (the process of observing and feeling the skull to determine a person’s psychological attributes) and it is within this role that she meets Ruth Butterham- a seamstress apprentice turned house maid who is condemned for murder by accusation and by her own admission.
And so Ruth’s own sorrowful tale is told and we see her bullied in school, taken out of education to financially support her family as it grows only to then heart achingly and suddenly diminish, on to an “apprenticeship” where she and the other girls are abused in the foulest of ways, we see Ruth fight for the life of her only true friend only to lose the battle, we see someone Ruth could have loved marry another and then we follow her journey as she tries to live freely and seek revenge in the slowest of ways.
The book also allows us to see Dotty’s journey- her love for police constable David, her love for her father who loudly believes that she is becoming an embarrassment owing to being 25, unmarried and dallying with science and all things looked down upon in decent society (the same belief he had of her mother’s path) and a future engagement of bother herself and father.
It isn’t until the last few chapters when Dotty allows us to acknowledge that events weren’t Ruth’s fault and we see the court trial that we put together the pieces of Dotty’s own puzzle alongside Ruth’s. And by the time the reader fully understands and has the whole picture, it’s too late for Ruth and the future of Dotty is not known to us as the book ends on a cliffhanger.
I LOVED this book and literally read until my eyes couldn’t take anymore, then went to bed and read more the following day and the day after until the last page was turned. Everything about this book enthralled me, enticed me and absorbed me in to the pages. The writing style was just perfect- we had chapters from Ruth’s point of view written as if she were speaking or writing to Dorothy, and we had chapters from Dotty which were written in the present tense as events unfolded. The perfect mixture of explaining the past of one girl and living the present of another. The plot was easy and enjoyable to follow, the language was understandable and descriptions of people, places, sounds and smells were so good it was as if you were right there alongside the characters.
The first book of Purcell I read was The Silent Companions three years ago. I liked the book a lot but found it very eery, and enough so that it gave me a singular nightmare (the second book ever to do so) when I didn’t expect it to! It made me a little nervous of picking up The Corset, because really in 2020 I could do without the added extra nightmares and disrupted sleep! But I’m so very glad that I did because while this book had far less of the frightening and obvious variety of the supernatural, it was just floating on the surface and when I reached the end, I realised I had been reading a thriller and more of a murder mystery than a paranormal scare fest.
I hadn’t planned on reading Bone China (Purcell’s other novel) however I now feel that I simply must and urgently! This was the perfect book to showcase Purcell’s skills and I simply can’t wait to see what she brings us next!
Oblivio salvationem Angelis opperitur Oblivion awaits the Angel’s salvation
Beautiful, dark, and horrific. You’ll need your A-game for concentration and thinking for this one.
Where to start with this one?! I was offered to read this via Rachel’s Random Reads (if you don’t already know of her or her social media, then as an avid reader and blogger or budding novelist you need to look her up! Total game changer!) and hadn’t long finished a spooky book challenge and felt in a bit of a slump-with my ever expanding TBR list I was feeling a little overwhelmed and my reading mojo was taking a nose dive. I almost handed the book back and put my hands up in epic failure BUT how glad I am that I didn’t! I’ve never been so curious or enthralled before!
The centre of the book focuses around the Boy-we never learn his name and that may seem frustrating (and it is at first) but you soon just accept this lad has no name. You learn that he sees things that other do not-souls-and can look into a person to see if they are good (colourful souls) or bad (tar black souls) and can also see if a persons soul is passed the point of return (when considering if they can become “good”).
The Boy is an orphan, born in an asylum and raised within the care system, and knows nothing of a typical family. He’s wanting so desperately to find his mother’s soul that he leaves the care home and goes on to live in the abandoned asylum carrying out his soul-catching ritual night after night until he finds her. Only when he does and makes an attempt to place her in a host body, it just isn’t right-his mother isn’t at home in her host, and so he ends the hosts life and is subsequently caught and taken to young offenders detention.
As the Boy is highly intelligent and other worldly, he sticks out like a sore thumb and is soon targeted. However an unlikely alliance forms with Makka (who we slowly learn actually has a heart of gold despite rough around the edges and quite handsy!) who takes on the role of lead protector and opens up a whole new world to the Boy and introduces him to the world of double decker buses, the London Underground and patterned carpets in vans. They two boys also come crashing in to the world of Vee-a girl who has been abused at the hands of a father who should be protecting her but instead passed her around like an object in order to make his own gains.
The three form a real bond and while Makka and Vee have their own journeys in to revenge for their hurts, and they work through them together as a whole. And eventually the Boy places he most precious and beloved jar in to the hands of Dr Eve Rhodes (the jar being his mother’s soul).
Dr Eve Rhodes is a fantastic character with a unique sight of her own which she grew to reason with abs cover over by becoming a psychiatrist. She is the main voice of reason in the entire book and soon finds herself reaccepting what she would see as a child and becoming the keeper of the Boy’s mother’s soul.
The plot is strong, the scenarios are graphic and frankly bloody, racist and of a sexual nature, but the story is damned good! Most of the adventure is from the Boy’s narrative with other chapters looking in on key characters from time to time , which allows the reader to see what’s going on in other places and times, leading to more depth to the story itself and other characters. There are parts where your heart breaks and aches (when you see one of the characters discover tears for the first time) and there are also parts where you can’t help but laugh (looking at the carpet pattern in vans and wondering if patterns on seat coverings are the same in other parts of the Tube), parts where you recoil (burnings and bodies) and parts where you feel anger (abuse and racism).
This is an exceptional read that just seems to have it all in one book! Really worth the time and effort and I really hope there’s a follow on where we see how Dr Eve Rhodes and the Boy’s mother live and go about their life while waiting for the Boy to be ready and his mother to be released.
Disturbing, intriguing, boundless, horrific, interesting, scary and gripping! What a story! What an author!
The Witch bottle shows is Daniel, a milk man who carries grief and regret with him like the majority of us carry a face mask and hand gel. Having lost his baby brother at the tender age of five and his mother struggling with catatonic depression, he witnessed the horrifically traumatic birth of his daughter and undiagnosed post natal depression of his wife (this last part isn’t mentioned exactly but an email from his wife in one of the last chapters is why I say this) leading him into further turmoil when his mother passes. We see this lonely and odd milk man become haunted a by the strangest of eery spectrums and see a hidden part of our work along side him.
I’m unsure if the book has a happily ever after, but we are made aware that Daniel saved the world as we know it somehow and to me this is an assumption of a happy ending (just not really for Daniel but give the man his posthumous credit where it’s deserved!) as Katherine dreams of Marriane and all is not well in these dreams and she’s aware of something looming outside in the darkness when she wakes. Very much a cliff hanger of epic proportions!
This book gripped and enthralled me, shocked and saddened me and also sickened me (for the right reasons-a good gore scene in a novel can be hard to interpret and the perception varies from person to person) and the hit that has really stick with me is the part where Ryan has joined the Fallen Stock drivers and Daniel is surrounded by them and forced to the steps of the rear of the truck face down and made to drink (spoiler alert sorry!). Needless to say this novel has made me very glad I’m a vegetarian!
Fletcher’s style of writing was good with exceptionally strong descriptive and narratives, but when narration changed from one character to another, it wasn’t always clear immediately and lead to a few sentences having to be re-read. I feel like the description of life as a milk man and it’s routine was accurate but I feel like maybe I didn’t need to take on board all of the information given, but nice to learn new.
Never having read anything from Fletcher before I am keeping a keen eye on him for future releases.
What.A.Book! And such an appropriate read given the current climate in the world. Peter May first started to put together his ideas for a crime novel set amid Bird Flu/H5N1 in 2005. He researched it for many a significant period of time and eventually came up with Lockdown; a murder mystery and crime thriller set in the epicentre of a global pandemic killing millions. No publisher wanted to know; they said it was unrealistic and couldn’t ever happen. Until the smart cookies over at Riverrun decided May had stumbled on to something and his nov published while during the Covid-19 global pandemic which saw the majority of the world going in to lockdown as the international death toll rise higher and higher.
What a clever man Peter May is.
This book is set in London in the middle of a pandemic that’s wiping out millions across the world and emergency field hospitals and mortuaries are being built around the city (sound familiar?) and one night, a team of well paid and well PPE’d builders stumble across a smart, expensive looking hold-all in the ground containing the bones of a young child. And that is where the mystery starts.
Who is this child? Why are the remains stripped bare and stuffed in to a bag in the ground? What part of the puzzle does this unearthing fit in to? It’s up to D.I Jack MacNeil to head the investigation with forensic odontologist Amy and her team to discover the truth. In between times, there’s a ruthless and professional killer out in the city taking down anyone with information and is also forced to face every parents worst nightmare.
Lockdown was an exceedingly well written book and so very worth the time to read. It may feel a bit close to home for many people, and will do for a long time I’ve no doubt, but amidst all relative similarities it still is a fantastic good Murder mystery and crime thriller. The chapters are well paced and written from character perspectives and a good chunk of well explained science is thrown in to the mix the further in to the book you read. And because May did a lot of research in to the H5N1 strain it is really and truly interesting and really piqued my interest in to the mutation of generics and the spread of disease.
For me, this was a book I couldn’t put down and I’m most definitely looking forward to reading previous works of May once my 2020 TBR list has dwindled.
Well what do I say? Where do I begin? I have literally just closed the pages of this book and have taken a complete U-Turn of my thoughts and opinions!
This is the final read of the Read By Spooktober challenge over on Instagram and it was one epic ending! I picked up this book thinking it’s far too short to really hold much detail or much of a story (160 pages) but as I began to read it, I thought it was about 100 pages too long- I was bored and waiting for the scares.
I had seen the film starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2012 (so long ago!) and although it was rated a 12, I distinctly remember the character of Arthur Kipps looking out into the night at Eel Marsh House and the face of the Woman in Black leaping out at him through the window (both my mum and I literally jumped a mile and screamed! I was a youngster back then and not ashamed to admit it scared the life out of me!) so I had high hopes of major jumps and scared for this read, but it seems Hollywood used its artistic licensing to add more to the story than what was originally there.
Susan Hill gives you the most amazing descriptions of Crythin, it’s village and residents, as well as the vastly changing Nine Lives Causeway and unsettling Eel Marsh House, but it isn’t until that very last chapter that the scare comes.
When Spider almost lost her life I was in pieces! I had sudden flashbacks to watching THAT scene in The Never Ending Story (if you don’t know it, a horse is swallowed by marshland leaving his human companion, and viewers of all ages, utterly broken, devastated and a tearful mess) and thought I couldn’t read on, couldn’t bare witness to the Marsh taking a life, but then Arthur rescues her and literally becomes Man of the Hour and all round hero. So I read on feeling less bored and watched as the puzzle was put together and all the pieces fell in to place, leading to the devastation and horror of an innocent pony and trap ride. And that was when I closed the book and though “woah” and couldn’t think of anything else until I re-read that chapter again.
For 160 pages, Hill has gifted the world with a short but exceedingly detailed novella full of a hauntingly devastating love and the lengths of revenge and retribution that a soul will seek out in order to feel justice. The Woman in Black is well and truly worth the short amount of time to read and makes for a better book than film (in my opinion) and Hill did a fantastic job of submerging the reader without them even k owing it.
This was the second read for Read By Spooktober over on Instagram and The Shadow Friend is Alex North’s second book (The Whisper Man being his first nearly twelve months ago-two books in less than a year? Must be an avid writer!) and is the first of his titles I have read.
After feeling somewhat dissatisfied with my previous Spooktober read (Pet Semetary by Stephen King) I wasn’t sure how I would take to The Shadow Friend and how I would find it, so opened up the first pages with little to no expectations and I was pleasantly blown away!
The Shadow Friend is set in the village of Gritten where 25years ago, a horrific murder took place and a bit vanished. Paul, a friend of the one boy who committed the crime, returns for the first time when his mother falls ill during the turbulent time of copycat murders taking place elsewhere. As part of her investigations, Detective Amanda Beck comes to Gritten in search of answers, which she mostly finds.
I was gripped! And without giving away too much, I was saddened when Paul’s first love was revealed as the subject of harm and I really felt my heart break for Paul at that key moment during his adult life. I honestly couldn’t read further that evening because I was so cross with North for his decision in that particular chapter! That’s how invested I was in this story and it’s characters!
The ending wrapped up a lot of loose ends and left the reader feeling settled with the answers they had been presented with. All in all, this was an excellent read and I’m certainly adding North’s previously published novel to my online shopping cart and I eagerly await his next title! This is well worth a read! Not frightening but chilling and very eery in places.
Morelli’s Reads 