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The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Synopsis: Bilbo Baggins, an ordinary hobbit, is dragged onto an adventure with the mysterious wizard Gandalf and a number of dwarfs to regain treasures taken by an evil dragon.
On the way, he encounters Gollum, whom he defeats (through the use of a ring of invisibility) and navigates his way through a number of obstacles in the forest, finally arriving at Lake Town, where Smarg the dragon is guarding his stolen treasures.

Suitable for: Fantasy Lovers

Age Group: Kids and Teens

Star Rating: 8/10

Verdict: I am not a huge fan of fantasy, but this is a great, funny, interesting book. A good rea; there is a reason why it is a classic. Readers may also be interested in The Lord of the Rings, the sequel to Bilbo's adventures. The Lord of the Rings review will be completed soon.

Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage by Denis O'Connor

Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage is the sequel to Paw Tracks in the Moonlight which i have not read. From a view of reading from the 2nd book my point of view would be different to if i had read both so please keep in mind that this review was written without basic knowledge of the previous book hence a different perspective.

Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage is probably a book that the author wrote about himself and his cats as he is the person speaking in the text. It is basically written in the style of a diary except in more detail. The author and his wife decide to move back into a cottage they sold some time ago, but it would not be a proper without a cat to accompany them, as they had lived here previously with a cat. So, the decide to go out and buy a Maine Coon kitten. At the end of the story they have bought 4 Main Coon cats in total.

I think this book is okay if you like reading about cats or if you want to know how life would be like with a cat. It doesn't really have a particular plot as it just just goes on and on about the author's life with his cats and all the ups and downs with his large cat family. If you are looking for an action book then this is not the right book for you. Every now and then something will happen to their cats, which is the only time you'll meet any "complication" part of the book.

Age Group: Kids, roughly 9+ (it does contain some sadder bits so be aware of this)

Star Rating: 4/10 (If you like cats you might like it more)

Again, I haven't read the first book so my judgement could be changed if I had read it first. If you do want me to read the first book and re-review this then please ask!

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Synopsis: My Sister's Keeper is a story about a girl who is diagnosed with APL, a rare form of leukaemia, at a young age. Her parents are willing to do anything to save her, to the point where they create a 'spare parts child', first to donate cord blood at birth, then blood and bone marrow.
This is where things are complicated, when Kate is diagnosed with end-stage renal disease (kidney failure). Her parents want Anna, the 'spare parts child' to donate a kidney, and Anna, who apparently has had enough of being her sister's lifesaver, decides to file a lawsuit, suing her parents to the rights of her own body.

Suitable for: Anyone who has Time for a Book that Drags on and is Filled with Flimsy Junk
Age Group: Teens and Adults (or older children capable of handling a more mature topic)
Star Rating: 2/10

Verdict: Put very bluntly, My Sister's Keeper is a book with a good storyline which is ultimately wasted by the quality of the writing. Picoult drops metaphors in every chapter which were clearly intended to be deep and meaningful. Which I, as a normal person, has no brain capacity to absorb (a lot of junk about a house being bulldozed and rebuilt-literally-and then the narrator, in this case the mother, ends by saying 'but you know what? They rebuilt.) I mean come on. It is being over-dramatised far, far, far too much and it ends up becoming a load of cheesy junk. How does a house being rebuilt have any relationship to a kid with leukaemia?
Enough of that. Apart from too many failed metaphors supposedly containing the Meaning of Life, the characters personalities are completely cliche; there's the Teenager who Rebels, the Kid with her Own Opinions, and the Saint. Oh please. Added to that heap of failure there is also an amazingly stupid and completely irrelevant sub-plot about Anna ('spare parts child')'s lawyer, and the counsellor/social worker being in love. This is meant to be a book which questions ethics and morals and the basis of human society and the legal system, not a love story. Even Twilight would be a better choice than this if I wanted to read a love story (and considering how much I dislike Twilight, that's saying something).
Spoilers Below
The ending was an epic fail. It was too predictable, and far too unrealistic. Leukaemia Kid is miraculously cured. Dad gets over Spare Parts's death. Mum mourns but gets over it. Teenager who Rebels becomes good.
I personally know a cancer survivor, and someone who died from cancer. And either way, that's not the way it works.

Raven's Gate by Anthony Horowitz

Raven's Gate is the first of the five books in The Power Of Five series written by Anthony Horowitz. It is about some people who are trying to protect the world from evil spirits, which somehow Matt, the main character, is involved in. Raven's Gate is the gate that can bring the evil ones back into the world, and Matt must find out how to stop it from happening!

I think this book was very interesting, it was pretty fast action paced which kept me flicking through the pages without putting the book down. Younger readers might get nightmares if they read before sleep as there are parts that are a bit spooky.

Age Group: Teens

Star Rating: 8.5/10

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen, a 16 year old girl is about to go to reaping for Hunger Games, a cruel game that the Capitol organised which 2 children aged 12-17 in each district has to kill each other. The motto is To kill or be killed. On the day of reaping the two children was chosen and it turned out to be her dear sister. On the verge of fainting, Katniss volunteers to step forward instead of her sister and to risk her life.

When the hunger games begin, Katniss will be in great danger. Will she succeed? Will she make enemies and allies?

Rating: 9/10

Warning: contains violence

I really enjoyed this book because it was one of the books that you had to read until the very end. The page turning book was well structured and was full of twists and turns.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (book) by Roald Dahl

Charlie and the chocolate factory is a classic story by Roald Dahl about a boy named Charlie Bucket (a chocolate lover) and around the world, Willy Wonka, the most famous sweet maker in the world, sends out 5 golden tickets in chocolate packets and the lucky winners will get to go into his chocolate factory where no one is allowed to go in. One day, Charlie finds a fifty pence piece (around $80 AUD) and when he buys it he realises that it has the golden ticket.

When he visits the factory with 4 other children, it is one of the experiences that will change his life forever.

Rating: 9.5/10

I used to love this book as a child, mostly because of the plot, and the funny jokes that Roald Dahl seems to slip in. The description of the lollies (mostly chocolate) made me dribble all over the book.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code is a bit of a religious book as it contains content regarding Christian beliefs. Basically this book is about this group of people that want to be in possession of a particular item, or secret. Not many know about where this can be found, but this group of people is very desperate to know - they are able to go all out, no matter what it takes, even if it means to murder someone.

I think that this book is quite interesting, it has a good plot, but sometimes it goes on and on a bit too much which are the bits you can skim over. Apart from that, if you like reading about a chase and a fight to see who can solve the mystery first, this is a book you should definitely try.


Age Group: Teens & Adults (Mild Violence)

Star Rating: 7.5/10

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

The Deep End of the Ocean is the story of a three-year old boy, Ben, who is kidnapped. His mother, Beth, wanders then in a self-centered haze. Nine years later, however, Ben is found again-this time as Sam Taylor, mowing Beth's lawn.
The real problem for me with this book is that some parts of the first part drag on for far too long. We already know about Beth's main characteristics and flaws as they are demonstrated in the first few chapters. Mitchard goes on too much about this and it can get fairly boring in parts. However, in the second part of the book, you really start to see a dysfunctional family breaking down slowly, and it is quite interesting to see the different reactions characters have to this (e.g. the older child becomes 'bad' i.e. rebels, the mother becomes increasingly self-absorbed, and the father becomes a workaholic).
However, a fair warning would be that this book contains, from the start, no happiness. Happiness does not exist in Beth's world. It is a story of how a family can survive but die in spirit. The story is left unfinished, with a trailing end, and we never quite know what will happen next.
This book left me with many questions. How can we define a 'good mother'? What would a family struck by tragedy do? And finally, was Ben (Sam Taylor) ultimately better off being raised by his kidnappers? It leaves a lot of room for thought.

Suitable for: Parents and Grandparents

Age Group: Adults

Star Rating: 8/10

Life As We Knew It by Susan Pfeffer

Life As We Knew It is about what happens when a meteor crashes into the moon. Yes, it sounds quite boring/uninteresting but it really is quite cool. When the moon gets hit it moves closer and closer to the earth, disrupting the waves of the seas, causing natural disasters, etc. This is like the end of the world; lots of people are dying from natural disasters and the effects of no electricity.
Life is hard to survive in when mother nature is not in a good mood.

Age Group: 12+ - teens

Star Rating: 8.5/10


Apparently they are now making this a series called The Last Survivors. They have now 3 books in the series, Life As We Knew It, The Dead and The Gone, and This World We Live In.

Tomorrow Series by John Marsden

Tomorrow When the War Began is the first out of the seven books in the Tomorrow Series. In this book, the main characters go camping over a weekend in the bush, with no adults to accompany them. When they come back from their camp they notice that there was nobody left in the houses and they were all quiet; some houses had been broken in and ravaged through. The night before they had left to go back to the city was the night they had seen planes in many formations go by. This was the beginning of something big, something that would change their lives forever.

Age group: Teens/12+

Star Rating: 8/10

Warning: This book contains violence and death scenes.

Mean Girls Movie Review

I LOVE this movie, starring Lindsey Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Mc Adams and Lacy Chabert. Mean Girls is about Cady Heron who came from Africa and goes into High School and gets introduced into the different types of people(cheerleader, sporty, popular, nerds, freaks, asians, cool asians etc.) Eventually she makes friends and they plot to destroy Regina George the most popular girl in the school and has a group called "the plastics" containing Regina George The head of the plastics, Gretchen Weiners who knows a lot of things about everyone, Karen Smith the dumb one. After a while she becomes friends with Regina and slowly she becomes a plastic and starts to be mean like the rest of the them.

I love this movie as it is a chick flick and hilarious. Also has the BEST quotes.

Rating: 10/10

Rated: M

Reviewed by grace

Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin

A moving tale of love and hardship, Li captures the essence of living in the time of the Cultural Revolution. The story moves seamlessly from his childhood, to the Ballet Academy in Beijing, to his life abroad, and although the back cover contains a full synopsis of the story, it really isn't the plot that makes this book special, it's the way he portrays Mao's China and the little incidents that made up the big picture of his lifetime. Competing with rats for food, witnessing the execution of counterrevolutionaries, and finally defecting from his motherland, this is a captivating autobiography by a truly amazing dancer--a must-read.

Suitable for: Weekends and Holidays

Age Group: Young Children (picture book), Kids (kids' version), Teens, and Adults

Star Rating: 9/10


Buy the Book Here

Read about the Movie Here (may take a while to load)

Shadow by Michael Morpurgo

Shadow by Michael Morpurgo, is a emotional story about how hard life is for people living in third world countries and the huge impact of war on communities.

Shadow is about a boy (Aman) and his mother who have been through a lot to escape their country, but have been forced to return. During the war in Afghanistan, they escape their country, however, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Aman and his mother come from a tribe that is disliked by those who are evading into their country and everywhere they go they could be facing trouble. However, wherever they go there is a dog that is following them that attracts a lot of attention.

The story is quite sad as it reflects many's lives even nowadays. The plot is also quite interesting; it is rather unexpected, so that adds to the excitement. This book is made up of many chapters, each with a different character narrating, which is a new twist on an old idea.

Age group: 11-15 years

Rating 7/10

By Alvie

Horror High Series

The Horror High series are about horror stories (hence the name) about high school students dying, murder cases, vampires, all the scary things that you can imagine. These series are written by several authors such as R.L Stine (well known for his goosebumps series) Diane Hoh and many many other authors

The one that I read was called "Horror High Deadly rumours" was about Abbie who just moved schools finds Louis and becomes his girlfriend. After some time she heard a story on how his girlfriend mysteriously died and Abby wants to find the truth after she gets threats and having to go under life threatening situations.

This story you could say it was predictable (as I suspected the killer on the first few chapters) but you keep turn the pages to see what happens as there are so many twists and turns.

Rating for the series: 7.5/10

Rating for Deadly Rumours:7/10

by Grace

Air Head by Meg Cabot

My friend introduced to this book a while ago, but I never took it really seriously. I read it today and it was about a tomboy called Emerson. During an accident at Stark's mega grand opening (a company for models) Emerson is suddenly slipped into supermodel Nikky Howard's shoes, leaving her old self and troubles behind and starting a new struggle with the life of a supermodel.

Ranking 6/10

Although the plot is well structured, I have to say that it was mostly a really long and included lots of unnecessary detail and I didn't really have a link to the main character.

by grace

Kitchen Chinese by Ann Mah

So I bought a new book last year for Christmas but never got around to reading it. It was a first edition paperback of Kitchen Chinese by Ann Mah. I finally finished the 368-page novel yesterday and decided to try out one of the recipes one of these days.

Kitchen Chinese is a story about a young woman who is fired ('I used the handy term "laid off",' says Isabelle in the book) and decides to move to China to find a new job and get a fresh start. With all of the usual features of mainstream fiction written by young women (lots of romance, smooching, and details on Isabelle's love life), it is a lighthearted story filled with juicy details and plenty of mouth-watering descriptions of Chinese food. It's a nice, quick read, but doesn't really have that much of a plot, and is a tad too predictable. The main character doesn't really undergo a major change in the end and I guess a personality or characteristic change is something I like to see in characters.

Suitable for: Quick Reads

Age Group: Teens and Adults

Star Rating: 6/10

View Ann Mah's Site and Buy the Book Here

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