monsters Archives - Reading Pebbles

Review of Grim Falls Academy by Louise ForShaw

I am delighted to be part of the Grim Falls Academy Blog Tour. Introducing to you a fantastic new series for children aged 7 to 11 years. A great book for those that prefer a shorter read (each book is about 120 pages). It has the perfect mix of inventive characters, adventures and mishaps, and great character development to keep the interest of all years in KS2. The story is set in a boarding school for monsters, and focuses on three main characters. Seb who is a werewolf, his best friend Victor, who is a vampire bat, and a new student called Tabitha who is probably a human and just discovering her talents. As the title of the first books ‘Don’t Eat the Soup’ suggests, the cooks’ soup causes chaos. I love that the teachers are affected by the soup, leaving the students to sort out the chaos. Unfortunately, this coincides with a school inspection, so Seb, Victor and Tabitha have a race against time to put things right and save the school. But, luckily for the trio they are supported by two ‘enchanted suits of Armour’ called Clunk and Clang, who guard the school. The school inspector has trouble solving Clunk’s riddle so is delayed at the front door to the school.

I love that the publisher Maverick Books has decided to publish the 3 books in the Grim Falls Academy series at the same time (I really hope there will be more in the series). So that developing readers can keep their interest by jumping straight into the next book. There are a number of things that set this new series apart. Firstly, the way the the story is built up, there is good story telling and plotting and Louise ForShaw perfectly balances introducing the reader to information they need to understand the story with an exciting action packed plot. This is further enhanced by the excellent and well placed illustrations that make this a very readable series. Louise ForShaw is both author and illustrator. She has illustrated many children’s books, this is the first book she has also written. I think her background in illustration has really enabled her to make good use of the illustrations to support the story, which is not always as well done in short reads. The second thing that distinguishes this short read for KS2 is the strength of the characters and the strong friendship between Seb and Victor.

Exploring Mishaps and character development

As part of my stop on the Blog Tour I wanted introduce you to two aspects that I think Grim Falls Academy does especially well.

Exploring Mishaps

There are a number of accidents and incidents that happen. So let me introduce you to a few of them.

The incident with the mop

As Seb is rushing to class at the the start of the story he has a run in with a mop, With a combination of text and illustrations this is brilliantly executed. So you have a laugh and feel sorry for one of the main characters.

“Seb was in too much of a hurry to see the sign on the floor. Or the bucket full of soapy water. Or even Brian the zombie caretaker, mopping. That’s why he suddenly found himself with one foot in a bucket, slipping and sliding across the damp floor.
“LOOK OUT!” he wailed, flapping, his arms wildly. But it was too late.”

P11 Grim Falls Academy, Don’t Eat the Soup! (Book 1)

The start of the chaos in the lunch hall

Absolutely love how the school cafeteria went from calm lunch hall, to chaos in minutes!

“The cafeteria exploded into chaos.
Miss Hallow quickly sprouted two more tentacles that wrestled and grappled with each other, “WHAT’S HAPPENING?! WHAT AM I?IN FACT, WHO AM I?” she wailed.
Dr Fink the Mad Science teacher, was lying on the floor sobbing with his hand covering his ears….”

P40 Grim Falls Academy, Don’t Eat the Soup! (Book 1)

Character Development: characters that care and want to do their best

One of the things I love about this series is the care Louise Forshaw takes in developing her characters and the insights she gives into how they are feeling. It is also great that book 1 has profiles of each of the main characters in the book, which would be great for recapping the story, and helping the reader understand the characters.

Seb being a wererwolf is the perfect opportunity to explore in a broad sense what happens when you get angry. So you get introduced to Seb being frustrated by getting angry in certain situations and trying to control it.

Another, is when Clang feels he’s a failure because he let the school down with something. I love how the illustrations that go with this tell the reader more and you can see how Seb and Victor are comforting him.

There is so much to enjoy in this imaginative new series, full of mishaps and adventures and characters young readers will really warm too. Highly recommend for 7 to 11 years. Do check out the rest of the posts in the blog tour.

You can support an independent bookseller and purchase from me at Readers that Care.

Check out the other post in the blog tour.

A teacher in the fabulous bookish twitter community I am part off, recently posted this question:

“We are using this picture as a writing stimulus. Y6 children thinking hard about the effect of the reader. Looking for extracts from books of strange, unfamiliar creatures (harmless or dangerous) and/or forest descriptions (again peaceful or scary)”

Trees and Suspense

All three extracts feature trees or a tree, and some great suspense writing . In Celine Kieran”s Wild trilogy, MUP is on here way back home from visiting her sick Aunt; as she drifts in and out of sleep in the car she sees through the window witches in the trees. In Kathleen Fidler’s the Boy with a Bronze Axe, they are not sure what’s lurking in the water in a cave they’re exploring. later they discover it is a tree trunk! Finally in Barbara Henderson’s Punch a young boy is running away from a fire and climbs up a pine tree, but then something starts to climb up after him.

“outside the night was streaming past, Mup had slumped against the door with her face tilted to the sky, and she was looking up through the branches of the roadside trees, the trees were falling away as the car sped by, and there were witches in the branches and they were following the car.

Mup wasn’t startled – half asleep as she was, with the taste of warm custard in her mouth – but she frowned up aT the witches with an inkling that something wasn’t right……….….Mup was filled with the knowledge that she was awake, and there were witches in the trees, following the car.

There were men witches and women witches, and they leapt from branch to branch, racing along at tremendous speed. They were nothing but shadows among shadows, so that Mup had to strain her eyes to see them……….Then one of the witches jumped the gap between the two trunks, her silhouette dark against the fine grey of the sky. She descended in a falling arc, her clothes blown back like ragged black wings. As her pale hands reached for the branches of the next tree, she looked down into……”

p10-11 The Wild Magic Trilogy: Begone the Raggedy Witches by Celine Kiernan

It was Brockan who first saw the strange thing in the water below the ledge. “Oh look! What’s that?” he cried in terror, clutching at Tenko. “What’s that dark thing, waving terrible arms? Is it the spirit of the cave come to snatch us?”

He turned to run and would have fallen into the water below if Tenko had not grabbed him. Tenko’s heart had leaped and thudded for a second, but he saw the object did not move any nearer to them. All at once he knew what is was.

“Stay here!” he said to the other two. “I am going to have a closer look.”

……………Tenko crouched down, crawling nearer and nearer to it as he would creep up on an enemy. One of its arms was outstretched towards him. Suddenly Tenko dealt it a blow with his axe. There was splintering sound but the arm did not move. Tenko stood up and gave a cry of joy.

“Come here! Come here!” He shouted. ” It is what I thought.” Kali and Brockan came slowly timidly, not quite sure of their safety.

“What is it Tenko?” Kali whispered, Even her low voice echoed mysteriously round the cave.

“It’s a tree!” Tenko shouted triumphantly.

They drew closer staring.

P69 The Boy with the Bronze Axe, Kathleen Fidler.

A young boy called Phineas is running away from a his boss, after he accidentally started a fire.

“ A sob rips through my lungs and my vision blurs, a mix of smoke and despair; until more flutterings and rustlings disturb me and the trunk sways alarmingly. I hold my breath. There is no mistaking it.

Someone is climbing my tree.

Someone heavy.

I cling to the trunk as tight as I can and I peer down, and my blood freezes.

Through the dense needle branches. I recognise the subtle stripes of a prisoners clothes.”

p12 Punch by Barbara Henderson

Some ginormous and rather unusual spiders:

In the Christmas holidays I read Dan Smith’s Below Zero. Which features some brilliant robotic spiders that get rather out of control, but to find out the reasons why they do you will have to read the book! Then my son suggested I include the giant spider in Larklight.

“At the back of the room there were three large bays………Right now HAL and ROY were empty, but the bay with ED above it was home to something that was one of the most amazing things Zak had ever seen. But, also one of the scariest.

The Spider were slightly bigger than a two-seater Smart car, and was made of a flat oval casing, about a metre and a half deep that housed the robot’s ‘brain’. On top of that, the bulk of the body was a ribbed dome, like a bloated tick that had filled itself with too much blood. It had four legs, each joined in six places, giving it a look of a weird grey metal spider. Close to the front, it had four narrow arms designed to accept interchangeable attachments. For now the arms were tipped with pincers.”

P91 Below Zeor by Dan Smith

“Down in the hall, the monstrous spider squeezed it’s prickly ball of a body in through the door with a faint scraping sound. A cluster of black eyes glittered like wet grapes at the front end. Above them a shabby brown bowler hat was perched upon it’s spines. Beneath, hairy mouth-parts twitched and fidgeted. It tilted itself upwards, and saw me starring down at it.

“The names Webster ‘ it said, lifting it’s hat with one huge claw. I’m expected.”

P27-p28 Larklight by Philip Reeve and illustrated by David Wyatt

Some follow-on ideas:

Think about what sort of spider you would create. What size would it be? Is it a friendly spider or a monster?

Can you draw what Dan Smiths robot spider looked like? What features of your own might you add?

What other stories do you know that feature a spider or spiders?

Friendly, spoon collecting Alien’s

And finally but by no means least is my son’s favourite creature from Cakes in Space, written by Phillip Reeve and illustrated by Sarah McIntyre. Astra IS in a spaceship, with her family, which is travelling from earth to the planet Nova Mundi in deep space. They were all put to sleep in little sleeping pods. But, astra wakes up whilst everyone else is sleeping. she has already dealt with some rather unsual cake monsters.

“ It was a monster alright, but a different sort of montster: a squat plump one in a grease-stained spacesuit like a grubby chimney pot, with a nest of eyes on stalks poking out of it’s helmet.“

“Ploogah stofie!” Shouted the creature, it’s voice loud and buzzy on her helmet radio. “Britxit Floop”.

“I am sorry said Astra. I don’t understand.”

Astra remembered her mum and dad telling her that there were not such things as aliens. But, then they’d probably thought there were no such things as a man-eating fairy cakes, either. She was going to have lots to tell them when the woke up.”

P105-p107 Cakes in Space by Philip Reeve and illustrated by Sarah McIntyre