Captain Cat and the Treasure Map! by Sue Mongredien (Illustrated by Kate Pankhurst) – Book Review
Synopsis
The First book in a laugh-out-loud, highly illustrated piratical adventure series for newly confident readers and families to enjoy together.
Join Captain Patch the cat and her crew as they sail the seven seas in this puuuurfect piratical story! Patch is the ship’s cat who lives aboard The Golden Earring. Along with her friends, Cutlass the parrot and Monty the Monkey, Patch frequently gets the pirate crew out of trouble – although they never seem to realise just how much she does to save the day…and their skins!
In this first adventure, the pirate crew discover a treasure map and set out to find where X marks the spot. But little do they know the treasure is cursed and it’s up to Captain Cat to stop them… before it is too late!
Author
Sue Mongredien has had over one hundred children’s books published, including the Oliver Moon and Secret Mermaid series for Usborne, and the Prince Jake books for Orchard. She is also one of the authors behind the internationally bestselling Rainbow Magic series, as Daisy Meadows. She lives in Bath with her husband and their three children.
Illustrator
Kate Pankhurst lives in Leeds with her family and spotty dog, Olive. She has a studio based in an old spinning mill where she writes and illustrates children’s books. Recent projects have included the Fantastically Great Women series and Mariella Mystery Investigates series. Kate is distantly related to the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, something that has been an influence on the type of books she enjoys creating for children.
What I Thought
Captain Cat is a fun and pacy story with a cast of loveable characters in both the animal and human pirates aboard The Golden Earring. My favourite was the parrot Cutlass and his awful jokes and puns.
This is a perfect story to read out loud thanks to a whole host of sound effects.
The story itself is fairly straightforward – pirates find treasure map pointing to Cursed treasure. Patch (cat), Cutlass (parrot) and Monty (monkey) realise the curse means death so try and stop their human counterparts getting the treasure. Cue hilarious escapades.
What really bought this to life for me were the illustrations (and in my advanced copy they were only rough pencil sketches).
As a series my hope is that we get to find out more about each character as we go through. For example pirate mate Ginger is ridiculed by Captain Halibut for her poor reading but then is described writing postcards home. It’s odd to hear of a pirate having any home but the ship so I hope we get to hear more about Ginger in future books.
Captain Cat and the Treasure Map! Is out now and the second book Captain Cat and the Great Pirate Race is publishing in July. Thank you to Jo Hardacre at Pan Macmillan for the gifted copy for the purposes of this honest review.
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Happy Girl Lucky (The Valentines #1) by Holly Smale – Book Review
In yesterday’s guest post author Holly Smale shared her soundtrack for the first novel in The Valentines series. Today I’d like to let you know a little more about Happy Girl Lucky.
Synopsis
The Valentine Sisters – Hope, Faith and Mercy – have everything: fame, success, money and beauty. But what Hope wants most of all is Love, and it doesn’t matter how far she has to go to find it.
Except real life isn’t like the movies.
Unless of course you’re a Valentine…
What I Thought
If you are familiar with my blog you will already be aware I’m a huge fan of Holly’s writing and have been a champion of her Geek Girl series, whose protagonist Harriet was the geekiest of adorable geeks and you couldn’t help but love her.
The Valentines Sisters therefore had big boots to fill and it’s a good thing they can afford the best boots out there.
We start with the story of the youngest sister, Hope.
Fifteen year old Hope has grown up in a famous family (her parents met on the set of a film) but out of the limelight. The Valentines have a family rule that have seen her coddled and protected from the media until she turns sixteen, and Hope can’t wait.
She lives out her days fighting with her sisters, stealing their clothes, being tutored at home and daydreaming that she is part of an epic love movie. Hope’s daydreams appear in the novel as mini scripts complete with wistful actions and declarative dialogue. Hope lives up to her name – she falls in “love” freely and frequently. It’s just a shame the boys don’t always follow the script.
Hope is hopelessly naive at times, she is a horoscope devotee and I have to admit, as well as wanting to give her a big hug I also wanted to shake her a few times – you know gently and just so she doesn’t get hurt. Hope herself says it’s a doggy-dog world but she doesn’t seem to quite grasp what that means (Geek Girl’s Harriet’s eye would be twitching at some of the phrases Hope comes out with).
As much as this book is about romantic love it is also about familial love and the relationships with her siblings, parents and grandmother is vitally important to her. Her mum is in rehab, dad is in the US filming and her siblings each have their own public persona to cultivate…
…leaving Hope lonely, and she is reaching out for love wherever it comes from and she has the resources to go all out to get it. And boy does she take things to extremes – including a trip to the Hollywood Sign.
Holly Smale has developed another excellent cast of characters, I’m actually desperate to find out more about Mercy. In Hope she utilises her skill at writing teen girls as they can be, unreliable narrators of their own lives. With a different take on humour than in her first series there are less laugh out loud moments and some serious issues tackled in Happy Girl Lucky including gaslighting (although it’s not explicitly labelled). This was a fast paced and hugely enjoyable read and yes, you will do as the series tagline suggests, and fall in love with the Valentines.
Sisters Faith and Mercy will each have their own story, and I’m not going lie, I already know I’d love to have a story of some sort from brother Max’s perspective (maybe a novella if not a full length escapade).
Thank you to HarperCollins for the Advanced Review Copy I was gifted for the purposes of giving an honest review. I also grabbed my very own finished copy with orange sprayed edges from Waterstones on Thursday – which was release day.
UKYARocks
Yesterday I had an idea and I decided to act on it whilst inspired – so please do go follow #UKYARocks and get involved with spreading the news about all the fabulous UK Young Adult Fiction that we have available to us. My first creation had to be based on Happy Girl Lucky.
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Soundtrack to Happy Girl Lucky – Blog Tour Guest Post by author Holly Smale
So pleased to welcome Geek Girl author Holly Smale back to the blog today to talk about the Soundtrack that helped her write the first book in her brand new series which released yesterday.
SOUNDTRACK FOR HAPPY GIRL LUCKY
I always write to music, and every time I start a new book I usually have a handful of songs I turn to when I need to feel in the right mood, or get the right tone, or just generally have to click back into the mindset of the character I’m writing as. Sometimes they’re lyrically accurate, but they’re often more of a feeling: something that encapsulates how it feels to be my protagonist.
Happy Girl Lucky is a different kind of book to Geek Girl, and Hope is a very different girl to Harriet; she needed a new kind of soundtrack. She’s a very positive, confident, easy-going and high-energy girl, and the music I listened to needed to fit that: far less classical than with Geek Girl, with a lot more attitude.
Here’s a list of the songs I turned to again and again. Songs I think Hope would probably have on her iPod. Ironically, there’s quite a big cross-over between my Happy Girl Lucky playlist and my personal running playlist. In both cases, I need to feel uplifted, motivated and positive: maybe a little bit sassy and kick-ass.
All I Do Is Win – DJ Khaled
I love this track – it’s so amped and fearless. There’s so much exuberant confidence, so much go go go. I feel like Hope would be listening to this in her room to motivate her; she’d probably have her own little dance for it.
Don’t Delete The Kisses – Wolf Alice
Another personal favourite. This is so sweet, so teenage and so perfectly encapsulates a huge, joyful crush. With – I think – a perfect undercurrent of anxiety and fear that you won’t get what you want.
Waiting For A Star To Fall – Boy Meets Girl
A straight-down-the-line love song, and one I used to dance round the living room to as a child in the 80s. It’s so buoyant, so happy, so playfully romantic. I feel like Hope would appreciate the 80s vibe immensely, and whenever I need a shot of sweet hopefulness I stick this one on.
Transatlanticism – Death Cab for Cutie
Bit of a change with some solid emo, but for someone in a long distance relationship between the UK and America, this feels yearning and pretty fitting. As happy as Hope usually is, there are moments in the book where she is genuinely struggling with sadness and I needed to find music to fit that.
Soda – The Cinematic Orchestra
Again, while Hope is generally very upbeat there are moments where she needs to be quiet, thoughtful, more introverted. This is one of my favourites – I’ve taken it around the world with me, on various road-trips through India and Asia – so it helps me tap into that. It really is a great one for beautiful landscapes.
Safe and Sound – Capital Cities
Not going to lie: this is one of my favourite running tracks of all time, and it’s also one I turned to over and over again for Hope. It has a similar, fast rhythm to the others – it’s the right tempo for Hope – but it also has a beautiful optimism to the lyrics.
Where No-one Goes – JONSI
Okay, this is famously the soundtrack to How To Train Your Dragon. But I’ve been a fan of Jonsi for nearly 20 years – he was in one of my favourite bands, Sigur Ros – and this is so beautifully hopeful, so upbeat, so sweet, so brave, so free-ing. In my mind, this is where the book ends up: this is so perfect for the mind-set Hope ultimately reaches. If I have to choose one song for Happy Girl Lucky, it’s this one. It’ll always be the one that reminds me of Hope.
Huge thanks to Holly for sharing her HGL playlist inspired by its point of view character Hope. Lots of tracks I wasn’t familiar with on there. I’ve created a YouTube playlist if you want to listen to it before or after reading Happy Girl Lucky. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzXeNd36_QuQbSGGrRfDui23h-nm85Q6f
Each book in the Valentines series will focus on a different member of Hope’s family and I’m sure their playlists will all be very different.
Do come back tomorrow for my review of Happy Girl Lucky.
