ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell 144 pp. Penguin Group. £8.99. (Ages 13 and up) ISBN 9780141182704 Rating: ? Stars This book is set in a future when animals are much cleverer than now. And because of their cleverness, the pigs started a revolution against the humans. Pigs could speak fluently in English unlike the other animals, and that gave them the power to be leaders. But, the story that follows only happened a few years after that... Their first leader, Old Major, was kind and fair who knew animals should be equal. But when Napoleon became the leader it was very unpleasant. He made a rule that allowed the pigs to have better food and that forced all of the other animals to work crazily hard every day and night. That wasn’t enough, Napoleon wanted more power. He decided to kill his brother, Snowball, so that he would be the only leader. Snowball was admired because he came up with a clever idea to build windmill. Sn...
UGLIES TRILOGY by Scott Westerfeld Simon & Schuster Childrens Books. (Ages 11 and up) Rating: 4.5 Stars UGLIES 448 pp. ISBN 9780857079138 PRETTIES 384 pp. ISBN 9780857079145 SPECIALS 400 pp. ISBN 9780857079152 The Uglies book series, intended for young adults, was actually recommended to me by my grandma. Now, although this might make you think, “boring”, and that this series must then be some weird old classic, I assure you it isn’t. Firstly, my grandma tends to pick good and modern books, and secondly she actually found out about this series from one of her high school students. Something I like about all the books in this series is that the main character, Tally Youngblood, is very, very far from perfect. Most of the time I dislike or hate her, and if we had met we probably wouldn’t have become friends. For me, this means that when Tally does do something good, it feels much more real and impressive, because you understand how hard it is for her. This also...