Specky Magee By Felice Arena and Gary Lyon

"The life and times of an aspiring footy champion"... which is written on the front cover of the book, pulled me into the world of Specky Magee. It's not a recent book, published in 2002, but when I saw it on the bookshelf 5 years ago I decided to give it a try. Another reason of how it convinced me to buy it was because I can relate to Specky, meaning that I'm the same age as him, I play in a football club just like him, and I'm going through the same life challenges that he is also going through.

Specky Magee is about a passionate 12 year old boy who is nicknamed Specky, he plays for a team called Booyong High Lions. Throughout the story he is faced with alot of challenges and at the end he confronts his step dad to answer a dreadful question to both Specky and his father, "Am I adopted?"

Tere are many reasons of why I like "Specky Magee" but mainly it's at the start of the book it features a page on the real "Specky Magee" and it explains his life and what things he has won such as awards and medals. The next few pages contain biography's of the author and illustrator. In the bottom right of the page there's a picture of a boy marking a ball, and if you place your thumb on the bottom right corner and flick it through all the pages, it will start moving into a sequence of a boy jumping up to mark a ball.

The things I dislike about the book is that it is a bit short and that its takes a while to get into the story.
The book contains 180 pages.

Overall Specky Magee is a really addictive book for ages 11 and up.

Ranger's Apprentice "The Ruins of Gorlan" By John Flanagan

My library teacher recommended the book to me, and also the blurb featured comments from kids from years six and five. Some of the comments that caught my eye were...

"This book was so good I couldn't put it down... John Flanagan really kept me on edge."

&

"I couldn't get my eyes off the pages, it was too interesting to stop reading. I would definitely recommend this book to any person who is looking for an adventure".


People see Will as a small, weak boy, but truly he is fast and smart. Throughout his childhood he has dreamed of following in his unknown father's footsteps to become a knight of Castle Redmont. But when Will got rejected from battle school, all of him dreams are lost.

A mysterious stranger called Halt appeared out of the dark and requested that Will took up the job of being a sly and secret ranger. Will didn't like the idea of being a ranger because rumors have said that rangers work alone and are a secret group. But after a bit of hard work and training for Halt, Will changed his mind of hating rangers and instead now actually regrets ever discriminating them.

After long hours of training and hard work, Halt and Will finally set out on a desperate mission to prevent the assassination of the King.

"Ranger's Apprentice. The Ruins of Gorlan" is a fantastic book that I would recommend to anyone who like fantasy and adventure. The age group that I recommend is for boys and girls that are 12 years and over.

Just Shocking! by Andy Griffiths

Just Shocking is a very funny book that contains 10 shocking stories. The ten stories are:
"Fun with a fire hose", "I Am A Robot", "Balloons of Death", "Unfunniest Home Video", "101 Dangerous Things", "A really really good excuse", "Why I love coco-pops in 50 words or less", "Lemonade Roulette", "The Exploding Butterfly story" and "Fun with a monster truck".

All ten stories are filled with laughs and contain lots of humour. Just Shocking bock is about a young boy called Andi and his friend Danny doing all kinds of stupid things like acting as a robot, and even making his own funniest home video! My favourite story out of the whole 10 would be "I Am A Robot" because after Andi sees his sister Jenny reading a book called "I-Robot" he gets an idea and dresses up with a coco-pops cereal box on his head and acts like a robot which eventually he found out that it was a bad idea, because when his parents had enough of his foolish acting, they locked Andi into a closet that was filled with very dirty vacuum cleaner and lots of spiders. Another funny story is "A Really, Really Good Excuse", which is about Andi arriving late to school and has to quickly make up a really good excuse to convince his teacher to not get him into big trouble.

Overall I think that "Just Shocking" is a very funny book.