Louie’s verdict: Love this book! Brilliant observations about family, friendships and, more importantly, biscuits.

Louie Stowell Louie Stowell

Loki’s verdict:I think I’d like to be a witch in this book. They’re cooler than the wizards and warriors. Louie Stowell's visit was a fabulous high energy, creative and imaginative experience for our children. From a brilliant audience-participating potion -making assembly to creative workshops that encouraged the children to use their own ideas creating magical creatures and in which Louie spent time with every child in class, offering tips and help. Excellent and fully inclusive activities that all our children could be involved in. Louie really made our children feel special in her book signing session too and took time to chat and answer questions about becoming an author and all her inspirations (no matter how odd they were!). Fabulous day that we all thoroughly enjoyed!"Louie’s verdict: A funny, enthralling story with illustrations that manage to combine humour and a sense of epic scale and danger. Also: anyone who reads this book and won’t admit they have tried to summon monsters by Singing is a liar. Loki’s verdict:Robots are awesome! I think a robot best friend would be excellent. Because I could program them to be always impressed with me. Read our review of Little Badman and the Invasion of the Killer Aunties Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Books — Louie Stowell Books — Louie Stowell

Loki’s verdict:Naughty? It’s clearly about a very well behaved child who respects his elders. I’ll show you naughty.Louie’s verdict:Funny, beautiful and magic. Love the inky-splashy feel of the art, and the story that feels both mythic and very particular to these characters. Louie’s verdict:I’ve been a fan of Neill’s comics work for ages and this move into illustrated books does NOT disappoint. It’s both very funny and also incredibly humane. Even the adult characters get treated like full humans. Loki’s verdict:I DEMAND to have a 13-storey treehouse immediately. Not having one is a breach of my human rights! Odin’s verdict: If you get any crumbs on the computer again Heimdall will send you to bed without any supper.

Loki: A Bad God’s Guide Series by Louie Stowell - Goodreads Loki: A Bad God’s Guide Series by Louie Stowell - Goodreads

Read our review of The Wizards of Once Little Badman and the Invasion of the Killer AuntiesbyHumza Arshad and Henry White, illustrated byAleksei Bitskoff All of the staff and children of our school loved having Louie in school for the day. She provided real inspiration to all children to improve their writing and instilled a real love of creating stories and characters. The workshops and assembly were full of humour, purpose and thoroughly enjoyed by all.” Loki’s verdict: I could totally draw like that if I tried. But I’m too cool to try. Also my hair is definitely cooler than Ash’s hair. Not enough books for older children have pictures. It’s as though you stop reading picture books and suddenly, images are bad. So every time I find a book aimed at older children that has pictures, it’s a little ray of joy. Here are some of my favourites. I haven’t included comics, because that would be a very long list indeed. These are books where the pictures play an important part in telling the story, but aren’t told in panels. Frostheart by Jamie Littler Odin’s verdict:I loved this one. It reminds me of the World Tree, but with more man-eating sharks. Hmm, perhaps I should add some to the World Tree?Louie’s verdict:It probably doesn’t need my praise but I have to respect a triumph of the form. Years later, I’m still laughing about the cheese touch. Bookbuzz is a reading programme from BookTrust that aims to help schools inspire a love of reading in 11 to 13-year-olds.Participating schools give their students the opportunity to choose their own book to take home and keep from a list of 17 titles.