BOOKS FOR STRUGGLING READERS
When Melanie shelters from a storm inside a little museum, she makes the mistake of breaking an old Greek vase. This releases the Furies – the three avengers of Ancient Greece, who punish people for the crimes of their parents by driving them mad. They slip into Melanie’s thoughts, and haunt her dreams – snakes coiled round their arms, whips and flaming torches in their hands. Melanie must join forces with the son of one of her mother’s school-friends to unravel the secrets in her mother’s past. Do they have any hope of putting things right, before the Furies get their terrifying revenge?
A good story will hook even the most reluctant child, who needs something exciting and relevant that doesn’t patronise them.
Tim is pretty fed up – he has been packed off to Africa for the summer with his older stepbrother Martin. Martin is studying elephants, and Tim has to help him take notes and follow up herd members. But when their jeep crashes and Martin is knocked unconscious, Tim is left to find his way back to the Study Centre on his own. At sunset it’s not only leopards on the prowl – what will happen if Tim encounters Tusker, the rogue elephant who has been terrorising the villages? But scariest of all are the poachers, who have already killed one of Martin’s elephants, and are perfectly capable of shooting a thirteen-year-old boy if he gets in their way…
Max’s mum and dad say he’s a brat, so they’ve sent him to boot camp. In the Gobi Desert. In Mongolia. Max is not happy. So he makes up his mind to run away. But life in the desert is hard, and it’s easy to get lost. It will take an 11-year-old girl to help him stay alive...
What would you do if a monster nearly killed your best mate on your way home from school? A monster that changes its colour so that it can hide against a tree trunk and be really hard to see? And what if other people start dying, and neither the police nor the press seem to know why? After a bit of detective work Rick thinks he knows the answer, but can he and his friend Jack stop the tree devils before there are so many of them that human beings are wiped off the face of the earth?
