 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I have a review of two kids' novels that have recently come out from Alan and Unlin, and I'm really excited to share them with you. I do have a few more novels that I haven't read yet that are young adult titles that I will hopefully have up in the next week or so, but today I have one junior fiction-ish middle grade title and one middle grade science fiction novel. So we're going to start off with Hercules' Quick's Big Bag of Tricks by Ursula Dubasowski. This is a bind up of three Hercules' Quick stories that have come out over the past couple of years. The synopsis says Hercules' Quick wants to be a magnificent magician, he just needs a special box of tricks, but the box is expensive and Hercules doesn't have any money. Luckily Hercules lives in a big apartment block with Aunt Alligator and his tadpole friend Sylvie, and he has plenty of neighbors who are willing to pay for his help. No job is too odd for Hercules' Quick. And so in this story, Hercules has seen this box and he is determined to save up for it, like he's determined to do it himself and he's encouraged by his Aunt Alligator and so he makes this sign, he hangs it up and soon all of his neighbors begin calling him for help with various odd jobs. Some of them fairly mundane, most of them ridiculous and hilarious, and Hercules quickly finds himself inundated with jobs to do, but he's so excited because they're paying him and he's earning money and it has a purpose. And it's really interesting to see in the story that when he starts to feel tired or feel like he doesn't get a break, that he remembers that he's working for a purpose. This is a really great one for those kids who might just be starting to do chores for pocket money and things like that, because it is a great way of saying well if there's something that you really want and you want to save for it, this is a good way to do it. It's also just nice to talk about acts of kindness and acts of service that you can do to help out people who need help, particularly with young kids. The other thing that's really cool about this book, particularly for those kids who really like magic tricks, is that at the end of each of the books, so the three books that are included, there is a magic trick and how to do it and it includes everything from what you need to do the trick, to how you set it up, to how you perform it, and that's really cool. There'll be a lot of kids who love that. Magic tricks are huge for this sort of seven to 10 age bracket. I had a lot of fun with this. Vesela Dubaśarski's writing is always on point and I loved the illustrations throughout the story, it just made it more fun. And then I read Mars Underground by HM War. This is the conclusion to Mars Awakens, that's part of the Mars duology, and I previously had reviewed Mars Awakens when it first released. This is middle grade science fiction. This is about two colonies of humans that live on Mars. Both colonies have very different philosophies that have developed over the years, and they're very isolationist in that they don't communicate with one another. They do believe that the other group is detrimental to the way that they live, and so the two colonies are very separate. In the first book, a couple of kids from both colonies met and they realized that maybe they're not so different and maybe they can help each other out. One colony is very much into advanced technology. The other colony is very good at growing and maintaining their own produce and things like that. So they have complementary traits that would help each other out, and so these kids are determined to show each colony that they're stronger together. But that doesn't go as quite as well because obviously these philosophies have built up over time and the leaders who are now in charge have been previously led by other people and they don't know any different. And so that causes conflict as these kids try and race across Mars, trying to convince everyone to work together. There is also another plot in here about a symbiotic race that everyone calls the others that they're afraid of, but in this story they begin to explore that maybe they're not quite the enemy to be feared as previously thought, again due to that communication or just the lost in translation communication that happens over time. I really enjoyed being back in this world revisiting these characters, getting the conclusion to their story and you know seeing that there is some kind of positive outcome for both these groups of humans and it was very very interesting. I do love a good sci-fi story and I love seeing when we get more middle grade ones. So thank you very much to Alan and Alan for sending me both these books. I had a great time reading them. I will leave links to where you can check them out down below. If you've read them or you're planning on picking them up feel free to share your thoughts down below. Or if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a star emoji. I hope that wherever you are in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.