You’ll be sure to find plenty of inspiration for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge with these fun science and innovation themed recommendations.  Get ready to be boggled by brilliant facts, gaze at the stars, and be inspired by tales of creativity and invention with our picture books, early readers and middle grade books – there’s lots to keep you busy this summer!

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Read about the Science Museum and this year's challenge

Rosalind Ephraim

Burway Books, Shropshire

In 1974, I opened my bookshop in Church Stretton, a market town nestled in the spectacular countryside of the Shropshire Hills. Through the decades since I have always championed writers on the natural world around us who give us fair warning; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Penguin, £9.99) is always in stock. James Rebanks’s English Pastoral (Allen Lane, £20) is my choice for this year; his voice is lyrical and clear. We must listen to these voices, and this year has been a good vintage.

I’m a lover of Russian and eastern European literature, and the Georgian novel The Eighth Life (For Brilka) by Nino Haratischvili (Scribe, £9.99, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin) is one of the finest for some time. Stasia’s life changes when a White Russian soldier is at the door… there is smell of coffee and cake and deadly chocolate.

My favourite children’s book for this year is The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith by Loris Owen (Firefly, £6.99). Adventure, boarding school, wormholes, puzzles extraordinaire; will Kip and his friends find the Ark of Ideas?

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Congratulations on your first children’s book. Can you tell us briefly where the idea for the story came from? 

Thank you WRD! My mum gave me an idea in 2015 - a secret school for inventors. Ten Riddles is very different now from that original idea, but you’ll still find lots of weird and whimsical inventions in it. 

I believe that mysteries are all around us, waiting to be found in ordinary things we think we understand completely. Things we take for granted - like energy for example - can turn out to be more fantastical than any fiction. This thought led to Strange Energy, which led to Quicksmiths College.

Kip’s story grew as I wrote, and I didn’t plan much other than I knew he had a sister and I knew he was going to change the world. 

The book is full of riddles and puzzles to solve, were these fun to explore and set up?

The puzzles and the 400-year-old treasure hunt were enormously fun to create. Some riddles worked straight away, and others needed more thought. Sometimes I cackle out loud when I come up with a really good one.

It’s like my birthday when someone gets a puzzle and I hear how excited they were to solve it – for a moment you’re really connected with another person who you don’t even know.

We love the Quicksmiths College of Strange Energy – if you were initiated into the college, what would you investigate?

Aeon Light is ultra strange and ultra-ultra mysterious, so I’d be tempted to investigate that. I’d also like to see what happens if you mixed Skycrackle with Thoughtwaves – could you direct the plasma wherever you wanted, or change the colours, or make it dance to music?

Do you have a favourite scene in the book? 

I love Pinky the flying squirrel and the mowl like they were my own pets – so probably when Kip and Albert first meet the mowl, or maybe when the mowl and Pinky first meet and fall in love.

What books did you read/love as a child?

So many! I couldn’t get enough fantasy – The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark is Rising, anything by Roald Dahl, The Hobbit, the Fighting Fantasy books, The Owl Service, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz…

What are you writing next? 

I’m working on the second book in the series – at the moment it’s called Into the Myriads. I can’t say too much for now, but there’s a clue in the title and at the end of the first book.

Loris chats to Bex from the Fun Kids Radio on the book club podcast. Listen to them talk about Kip Bramley and his new friends at Quicksmiths, Strange Energy and quixars, Pinky the flying squirrel and the mowl. Join in as Loris teaches Bex to make all the different mowl calls - you might need to be able to roll your rrrrs though! 

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Listen to short podcast.

Suggested reading books for primary & secondary aged children in the UK.

Here's our selection of top new children's books coming out in autumn 2020 (September, October, November, December). These reading recommendations include picture books, early and middle-grade fiction; young adult novels and non-fiction for children aged 5-13.

Also featured:

The Monsters of Rookhaven (Padraig Kenny)

Glassheart (Katharine Orton)

The Griffin Gate (Vashti Hardy)

The Puffin Keeper (Michael Morpurgo)

The Castle of Tangled Magic (Sophie Anderson)

Deny all Charges (Eoin Colfer)

Tamarind and the Star of Ishta (Jasbinder Bilan)

'Noggin-busters enliven The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith (Firefly, £6.99, out 10 September), the inventive first fantasy novel of Loris Owen. Chess club stalwart Kip finds his way into a parallel plane, where kids like him attend an elite boarding school. Extraordinary eccentrics are the norm, surfing around on air-boards called "skimmis". Leaving his dad behind is hard, and leaving his mum in the care home harder - but worth it, if Kip can find a cure for her suffering the after-effects of a lightning strike. But soon, Kip and pals are called upon the safeguard their new haven against sinister forces.' 

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Firefly Press has snapped up a middle-grade fantasy novel by debut author Loris Owen.

Penny Thomas, publisher at Firefly Press, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith from Anne Clark at the Anne Clark Literary Agency. The publication date is to be confirmed.

Thomas said: "The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith is a scintillating ride through mysteries, adventures and emotions for its young protagonist. Firefly is delighted to be publishing such a  brilliant debut."

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The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith is a 'scintillating ride'

Penny Thomas, publisher at Firefly Press, has bought UK and Commonwealth rights to The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith, a debut middle-grade fantasy novel by Loris Owen. The deal was struck with Anne Clark at the Anne Clark Literary Agency, and publication date is tba. 

The story follows Kip Bramley, who has no idea how much his life is about to change when he receives a cryptic invitation delivered by a beetle-shaped drone.   

Thomas said: "The Ten Riddles of Eartha Quicksmith is a scintillating ride through mysteries, adventures and emotions for its young protagonist. Firefly is delighted to be publishing such a  brilliant debut."   

Owen lives in Kent with her partner, a firefighter, and is inspired by the work of Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman. 

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