Friday 17 June 2016

Tommy V Cancer - Review: Wail Of The Banshee


Today is my stop on the Tommy v Cancer blog tour! The aim of this blog tour is to spread awareness of Tommy Donbavand’s current battle with the big C and to help raise some donations for him as he can no longer do the full time work of an author that he was doing before so he needs as much as help as he can get. I'm taking part because I obviously want to help people beat this horrible, horrible disease after losing my beloved mama to pancreatic cancer 3 years ago. To find out more about Tommy's fight, you can check out his brilliant blog here: www.tommyvcancer.com

And if you wanted to donate anything, you can do so two ways:

Paypal
Patreon

You can also purchase any of his collection of brilliant books!

The idea behind this tour is that we all chose a book to review from Tommy's vast catalogue and I decided to focus on one of his series, Scream Street. Imagine a street just for werewolves, mummies, vampires and assorted other monsters and you find yourself living there literally overnight. Well, that's Scream Street for you... Here’s a review of one of the latest Scream Street books, Scream Street: Wail Of The Banshee!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19454376-wail-of-the-banshee
 
“AAAYYYOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!” Stunned awake by piercing screeches from next door, Jamie, newly arrived in the neighborhood, is certainly experiencing the scream in Scream Street. Favel has an infected tooth and Dr Skully fears the worst – the young banshee needs medicine, and fast! With the help of Luke, Resus and Cleo, Jamie must track down the ingredients for a life-saving remedy. But the four friends are dicing with death: if they’re not careful, Favel won’t be the only one biting the dust…

Wail Of The Banshee carries on where the last book, Flame Of The Dragon, left off except this time we have a new narrator. Jamie is freshly arrived in Scream Street having been moved by the Movers only the night before. He's come to the attention of G.H.O.U.L. Government Housing Of Unusual Life-forms) with his Walker talents, the ability to travel outside of his body whenever he feels like it. 

Woken by what can only be described as hideous wails of pain Jamie spots some rather unusual children outside the bedroom window and meets Luke (werewolf), Cleo (mummy) and Resus (vampire). Together they discover that Favel the Banshee has toothache and unless some magical ingredients can be found to make an anaesthetic she'll become very poorly indeed.

What follows is a grand adventure as Jamie gets to know his new friends, meets more residents of Scream Street and helps to find things such as anti-honey and griffin sweat! Between skeleton doctors, six foot tall fairies and the Gran Reaper life is definitely not dull in Scream Street...

Perfect for children age 7+ Wail Of The Banshee is another great instalment in the series. I should know, I bought and devoured all 14 of them over the last two weeks! The books are short enough for those readers who are either aren't confident about reading anything longer yet or for those reluctant readers whose attention span might not be as long as others. With plenty of action and thrilling story-lines they're great for both girls and boys, no gender stereotypes here thank you very much. What's even better is that if they like (love) the books there's a new animated television series to tide them over!



Scream Street: Wail Of The Banshee - Tommy Donbavand
Publisher - Walker
Release date - October 4 2012

About The Author

Tommy is the author of the popular 13-book Scream Street series for 7 to 10 year olds, published by Walker Books in the UK and Candlewick Press in the US. His other books include Zombie!, Wolf and Uniform (winner of the Hackney Short Novel Award) for Barrington Stoke, Boredom Busters and Quick Fixes For Kids’ Parties (How To Books), and Making A Drama Out Of A Crisis (Network Continuum). 

In theater, Tommy’s plays have been performed to thousands of children on national tours to venues such as The Hackney Empire, Leeds City Varieties, and Nottingham Playhouse. These productions include Hey Diddle Diddle, Rumplestiltskin, Jack & Jill In The Forgotten Nursery, and Humpty Dumpty And The Incredibly Daring Rescue Of The Alien Princess From Deep Space. He is also responsible for five episodes of the CBBC TV series, Planet Cook (Platinum Films).

As an actor, Tommy played the Clearlake MC in the West End musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story for over eight years, in addition to roles in the movies Zombie Love Stories (where he battled hordes of Scottish undead) and Going Off Big Time (where he was beaten up on a bouncy castle). A veteran of pantomime, he has portrayed just about every comic character from Abanazer to an Ugly Sister.
Tommy lives in Lancashire with his wife and two sons. He is a HUGE fan of all things Doctor Who, plays blues harmonica, and makes a mean balloon poodle. He sees sleep as a waste of good writing time.


Twitter Chat!

To end this tour, Vivienne and Chelley will be hosting a twitter chat that you do not want to miss!

This will be on 30th June 2016, 8 – 9pm BST

The hashtag for the chat is #tommyvcancer

There will also be a GIVEAWAY!

See you there!



 

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