#blogtour The Yellow Bills by Michelle McKenna @michellemckenna @annecater

Today I am very excited to be on the blog tour for Michelle McKenna’s book The Yellow Bills, which was publised 7th March 2017 by Matador.

About the book

Mya loves planes and wants to be a pilot when she grows up. As luck would have it she comes across a flying school run by lieutenant Drake who awards his pupils splendid pilot hats when they graduate. Mya wants to join the class but there’s just one problem. She’s not a duck! Could Goose the little duckling with big flying ambitions be the key to Mya getting her pilot’s hat? Or will Mr Sour the teacher who never quite made the grade have other ideas…Inspired by authors such as Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl and Angela Sommer-Bodenburg, Michelle weaves a story with the humour and invention of Nick Ward’s ‘Charlie Small’ series meets Dick King Smith’s wonder of the animal world

My Review

This book is aimed at young children, I would guess between 5 and 12 year olds, although other age groups, and adults would find it an enjoyable read as well.

It starts off with a young girl Mya making model airplanes and then going through a hedge behind her garden and finding some ducks learning to fly.  As she desperately wants to fly as well she tries to persuade the teacher to teach her at the same time.

I think this is a brilliant book as it combines a lot of fantasy, such as talking ducks and classes for them, with real life issues, such as bullying, not always getting what you want and how to overcome obstacles people put in your way, in such a fun way that children will want to read it all the way to the end.

It is a longish book for bedtime, at 60 pages, so we had to read it over a number of evenings and when I stopped reading it my daughter wanted me to carry on reading and loved the ending.

Both my daughter and I highly recommend it to everyone

To purchase the book click here

About the Author

During the day Michelle works part time in an office in London and then gets home to her full time job looking after two little fab ones. Michelle has been writing stories on and off for years but The Yellow Bills is the first time she’s had the confidence to put her children’s story into print.She finds her inspiration for writing is on the train journey to and from work.When she was younger one of her favourite stories to read was (still is) Lewis Carroll’s, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In fact she loved it so much she used to try and think of ways to see how she could change her name to Alice. She was about seven so had to listen to her Mum, who said she couldn’t change her name until she left home. By the time that day came she decided she didn’t mind being called Michelle after all.Michelle’s other favourite’s are Roald Dahl’s, The BFG and The Little Vampire by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg.