• I reviewed Sky Fleet: March of the Mutabugs by Victoria Williamson, a middle-grade dystopian read with protagonists aged around 12.

• I received a free review copy as part of a book tour organised by The Write Reads, and also did an unboxing which included lots of treats.

• The main characters are Amberley, a 12-year-old girl in a wheelchair following a tragic plane crash that killed her parents, and her best friend Rick, who is visually impaired and aspires to be an engineer.

• Both children work together to repair Amberley’s parents’ plane, the Fire Hawk, navigating both emotional and physical challenges.

• The story features mutant “mutabugs” created by radiation, some of which are gigantic and dangerous — readers with phobias of insects, especially spiders, should be aware.

• Williamson excels at representation: the disabilities of Amberley and Rick are integral to the story and empower the characters rather than being tokenistic.

• The book includes extra elements like illustrations of the planes with specs, pilot info, and log entries, which make it engaging for middle-grade readers.

• Themes include empowerment, resilience, doing the right thing even when adults don’t understand, and teamwork, alongside dystopian survival elements.

• The story lends itself well to discussion in book clubs or classrooms, covering topics such as science (insects, radiation), disability, dystopian themes, and moral lessons.

• Overall, I found it an exciting, action-packed, and thoughtfully inclusive read, and highly recommend checking it out.

S. J. Baker teaches English in a secondary school in Hull, where she does her best to pass on her own love for reading and writing to her students. Books have always loomed large in Ms. Baker’s life, so it was perhaps inevitable that after completing a degree in English Literature at Cambridge she should train as a teacher and spend her career sharing her love of story-telling with young people. Reading aloud to her own children as they grew up confirmed her in the belief that we learn much about life and how to live well from the books that we read. She lives in East Yorkshire with her husband and two exuberant black Labradors.

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Antonia Maxwell is a writer and editor based in North Essex and Cambridge, UK. With a  degree in Modern Languages and a long-standing career as a book editor, she has a lifelong curiosity for language and words, and a growing fascination in the power of story – the way it shapes our lives and frames our experience.

You might also like: 101 Blog Post Ideas For Book Bloggers

If you'd like to support me, donating goes a long way to helping with the running of this blog. Thanks for your support 💗

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