I really enjoyed this especially that it was set during the Georgian period which is fast becoming one of my favorite eras.

I received an audio copy of this novel from the publisher, Harper Audio, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All of it is written in the third person, focusing on the three separate perspectives of Dora, Edward, and Hezekiah. This worked well and brought a good degree of contrast, with the tone of Hezekiah's chapters noticeably darker than the others and providing more of an insight into his motives. Also, the storylines of Dora and Edward compliment each other nicely as they are both enduring difficult lives until they meet. But when they discover the secrets about the case, Dora’s entire life turns upside down. Anything she knows about her life, her past, her family is questionable! It seems like some things should be buried forever!

I could keep going on but this book just had everything: it had the mystery, the atmosphere, the intrigue and just the right amount of romance. I enjoyed the history and myth telling, and the talk of “curses”. After the tragic death of her parents during an archaeological excavation, Dora Blake is now living with her uncle, Hezekiah, in her parents’ antiquities shop. But Hezekiah does not have the interest in antiquities her parents had and he is slowly destroying her parents’ once loved business. Dora is desperate to escape from her uncles’ care, and is hoping to turn her love of drawing and jewelry making into a career, giving her the independence she craves. When her uncle imports a Grecian vase, one so old that it predates time itself, Dora feels an immediate connection. While anyone else who touches it or means it harm is instantly cursed, Dora continues to be the only one to open it and she uses its Greek inscriptions and drawings as inspiration for her jewellery. But Hezekiah has darker plans for the vase, and even darker plans for Dora, and when Dora realizes the true importance of the urn, her life is put at greater risk. all readers will progress at different speeds and may have spurts at varying times How do you Book Band real books?

Our team has many years of experience levelling ‘real’ books — when we talk about ‘real’ books, we mean books that have not been developed specifically for a reading scheme and have been written for the pure enjoyment of reading. Reading scheme books are written to exacting levels but the value of ascribing book bands to books written freely by exciting authors to absorb and captivate readers has been appreciated by our schools for 15 years.What she was not expecting was the number of revelations and questions that the pithos and its discovery brings up. I obviously especially LOVED all of the Greek myth and Greek history references throughout this book. This book satisfied my un-dying love for them. To try and find answers and stop her uncle, Dora befriends Edward, a book binder who wants to become a full-time antiquarian scholar. She also captured the class system and the different varied characters of London in a realistic way- you could easily imagine the setting and the people. the thing that lost my attention was the writing itself. the story definitely could have been condensed, the dialogue could have been tighter, the references could have been more seamless, and the narrative itself could have had more consistency.

Having finished school Dora now focuses her ambitions in designing jewellery, so when an ornate vase arrives at the shop, her interested is piqued immediately. Not because this treasure is a thing of beauty and mysterious, but she is able to take inspiration from its rare qualities and designs, when designing her own jewellery range. However, her interest only grows in a different direction when the secrecy, value and historical reference attributed to this piece of antique comes to light. This is not a Greek retelling but an intriguing historical fiction novel set in late 1790s London. However, the myth of Pandora's box (which should hereby be renamed Pandora's Jar) is central to the plot.

The table below displays each book band level and their equivalent reading age. Most children will work through the levels during the year, so for example, in most schools, a reception child, working at expected levels would end the year on yellow. Prepare to lift the lid on a lush reimagination of the mythological Pandora….Susan Stokes-Chapman’s atmospheric debut, PANDORA, immerses the reader in the dangerous, mysterious world of ancient antiquities with prose that is elegant and teeming with visceral sensory detail. A marvelous debut—imaginative, ambitious, and begging to be savored." — Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Apothecary Based in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, we work hard to support our staff and provide a great service to teachers and children alike. Our mission is to enable teachers to easily select high-quality books for classrooms, home-school reading and school libraries. The author does well to capture the villainy of some of the characters too: I definitely saw one of the characters as a Vernon Dursley type from HP and it was so easy to despise him! Twenty-one-year-old Pandora “Dora” Blake lives and works in her late parents' antiquities shop in Georgian London. Her parents had been renowned antiquarians specializing in Grecian artifacts and had made their living excavating tombs in South-Eastern Europe. Their untimely death in a mishap during an excavation twelve years ago left Dora orphaned and under the care of her unscrupulous and corrupt uncle Hezekiah Blake who promptly took over the shop and is responsible for its present state of disrepute, dealing mostly in forgeries and objects with not much historical significance. Dora aspires to be a jewelry designer and spends time honing her craft with her faithful pet magpie Hermes by her side, despite the constant beratement and ridicule of her uncle who would rather be rid of her.

I also love books with a central female character who doesn’t bow down to men & stays focused on bettering herself against the odds, especially in a time when women were expected to do as they were told! Again, Pandora lives up to my expectations in this regard. I was hugely invested in Dora’s story & was intrigued to discover the truth behind her uncle’s underhand dealings. We regularly review our levelling alongside the leading educational publishers to ensure that we are selecting books at the right text level. We consider a variety of elements including the vocabulary, sentence structure, the density of the text and narrative style. We also consider the knowledge that the reader is assumed to have, the emotional maturity needed to fully engage with the text and the complexity of the story as these features will impact fluency. When levelling books that have not been written to a prescribed level it is very difficult to work to a list of criteria but by careful comparison with scheme books and other ‘real’ books that have been levelled by educational publishers and by examining the texts alongside each other, it is possible to assess whether a text represents a good fit for a level or a step up or down in text level.

Dora is a character made more interesting by her family history, but is likeable and over the course of the book develops a strong level of independence. That, and the growing success of her jewellery designs, make you really start to root for her as she emerges from her uncle's oppression. The fact she has a pet magpie also adds that little bit of quirkiness.