[[Category:Confident Readers|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Confident Readers]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn= 1836285493|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User|author=Ulrich HubRob Keeley|rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, Jorg Muhle a slightly annoying brother and Helena Ragg-Kirkby (translator)a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.}}{{Frontpage|isbn= 1836282028|title=Meet at the Ark at Eight!The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=4
|genre= Confident Readers|summary=An educated penguin, an agnostic penguin and ''Would you like to adopt a violentghost?'' ''Young spirit, smallerborn 1887, young penguin walk into a snowdrift… You might not be able seeks kind home to make a full joke out of that opening line, but this book practically does continue haunt. Gentleman by birth. Good company. Gets on from therewell with other children. Three penguins – each a little different from the other, even if they generally look and definitely smell the same, Jokes and God, a subject of their conversation when shocks a butterfly comes along, of all thingsspeciality. The young'' ''If interested, hot-headed one (wellplace outside your home three twigs, in the pictures he wears shape of an arrow, pointing to your front door...'' Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is celebrating a woolly hat, hedecade of his wonderfully entertaining [[Rob Keeley's bound to be hot-headed) leaves ''Spirits'' series in umbrage, leaving just two – which Chronological Order|Spirits]] series with a new adventure that is perfectly timed if you're both a reboot and a dovecontinuation. Just like Doctor Who, Edward Fitzberranger, our incorrigible Victorian ghost boy, has some new companions. Ruby and come along telling all the animals Jayden respond to get into Noah's Ark in pairsthis intriguing advertisement and Edward, who has broken the rules as an almighty flood usual and absconded from his manor house home, is about to happen…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782690875</amazonuk>adopted by them and takes up residence in.... a wardrobe!
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven ButlerRob Keeley|title=The Diary of Dennis the MenaceChildish Spirits: Canine Carnage (book 5)10th anniversary special edition
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= IAround here, we're big fans of children'm sure Dennis the Menace has s author Rob Keeley. He's a hate-hate relationship with schoolball of happy positivity, but the nature of it is relevant when considering these books. The fact he goes at all is the cause for them in the first place – he [[The Diary of Dennis the Menace by Steven Butler|originally]] was tasked with writing a journal as homeworkunderstands children, and turned it into a menacing manual he writes for us, his readers. But if he paid attention there he might realise £1their pleasure and enjoyment,000 is not quite enough to build his own, self-aggrandising theme park, even if he manages to employ the bummy, booky, wimpy types behind the sceneslecture or hector. The grand sum ''Childish Spirits'' series is what Dennis intends to win when The Fame Factor TV talent show hits townone of his greatest achievements. ThatIt's a sequence of ghost stories centring on Ellie, as we a stalwart young girl who can easily foretellcope with anything the spirit world throws at her, is going to be very menacingly interestingand Edward, but that's not a spoiled lordling and the site of the titular carnage – for that we have to rely on an unusual sleep-over…first spirit Ellie encounters|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141355840</amazonuk>1783064617
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Max Boucherat|title=Cheeky CharlieThe Last Life of Lori Mills|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482}}{{Frontpage|author=Mat WaughKieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton|title=Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''My book is about all the naughty things that my brother Charlie has doneMeet Kit. Some Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is funny, some an avid fan of it is Dungeon Running – the sport where a bit sadteam of warrior, mage and lots of it is disgusting, because that's what Charlie can be. It might even make you be sickhealer enter specially prepared, so get ready.'' You know what? That's about the size of it. After Harry has introduced herself century- she's almost seven years old, she doesn't like her frecklesmagical mazes, she's used and race to people thinking that someone called Harry ought to be a boythe exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the big bad and she has a younger brotherthe points they grant you along the way. Unfortunately for Kit, who is three and called Charlie. This is Harrythe only thing he's book about Charlie. Charlie seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and a cheeky chappienew trio of questors is needed. He never shuts up. He likes Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, he has taken to push the goading from the token bully of his luckworld and stumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. And What chance does this friendless, having pushed his luck oncemuscle-free-zone have in actually managing that, and how could he likes possibly hope to push it againsucceed?|isbn=1839945184}}{{Frontpage|author=James Sherwood Metts|title=Planet Storyland|rating=4. And again5|genre=Confident Readers|summary= Things have been a bit sticky for the Earthlings. And againAI and automation have been proceeding apace, often replacing jobs they're paid to do and other tasks that took time to accomplish. This is much Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and starting to think of other, new ways to Harry's exasperationspend time, as she explains by dint of a book full of anecdotes.along came an awful pandemic.Life was pretty much shut down and, along with it, all the many daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1508910510</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel Renee RussellTom Percival|title=Dork Diaries: Once Upon a Dork (Book 8)The Wrong Shoes|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There Will's life is wishing you had difficult, in a fairytale relationshipmultitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and/or having doesn't have enough money for even the chance to change your life drastically – most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and then there is being able to see what would actually happen if either wish came truehad an accident. Nikki wakes up on a typical school day with a hellish start – no alarm clock, due to her younger sister, sandwich all over her jumper, again due to her younger sisterThrow into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and so onWill's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, and so she can only wish for something to take her out of it and give her he still has a dollop tiny amount of fantasyhope. That something He is dodgeballgood at art, which bangs her on the head so much she wakes up in a sheer fantasy world, where her BFFs are Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood, clings to the world moments of joy when he is peopled by other folk from schooldrawing, but her hunky friend Brandon is still Prince Charmingthat feel like a light at the end of a long, and her enemy Mackenzie Hollister is still able to make her life hell…dark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>147114383X</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lincoln Peirce1805141872|title=Big Nate Lives It Up (Big Nate, Book 7)The Teacher Who Knew Too Much|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Life at school might actually be interesting for Big Nate, for once. Even if the building is so old it's falling down, an ancient student's journal much like his has been discovered, peppered with Seventeen banks and a girl's cartoons from a long, long time ago – proving even he can jeweller’s have a connection with something a century oldbeen raided. (And I don't mean The police are baffled, but only Ben knows the connection made when bits of the place actually fall onto truth – his head.) Unfortunately for NateMaths teacher, Miss Judson, is really a safecracker! With police and her gangster boyfriend Al on their trail, another connection has been forced Miss Judson and Ben go on him – he has had to buddy up with the new boy in classrun. But Al needs them for one last job... ''He's new Goodness me, dorky, and has that Miss Judson is a terror! How on earth did a name that sounds nice teacher like her manage to get mixed up with a British boarding schoolbad 'un like Al? We'll find out. Luckily for Miss Judson, we're told. But what exactly the pupil who discovers her terrible secret is it about Breckenridge Puffington III that gives Nate Ben, the son of a strong sense of déjà vu…?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007581270</amazonuk>famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some day, and who thinks Miss Judson is worth saving
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= StrefChristopher Edge|title=J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan: The Graphic NovelBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic NovelsConfident Readers|summary=Here's Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a quiz question for you – despite the uniform seventy year copyright rulemovie marathon at their local cinema, which work a place that has been the sole recipient nickname of an endless extension 'The Black Hole'. All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of itexciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, courtesy of and they are swept up into an ex-Prime Ministeradventure they couldn't even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going on? The answer Will they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?|isbn=1839942738}}{{Frontpage|author=Adam Stower|title=Murray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers |summary=Murray is obvious now at leastsupposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, as this one who is one such volumeable to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two. ItBut he's a very readable and pleasant variant on J M Barriebad magician's original stage version cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and novel regarding Peter Panthe catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, which but into a world of course helps frightening adventure and always will now help the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospitalwhiffs. And for This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a boy who never grows uptroll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, at 111 years old but he's in spritely good health.turned up and he'll have to do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780272901</amazonuk>0008561249
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Helen MossAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title= Secrets The Glorious Race of the Tombs 2: The Dragon PathMagical Beasts|rating= 54|genre= Confident Readers|summary= They don't actually intend to have Eli is a busy lad – by day an adventure: quite apprentice in the oppositewondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in factthe evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. As far as fifteen-year-old Ryan and Eli lives with his friend Cleo are concernedlovely gran, being chased by bad guys and falling down deep holes too – for there is seriously over-rateda generation missing in the family. But they're on their way to China with their parents anyway A few short years ago, so they can hardly refuse when CleoEli's grandmother asks them parents were both lost to put the titular race, a jade bracelet she's had for eighty years back globe-trotting adventure where it belongsall entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beast. Where's This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the harm?only thing to possibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444010417</amazonuk>0571382231
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kjartan Poskitt and Philip ReeveHelen Cooper|title=Borgon The Taming of the Axeboy and the Whispering Temple (Borgon the Axeboy 3)Cat
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=''The middle's nice and crunchy but the squishy bits Once again, mice are horriblepitched against cat.'' NoIn this case, principally, thatwe have Brie the mouse, up against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case you's not re seeing a predator connection, they live in prehistoric times discussing a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem to be the eating names of us humanscheeses. InsteadAnyway, itBrie is shunned, scorned and, if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don's Borgon t match the Axeboy's mother, discussing peachesother mice he lives with. Yes, even in a world where a lot of nasty animals are still around to potentially eat They nibble up paper wrapping from the likes of Borgon, there are still things cheese for people to learnbedding – he displays it as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it. Borgon for And that story-telling will come in handy onenight, in this third adventure in the series, has a lot to learn about religion – when he scoffs at the idea therefeels all alone and cast out. It's a god resident in a temple he and his friends have discovered, even almost as if his friend Hunjah insists otherwisethere were another character from fable who had had to tell stories to keep themselves alive. The lesson is forced and This makes Brie the top dog in the truth comes outmouse community, howeverthough, when as all the others had the chance to half-inch some thieves turn up, having pegged cheese while the cat was distracted. But will the story have the site as a location of many earthly riches…successful sequel it needs when that cheese runs out?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057130737X</amazonuk>0571376010
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Dead End Kids: Heroes of the Blitz Lauren St John|authortitle=Bernard AshleyFinding Wonder|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=ItRoo's London life has become almost impossibly difficult. Her mum died when she was young, and now she finds herself awoken in 1940. Most the middle of the men have been conscripted and night by the East End is populated mainly by women and children. Josie and police banging on her door to tell her that her friends are carrying dad has dropped dead on much as usual, though, grouping into little gangs and arguing over turf via mud fights along his way to the Thames. But then comes corner shop to buy a terrible night of bombinglottery ticket. It When asked what other family she has, she can only name her aunt, Joni, who she knows her dad didn's the start t think very highly of the Blitz . But she has no one else, and 57 consecutive nights of bombing so off she goes to live with her unreliable aunt. Things continue to get worse for the East End. The fire service is stretched way beyond its capacity Roo, as when she and the lucky ones make Joni leave London in Joni's old campervan, it out of the shelters breaks down in the morning, while the unlucky ones don't see another sunrise.middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408338955</amazonuk>0571376169
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma CarrollAdam Baron and Benji Davies|title=In Darkling WoodOscar's Lion|rating=53
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= In the early hours We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother is more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple of the morning Alice’s mum receives the phone call they have been waiting times before he has to be ready forschool. The long awaited heart transplant that may save her sick brother But when he enters his parents' bedroom, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion on their bed, Theo’slooking sheepish, life is now possibleand admitting that he won't be hungry for another two days. Alice finds herself sent But there are benefits to stay with having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat to the bully that ruined a grandmother she doesn’t know, miles away from her friends and birthday party for Oscar the life she knowsother month. There is no TV And it can shapeshift, no phone signal so he can take it to school and no internet but Alice feels drawn it can get him out of a problem. And it's wonderful to have around the mysterious Darkling Wood surrounding house – not limiting his biscuit intake, being much more lax about the house despite her grandmother’s wish to have rules, and so on. OK, it chopped down. Meanwhile back in 1918 can't work a young girl desperately waits for news of her brother’s safe return from the front. Her mother doesn’t like her playing in the nearby wood dimmer switch but it is there that she discovers secrets and magic that can give her hope for the futureOscar a wonderful time. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057131757X</amazonuk>0008596751
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Potion DiariesJudith Eagle|authortitle=Amy AlwardThe Stolen Songbird
|rating=4
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=Samantha Caro's mother, a world-famous whistler, has failed to return home from her recent work trip abroad and is now missing. Her other mother, Ronnie, is a mixer having to go up North to take care of potions extraordinaireher sister who is unwell. Which So who is just as wellgoing to look after Caro? Sent to stay with Gam, because someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated and confused and worried. All her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics are brought to save a princess who has fallen in love halt whilst she is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's house, along with herself. Yesan orphan boy, you heard right! You might not think this is the most enormous problem - princesses are so spoiled and pamperedAlbie, who is it any wonder they fall living there too. But she soon finds herself caught up in love with themselves? But this isn't whata mystery, as she discovers a painting of a bird hidden away inside her mum's happened. Princess Evelyn has taken old suitcase, and all across London a love potion meant to make someone else fall in love with ''her''fearsome gang called the Snakes are thieving artworks and terrorising people. And Is the resulting havoc caused by painting somehow linked to the wrong person taking the right potion leads gang? And what has happened to some very unstable magic that could threaten the very kingdom itself. Hence the Caro''Wilde Hunt'', a national quest to find s mother? Is she somehow involved in the ingredients for a cure.mystery too?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471143562</amazonuk>0571363148
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Thirteen Days of MidnightTania Unsworth|authortitle=Leo HuntNowhere Island
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=Luke Manchett really isn't that upset when Meet Gil. Just twelve, he gets is so determined to escape the care system – the news system that his father has died. You might think constantly puts him in futureless places that's are not homes – and find a tad harsh, but Luke has been estranged from his father home for yearshimself. His primary concern He is his motheren route to yet another fosterer, who is disabled by crushing cluster headaches. Sowhen he jumps into an anonymous car, rather than worry her, Luke heads off and lets it ride him to a lawyer's office his future. That future seems to deal be in jeopardy when someone steals his one bag of belongings – but that someone lives with his brother in a camp on an island between the reading two directions of his father's will by himselfa motorway, a place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and seclusion. And he gets Them, and a mute girl also finding a shockhome there, albeit so much more successfully. Luke's inheritance adds up to six million dollars. SIX MILLION! Over a few weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408337460</amazonuk>1804540080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Dougherty and David Tazzyman (illustrator)Helen Peters|title=Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face Friends and the Bees of StupidityTraitors|rating=53
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We've been here beforeEngland, WW2. The lovely children whose name is in Two young girls are new at the title of all these books – handy when they make time to try and check if they're in this one or not – are woken up in a ridiculous way by a blackbird making his usual cameocountry pile called Stanbrook. The Army of Great Kerfuffle One is asleep – Nancy, destined to be in service all single cat of her life itseems, like the female generations before her. The King other is wearing Sidney, a girl from a badge hoity-toity Sussex boarding school that allows him to pretend to not be the King – this time hehas been removed there away from bomber flight-paths. The girls are chalk and cheese, and if we hadn's thinking of keeping beest guessed that then their behaviour with each other over their first encounters would only prove it so. But something is amiss, although he has four animals that go 'quack' and first separately and then in combination they realise the Lord Evesham must be a hive insteadrum 'un. Oh yeahMidnight deliveries are received under cover of secrecy, talk is made of meetings with Germans, and the evil badgers are in prison having not only that, a local Spitfire factory has been naughtyattacked. But they will never follow surely the pattern girls are wrong, and the upper class could never be evil and naughty and break out in order to be eviller and more naughty, will theyso underhand?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0192742736</amazonuk>1788004647
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian SedgwickJamie Littler|title=Ghosts of ShanghaiArkspire
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=ShanghaiTwo sisters, 1926Juniper and Elodie, born fifteen minutes apart, are growing to be chalk and cheese. The city Juniper is heavily divided between the naturalan eager hunter and trader in illicit magic, national areas, and the enclaves of including relics from prior major wars left out in the foreigners – Russian, French, American, BritishBadlands. Several Elodie is intent on getting closer to power in one of the younger international youths have formed the Ghost Society gangreligious districts of Arkspire, after perhaps even to become the principal character, Ruby, found another divide cleaving Shanghai child in two – that between line to inherit the living and power of the deadWatcher, the 'real world' and the Otherworld. Her brother dead, she seemed closest to become a ruler the conduit for a poltergeist in her apartmentdistrict has, and recently one of the gang have even managed to lock a spirit into a bottle and cast it down a wellfive major victors in said earlier war. But Being trained in the magic that only five people can use would definitely change the gang is immediately falling apart – status of the lad she loves, Charlie, and his sister are diverting themselves from, or have been warned off, any further such activitywhole family. Rose knows she has But in finding something oddly magical, Juniper might just be able to find the source gain some power of the problem her own – and cross any untold divides in her city to find the truth…for good, or for very, very bad…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444923900</amazonuk>0241586143
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus and Sean Murray024162343X|title=Trollhunters|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=West Coast USA in the 1960s, and the city is wracked and wrecked by a slew of missing children reports. The parents with their new anguishes, and new rules against playing out after dark, have no idea of the horrors in their vicinity – literally under their feet lies a city of trolls, guilty of snatching the children. Last to go, Jack Sturgess. Cue the modern era and Jack's younger, now grown-up brother Jim, and Jim Jr live a sheltered life in the most barricaded and secure home imaginable, and Jim Jr's life is as exciting as you'd expect. Unfortunately, however, the trolls are about to make a return to their nastiest of ways – and their intentions are a lot more surprising than Jim Jr could ever predict…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471405192</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewStolen History|author= Caroline Lawrence|title= The Case of the Bogus Detective|rating= 5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= Howdy folks! Welcome to Virginia City, bustling and busy home to prospectors, dancing girls, lawyers, gamblers and newspapermen. It's 1862, and our twelve-year-old pal Pinky is continuing the quest to become a successful detective and eventually join Uncle Allan in the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago. But for the moment there's so much crime right here in Nevada, thanks to the untold wealth being found daily in the nearby silver mines, that Pinky and financial partner Ping are soon busy day and night, chasing desperados, solving crimes and righting all manner of wrongs.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444010336</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ali Sparkes|title=Car-JackedSathnam Sanghera
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers Children's Non-Fiction|summary=A boy genius who speaks Mandarin and Latin and I was the bad company other people got into at school. I was disruptive in religious education classes because I disputed the existence of a criminal who’s just robbed a bank and stolen a car: it’s an unusual pairing but'god'. Where was the proof? In history lessons, it turns outwas probably worse still. Not too long after the end of WWII, I didn't so much want to learn about the British army's successes (and occasional failures, a perfect teambut we didn't dwell on those) in what came to be called 'the colonies' as want to dispute what right the army had to be there in the first place. ‘‘Car Looking back, I still believe I was right -Jacked’’ leads us through but I regret that I lacked the twists and turns of 12-year old Jack’s adventure when his parents’ car is hi-jacked with Jack still insidematurity to approach 'the problem' politely. I wish I'd had Sathnam Sanghera's ''Stolen History''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>019273346X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joan Aiken and Quentin BlakeThiago de Moraes|title=Arabel’s RavenOld Gods New Tricks
|rating=4.5
|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=It’s been manyMeet Trixie. Forever getting into scrapes, many years since I first met Arabel larks and adventures involving flooding the school aircon with fart powder, she could almost be thought a young goddess of nuisance. But just when she's being told that by her pet ravenone-last-chance-giving headteacher, Mortimer, whilst watching Jackanory on children’s televisionthe world changes. Bernard Cribbins used to read Suddenly, practically everything electronic stops working – a power-out, even of electric cars, hits not just the town the school's in but the storiesentire planet (apart from mobile phones, and they became firm favourites all that powers the Internet, just for our convenience's sake). Trixie, luckily, realises what has happened – the ancient Gods have taken the power of minepower from us. Here I am returning And so she begins her epic quest, to gather all the first book people that can steal it back – namely the characters from myth that have past form in stealing from the seriesGods, wellie the semi-deities, just a handful of years latergiants, half-gods and so on known as the story has lost none of its charmtricksters.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847806910</amazonuk>178845295X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Philip CaveneyHannah Gold and Levi Pinfold|title= One For SorrowFinding Bear|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= You'd think[[The Last Bear by Hannah Gold|Last time]], wouldn't youApril had been on Bear Island, that Tom Afflick a lot further north than many people would move heaven venture, and earth to avoid leaving Manchester to go to Edinburgh: finding a ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with a polar bear – that she called Bear. Back home, things on his last two visits there he ended up tumbling into the pastdomestic and family front are a bit advanced, where he met all manner of scary folkbut not perfect for her, and so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the islands Bear was last left on. But parents tend to be pretty determined to get their own way about such For a bear doing very Bear-y things, has been shot and no way are they going to swallow some mad tale about him being chased by plague doctors and other assorted murdererswounded. So, off he has Desperate to go, and yes – he's barely set foot in ''Auld Reekie'' when make sure he's time travelling againOK, she and her father return to the Arctic and hope that in a wondrous mix world of dramavery white and very dangerous things, real live people she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and deadly perilthat the friendship can continue.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905916957</amazonuk>0008582017
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dave CousinsSimon Fox|title=Charlie Merrick's Misfits in I'm a Nobody, Get Me Out of Here!Deadlock|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=What Late one night Graham Blake is that saying, about the best laid plans of mice and misfits gang aft agley? Charlie and late back from his fondly thought of friends in shift on the soccer squad we met [[Charlie Merrick's Misfits in Foulsforce, Friendsand then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and Football by Dave Cousins|last time]] are hoping for a simple trip to a summer camp for a week's educative trainingjoin him on the run. But noThey get together, their dopey manager has booked them in but barely begin to a survival camp by mistake. Instead of hitting smell the back whiff of Southern trains when the net they're building tarpaulin shelters. They can't set any watching footie-heads ablazefather is arrested, for they have leaving Archie on the late express to spark their own fires at night. They can still score, howeverBrighton, as there's toting a points-based competition tin his father was determined to hand, but now that Charlie has dropped keep away from his team in the proverbialcolleagues, they're once more really up against it…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192738232</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=John McNally|title=The Forbidden City (Infinity Drake, Book 2)|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=Finn may be only 9mm tall and still a teenager, but he's already saved the world once. Accidentally shrunk by his mad scientist Uncle Al, he joined bearer of a crack military team and helped foil the threat whole heap of a lethal bio-weapon, the Scarlatti wasp. But there's no let-up for Finn. Before Al can restore him to normal size, a new threat emergesquestions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007521650</amazonuk>1839944420
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom PalmerCath Howe|title=Rugby Academy: DeadlockedMy Life on Fire
|rating=5
|genre=Dyslexia FriendlyConfident Readers|summary=ItRen's the third story family home is destroyed in the ''Rugby Academy'' series and so far we've heard from Woody in [[Rugby Academy: Combat Zone by Tom Palmer|Combat Zone]] and Rory in [[Rugby Academy: Surface to Air by Tom Palmer|Surface to Air]]a fire. In thisShe, the final book in this brilliant seriesher parents, we hear from Owenand her little brother lose everything. We left the team She doesn't have any of her clothes, or any of her special little knick-knacks from her cupboard, and now she is living at the end of her grandmother's house where they can'Surface to Air'' when Borderlands had got through to t touch anything, or do anything, or even eat the World Championship in New Zealandfoods they normally eat. Despite When she goes back to school she discovers that the elation class are doing a special art project, creating boxes of doing so Owen isn't entirely comfortable with Jessetheir lives, the team captainto display things that are important to them and show who they are as a person. He But Ren has no doubts nothing to put in a box, and so she finds herself starting to steal things. Small things, things that he was a brilliant player - the best on the team - but he can't respect him as a personpeople might not really miss, not when they have so much already. But what will happen to her if someone finds out what she is doing?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781123993</amazonuk>1839942835
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=E L KonigsburgRob Keeley|title=From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E FrankweilerThe Boy Who Disappeared and Other Stories
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Eleven-year-old Claudia Kincaid Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is tired of being taken for granted. As back with a return to the oldest of four children, she suffers many an injustice, and the interplay of school and home life is becoming monotonous. She decides short story format! The Boy Who Disappeared treats us to run away from her home in Greenwicheleven new tales, Connecticut each as fun to live in the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art. Middle brother Jamie, 9, is her chosen companion, not least because he can fund their venture. By cheating read as his friend Bruce at card games, Jamie has accumulated more than $24 – which, in 1967 when this classic children's novel first appeared, was not an insignificant amountprevious offerings.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782690719</amazonuk>B0BVW69N1G
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel Renee RussellLaura Noakes|title=Dork Diaries: Drama Queen (Dork Diaries 9)Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Mackenzie HollisterNumber One. She's a typical American tweenager – concerned in popularityOr rather, looksCosima Unfortunate. Or rather, just Cos to her friends. The practice in the home she lives in is for the hot guys like Brandongirls to just be named by the number they correspond to in the ledger, and getting one over on they're all those around her. That's made a lot more easy by her parents being spoilingly rich Unfortunates – if Mackenzieyoung people with disabilities, say, wants a new cover for her diary she will just rip up a new $220 leopard print designer blouse and use uncommon mentalities or suchlike thatVictorian society frowns greatly upon. But Cosima bears the problem istag as a surname because nothing else seems to be known about where she came from, what she's reading back overas the first ever inmate, and what she's writing unique in having no known family inthe outside world. During a daring escapade to steal some posh cakes from the kitchen one afternoon, isn't ''exactly'' her diary she discovers a plan involving said outside world – it's the diary belonging a devilish Lord Fitzroy seems to our beloved heroine, Nikki, and Mackenzie has managed want to purloin it adopt all the girls for evil deedshis Institute. Can Nikki get it back – or live at all without her beloved journalBut why, and what does that body entail? And could there actually be something worse than her biggest enemy of, like, all time, being it possibly bring Cos closer to the person reading itpast she has so little link with?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471117707</amazonuk>0008579059
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lewis Carroll and Sir John Tenniel|title=Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |rating=5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=It can hardly have escaped anyone's attention that 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and we've seen numerous anniversary editions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447287118</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Guy Bass and Pete WilliamsonM Ross|title=The Beast of Grubbers Nubbin (Stitch Head)Nowhere Thief|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=It's all wrong At last there is new stock in Castle Grotteskewthe impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and her mother run in a seaside town. Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it. The very walls She also knows she should be terrified by free from worries about being found out, because she has the monsters the Mad Professor in the basement is creatingability to leave this world, out and use an unworldly portal of various body parts kaleidoscope colours to enter other worlds, where the sea levels are rising dramatically and different animals. But no, the clamour buildings are generally empty of noise, the unlikely activities humans and horrendous appetite ripe for food come from something else entirely – a hundred rescued human orphansplunder. That appetite needs feeding – so it’s perfect timing for the village below the castle, Grubbers NubbinWith eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything to have their annual podge-a-thon feast. actually generate custom at the shop? But when Stitch Head and his human friend Arabella go to purloin some human food – there being no decent alternative – they're horrified to find something even worse than Well yes, is the monsters trapped in answer, but the castle above…fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847156096</amazonuk>1839943769
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cassie BeasleyNatasha Farrant|title=Circus MirandusThe Rescue of Ravenwood
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Micah This story is an orphan who has been raised by his grandfather, but now Micah’s grandfather is dying. And if that wasn’t bad enough, his horrible great aunt has arrived to take care another excellent adventure from the author of ''Voyage of him, cutting their limited time together furtherthe Sparrowhawk''. But don’t worry all hope Ravenwood is not lost. When grandpa Ephraim was a child he visited an old house, in the mysterious Circus MirandusNorth of England, where he was promised a miracle by the miraculous Man Who Bends Light. All Micah has to do is get a message to the Light Bender Bea and his grandfather can Raffy have his miraclebeen living for most of their lives. With the help They are part of Jenny Mendoza (the smartest girl in the class)a complex, extended family arrangement, Micah sets his sights on the circusas Bea is there with her Uncle Leo, a task that requires unconditional love and faith. Aunt Gertrudis Raffy is wrongthere with his mum, Ephraim’s stories aren’t just stories ... and they are they?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1101892315</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Owen Davey|title=Mad About Monkeys|rating= 4|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=Of all the many millions of animals on our planet that deserve living together as a large format hardback non-fiction book, I guess monkeys are one of the ideal places to startfamily. They arehave grown up swimming in the cove, of course, our distant cousinsroaming through the trees, completely at one with all of the ancestor we have in common with them walking nature around our world within the past thirty million yearshouse and loving every inch of the place. They have a large range across But now the planethouse is under threat, as Leo is under pressure from his other two brothers to sell the property to a developer as it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. The children find themselves worrying not only about where they have over 250 variant species're going to live, and but if they have a lot of interesting facts and details regarding their social life'll even be together, their diet, their diversity and their potential future – all of which makes this an interesting read whatever your species bias may if Ravenwood itself will betorn down.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909263575</amazonuk>0571348785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Josh LaceyRobin Birch and Jobe Anderson|title=Dragonsitter TroubleSecret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You don't need me to tell you what itJayden's like when your uncle owns two dragons. He's the pig-headed type who has nose is forever in a mummy and baby dragon living with himbook, and which means he must live on knows a remote island off Scotland, lot about mythological creatures – the phoenixes and he must spend half the time hunting unicorns of the world of dragons in Outer Mongolia, or searching for the yetiexample. Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, so where she can see videos of anything that trouble starts from the very moment you arrive with your mother and sister to housesit for him – might be out there's no food. The problem, as their mothers see it, the dragons is that they are pooing everywhere and you cannever 't even use the front door properly because he didnout there't leave themselves, exploring the key in an obvious placeoutside world of Hackney, London. StillBut when a narrowboat turns up carrying a science-minded, educational purpose, thatand with a past involving Jayden's nothing compared to when cousin, they find a magical world they never knew existed. For many of those mythological creatures are real, including the neighbouring farmer gets his guns trained one Aisha thinks she's seen on the dragons when he accuses them a bit of stealing his sheep… local footage. Or how about when your big birthday party is hereThe crew of the boat, including a living gargoyle, and are tasked with saving the magician is booked rare critters – and the two dragons come kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to stayjoin in. Dare they side with Leila, because somebody else with the talent to care for them has woman on board, and her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, and become saviours of the hots for your mother…unseen?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1783442972</amazonuk>0241573483
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jo SimmonsB09XWSXSKY|title=Super-Loud SamMaestro Orpheus and the World Clock|author=Robert Penee and Joanne Grodzinski|rating=54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Sam is loudFrederick (or Fred, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleep. Not just loud as in A tune, rather like the loudest lad in class, ticking of a clock was playing over and not just loud as over in loudest fire alarm in schoolhis mind. It happened every time he came to visit his grandfather. NoHe hadn't really wanted to come; after all, Sam is he's ten now and all those old clocks don't appeal to him anymore. 'LOUD''' loud. Who needs old clocks anyway? Stop traffic in All they do is tell the streets loudtime. Scary loudAnd time isn't good for anything.. Loud enough to make passing birds forget how to fly loud. There's little rhyme or reason for this, just as there is no real reason ' And that was why his best friend Nina does nothing but knit all he was looking at the clock beside the livelong day, even when walking to schoolbed. Itwas nearly twelve o's just something you have to acceptclock but at midnight the clock chimed only six times. But what's thisThere was nothing for it but to go and find grandad - but where was he? Their favourite teacher has vanished, and a new one has taken his place – Mrs Mann. She's ridiculous with her weirdly large hands, her huge cardigan and even huger beehive hairdo. The biggest thing about her though is And why had all the threat she poses – that of eternal silence in her lessons. How can Sam possibly continue clocks stopped at school, when even him clearing his throat is like a plane crash in your earstwelve o'clock?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407152300</amazonuk>
}}
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