Changes

|author=Danny Wallace and Gemma CorrellLouie Stowell|title=The Day the Screens Went BlankLoki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Stella and her familyLoki. TheyThe trickster god has got into trouble again, so the other gods have decided there're just innocently trying to have s only one thing for it – he must be banished. And transformed – for Loki is spending a Sunday evening month both in together, watching exile and in the physical form of a film – using three different screens to watch three different things, mind – when ''poof'' everything goes blankmiddle-school kid here on Earth. And itHe's not just their homeguarded by a giant and a god in disguise as his parents, and Thor has come along as well, but to be the entire south-western village more suave, more popular and more successful brother of Mouseholethe two. Loki has a month to redeem his reputation, and not just thatget his moral compass pointing the right way again, eitheror else, but and to prove it he has to write the whole countrytext we read in a sentient notebook, if not world. Suddenly people are constantly on their phones – hoping they're first that is able to get a screen backcry foul of his lies, and not what they were constantly doing on them beforejudge his progress. Toasters But Loki is the kind of god who insists he can toast, but TVs cannot do the V part of their jobanything, and no computer can show its computations. You might think this so surviving a bit more virtuously for a month is going to be a social comedy about people stuck walk in such a Luddite experience against their will, but no. For the family finally remember Stella's grandma, and see if they can get across country to her. Hence this has to go down as a road-trip bookpark. But not just that, a slapstick road-trip comedy. And more than that, too – for it's a slapstick, high-drama, high-octane road-trip comedy with oodles of cuddly heart that kids of all ages will love.right?|isbn=14711968871406399752

|author=Hannah GoldLucy Strange and Pam Smy|title=The Last BearMermaid in the Millpond

|summary=April's father, There is no mermaid in the millpond. That at least is what Bess is telling herself. Neither will there be a scientistfriend for her in amongst all the other kids, has been given a job on a remote island called Bear Island, and he accepts who have had their entire childhoods sold to the mill-owners by the job deciding London workhouse they used to take his daughter April with himcall home. They live alone anyway, since April's mother died some Bess knows there is no time beforefor friendship in a hand-to-mouth, and he feels it will be educational every man for her to experience himself kind of existence. But despite herself Bess does find a bit of a kindred spirit in the island slight little Dot, and all its natural beauty. April already despite everything that life has an affinity with nature, taught her about betrayal and she's excited how befriending people only leads to travel with her fatherharm, thinking there might be a glimmer of all companionship in the fun things they will be able to experience together on the islandtired-out mill workers. But when they get surely that doesn't mean there, her father finds that his work monitoring and recording is any truth in the existence of the temperatures just takes up too much mermaid?|isbn=180090049X}}{{Frontpage|author=Christopher Edge|title=Escape Room|rating=3|genre=Confident Readers|summary=I've seen junior variants of his timethe 'Choose Your Own Adventure' format cover escape rooms – the process by which a character or characters start by being trapped in a specific location, and so April is left have to solve problems in order to explore by herselfget their way out. Her father had reassured her What I've not done (alongside experience one for myself – for that there were no longer any bears living on Bear Islandwould require actual friends) is seen a prose book describing people in such an adventure, but one day April thinks she catches a glimpse of onewith the regular second person narrative replaced by the first. Here, Ami and so she sets out four other tweenagers, all new to find each other and booked into the Beargame without any of their friends, and then when she sees he is injuredare a team – starting out at the game's main offices, to befriend where they're told they and help himtheir quest for The Answer are a world-changer.But could watching people engage with such a pastime, despite the ramped-up threat levels, change much in the world of literature?|isbn=000841128X1788007964

|author=Emma Carroll and Kaja KajfezLucy Hope|title=The Ghost GardenFledgling

|summary=FranBavaria, 1900. Our scene is a most peculiar hilltop house, built bit by bit over the gardenerdecades, and now looking imperiously down on the village and woods below. It's daughter at a posh country an eccentric house, to host eccentrics, so the library shelving system is worried. Shenot as we's just cracked her garden fork through quite d know it, the roof is retractable, there is a grim discovery steam-powered, hand- a large boneoperated lift system cut through it, buried under and so on. At the potatoes. But she's even more worried when she learns that that event coincided moment it houses an ex-soldier with Leo, PTSD and a passion for the older child long-standing family hobby of taxidermy, a woman who does nothing but quibble, kvetch and sing opera loudly, and the housedying grandma to our heroine, Cassie, breaking his leg while playing cricket on a young lass who has to do all the lawnmaintenance of this bizarre machine-like abode. She is due Oh but it's also going to get even more worried when she finds house someone or something else that also seems to foretell a surprise. Tasked with shoving Leo around the grounds in his bathchair, she might have reason to be out of her mind with fear, when she learns what he crashing through Cassie's bedroom window one stormy day is seeking - a long-forgotten burial chambercherub. But surely that won't act as And if you think such a premonition heavenly arrival is going to anything - not here in the sultrybe a completely great and wonderful thing, summery days of 1914?think again...|isbn=1781129002183994188X

|author=Rob WintersKate DiCamillo and Sophie Blackall|title=His Name Was WrenThe Beatryce Prophecy|rating=45

|summary=In September 1944 something came down ''Stories have joy and surprises in Oban Woodsthem'', near we are told here. And none more so than in this wondrous story, which feels an instant classic with the village freshness and the agelessness it has in equal proportion. We start with a group of Hurstwick. It came down hardmonks, taking the spire Order of the village church with itChronicles of Sorrowing, and the demonic goat that loves nothing more than upending, destroying trampling on and biting the poor Brothers. Things change drastically when the beast takes a totally maternal approach to a stone shackhomeless girl, and leaving one who has survived some trauma that has blocked her past from her memory. Elsewhere sits a wide trail through King in his castle, desperate to find the woodgirl, for it is prophesied that a young child can unseat the throne and cause great change. Who foretold that revolution but no trace the Order of the Chronicles of what it actually was. Sorrowing? German secret weapon was the local gossipBut how can a simple, but there should have been an explosion and amnesiac lass ever prove a crater, and there were neither of those things.threat to anyone?|isbn=B08KGVNVNB1529500893

|author=Alex WheatleGreg James and Chris Smith|title=The Humiliations of Welton BlakeGreat Dream Robbery|rating=2.5

|summary=We meet Welton Blake at the worst of times – only they should be the best of timesMaya's father is a professor who invented an amazing dream machine. He should be getting a text from the most bae-worthy girl in school in regards to a cinema dateBut something went wrong, but his phone has packed and now he can't wake up. Or at least, hethat's chundered last what Maya has been told. In a rather strange dream one night's meal and his breakfast over another girl in class, who's duffed him up in responseMaya makes a new friend, and discovers that the wanna-bae seems only way to actually save her dad may be with someone else anywayby being asleep. Cue one madcap action adventure story where dreams and reality collide. On a bigger scale he..really...and there's living with his mother everything from llamas and not much income now that the dad has left the picture – yesbananas, things are so bad they're resorting to having cabbage for dinner. I knowdream machines made from hairdresser cast-offs, right? But surely this is just a blip, a day at school to forget, and everything (like his vomit) will all come out in the wash? This can't be the start of a most nightmarish time for young Welton?talking cat called Bin Bag!|isbn=1781129495024147051X

|author= Katharine OrtonKeith Gray|title= GlassheartThe Climbers|rating= 4|genre= Confident Readers|summary= Nona and her Uncle Antoni have lived together ever since Sully is the best tree climber in the Blitz claimed village. He has what's known amongst the lives of her familykids as 'reach'. NowBut what happens when a new kid shows up in town? A new kid, called Nottingham, in the aftermath who clambers up some of the warhardest trees with ease? Suddenly Sully is worried that his status is being threatened, and not only that, they travel all over that his chance to name the countryfinal, replacing stained-glass windows unnamed big tree in buildings destroyed the park by bombs. Their latest job takes them out being the first to the wilds of Dartmoorconquer it, where Nona discovers that her world is full of ancient and powerful magicmight be snatched from his hands. She also discovers that a mysterious entityHow can Sully stop Nottingham? And will it cost him his best friend, known only as The Soldier, is hell-bent on using Nona's innate magic for or maybe even all of his own endsfriends, and will not stop until he has her…to do so?|isbn=14063852391781129991

|author=Rob KeeleyNick Lake and Emily Gravett|title=The Treasure in the TowerLocked Out Lily|rating=4.5

|summary= Rob Keeley Lily is back! Hooray! We here at Bookbag Towers are always happy to read a new adventure from Rob - his stories combine fast pace , or was, or has been, very ill, and lots of action, an easy to read style, an unerring eye for childrengive her parents relief she's friendships and rivalries, and always been told to stay with her grandma for a good dollop of naughty humourfew days. They're all present here, in ''The Treasure in parents need the Tower'relief as Lily's baby sibling is just about to be born – a child Lily swears she hates already and wants nothing to do with. The chance purchase But on tracking back home for word of her parents (and her plush toy so she can sleep) she finds stony-eyed simulacra of a book during a school trip sparks her parents, and the whole adventurebabe-in-arms, already installed. Who can follow These devilish interlopers need to be ousted to get the family back intact, even if it's not the clues best family Lily wants – and find all she has to help her in the treasure? Jesstask are some talking animals – Crow, her brother Mason Mole, Mouse and their friend Kessie through sheer persistence? Or spoiled brat Perdita with her money and tech gadgets and willingness to cheat?Snake.|isbn=18004613211471194833}}

|isbnauthor=1849767009Philip Reeve|title=It Isn't Rude to be Nude|author=Rosie HaineUtterly Dark and the Face of the Deep

|genre=For SharingConfident Readers|summary=This could have been one In a word, rich. There is certainly an abundance of those books which 'preaches to riches in this story set on a peculiar island called Wildsea, British but way west, beyond the choir': the only Scillies. There are troll people who'll buy on it are , and sea-witches, and legends of the people who know Dark family that nudity is OK has to keep watch for magical islands and their monster approaching from even further west, where no ship dare sail. The current Darks are the ones Watcher, Andrewe, who ''know'' that it's shameful will avoid it like they avoid has to keep notes of activity from the hot-and-bothered person Hidden Lands, his brother Will who lives in London with too much science in the supermarket who is coughing fit his head to bust. But... Rosie Haines makes it into something so much more than a book worry about not wearing clothes. Itsuch local yokel superstitions, and Andrewe's a celebration foundling daughter, who washed up out of bodies: bodies large and small the sea one day eleven years ago. But when Andrewe Dark drowns himself, both his sullen brother and his curious ward are thrust into the world of every possible hue. Bodies with disabilities and markings. They're fine. In factprotecting their island, they're wonderfullike it or not.|isbn=1788452372

|author=Onjali Q RaufAlex Foulkes|title=The Night Bus HeroRules for Vampires

|summary=Hector Eleonore Von Motteberg (or 'Leo' for short) is a bullyVampire. Egged She drinks blood, she sleeps during the day, and she can Grimwalk (turning into a flock of bats to travel around, although not all of them remember to come back). Pretty cool stuff. Now, on the night of her hundredth birthnight, she has to go out and hunt her first human. However, instead she ends up killing two humans by his two 'friends'accident and burning down an orphanage. Oops! And to make things worse, the ghosts of one of the orphans and the evil master of the orphanage come back to haunt her. So, not only does Leo have to team up with the friendly ghost Minna to stop the ghost of the Orphanmaster before he takes becomes unstoppably powerful, she has to do it all while hiding it from her family. Did I mention vampires and ghosts hate each other children? Yeah, there's sweets, harasses and threatens, plays pranks at school, and gets into trouble a reason why there are rules for vampires…|isbn=147119955X}}{{Frontpage|author= Angharad Walker|title= The Ash House|rating= 5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= A new boy arrives at every turnThe Ash House. Yet he finds himself frustrated when something actually isnHe doesn't know his faultname, or why he is there but then he isn't believed as everyone expects is used to the system, used to different places and different faces. He meets Dom who names him Sol and sets out to teach him the rules of The Ash House. These rules centre on a variety of Nicenesses set out by the absent Headmaster. All children must remember their Niceness and complete their chores, working as a hive in the smouldering shadows of The Ash House. But soon their easy peace is shattered by the arrival of the Doctor. By the end of the story, lives will be changed forever and The Ash House will never be telling liesthe same again. Nothing seems fair|isbn=1912626977}}{{Frontpage|author=Emma Carroll|title=The Week at World's End|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=First, the title. His parents are barely homeWe're in World's End Close, a mediocre set of houses, and seem where Stevie (Vie to her friends) finds fun only care about his perfect sister with the family dog and his annoying little brother when they with the boy over the road. But we could also be at World's End, because something taking a great chunk of the fun away is the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis is kicking off. The Soviet boats aregetting blockaded as America tries to reduce the risk of nuclear missiles offshore, and his teachers have abandoned him as not much else is able to make the news. That said, Vie has news of her own – Anna, a lost causesecretive young woman hiding in their coal shed. So what happens whenAnna has, in no short time, taken a strong interest in trying to tell the truth & fight to be believedAmerican airforce base behind the Close, said she'd locate something she wanted and leave, Hector finds himself embroiled with the police; first trying failed to accuseleave, and then trying implied her life was at risk. But surely this bit of intrigue has got nothing to save a homeless man from his local parkdo with what the Cold War is doing miles away?|isbn=15101067740571364438

|author=Carlie SorosiakIan Mark and Louis Ghibault|title=My Life as a CatMonster Hunting For Beginners

|summary=This is the story of an alien who has come down to spend some time on earth living as a humanMeet Jack. ItNow Jack knows very little about being fearless and nimble and quick, for he's something that each member in the alien collective is allowed to doa slight boy, and although he wants for 1 month, once they reach a certain age. Leonard comes to earth but gets distracted en route, danger and peril and so something goes wrong with interesting things his arrival and he finds that instead dad refuses to let him out of landing in Yellowstone Parkhis sight. That's because Jack's mother knew all about monsters, ready and look what happened to work as a park rangerher – she died. Luckily or unluckily then, he is instead in the body of a cat depending on the other side your point of the country! This is not what he had planned! Not only is he in the wrong place and the wrong bodyview, he is a giant ogre will threaten his aunt when Jack's father also in goes AWOL, Jack will fluke the middle of a stormogre's death, stuck in a tree! And so he meets Olive, the little girl who rows out in a boat to rescue dwarfish wizard-type will make himan apprentice monster hunter, and who names he'll be given a book that tells him Leonardall he needs to know about the perils he always wanted closer contact with. The book's name? ''Monster Hunting for Beginners''...|isbn=17880060890755501942

|author=Yara Evans and Luciana BettiLisa Thompson|title=The Adventures of an Urban Fox: Maggie ArrivesSmall Things|rating=45

|summary=Black Cat and Tabby Cat are minding their own business Although Anna has friends at school, she feels like she never really fits in their own house when a very alarming thing happens. A creature - a largeHer family don't have enough money to let her do after school activities, dog-and so she feels like creature - appears her life at home is boring in their housecomparison to theirs. Black CatWhen a new girl joins her class, always one Anna is asked to take chargepartner her, challenges this fearsome creature with all but things are complicated because the courage he new girl, Ellie, is unwell and so can muster't attend school in person. Tabby Cat backs himInstead, she joins in with the class by using a robot.... from Can Anna overcome the challenge of making friends with someone through a rather safe distance. The creature robot, and is indignant - ''I'm not she even interesting enough to be a dog. I'm a fox!''good friend to Ellie?|isbn=1511658649 1781129649

|author=Darren ShanAlex Cotter|title=Archibald Lox and The House on the Vote of Alignment Edge

|summary=This third and final book Faith's family home is teetering on the edge of a cliff, literally. Is that crack in the first volume of Darren Shangarden getting bigger? Is the house starting to slope a little? And as the house seems to be falling apart, so is Faith's new ''Archibald Lox'' series sees Archie family. Her dad has disappeared, and her mum is struggling to cope, barely leaving her bed. So that leaves Faith in charge, taking care of her little brother Noah, taking care of her mum, feeding everyone, getting Noah to school, and Inez make it almost all avoiding awkward questions from interfering teachers. Is her little brother okay? Why is he obsessed with what he claims is a ghost in the cellar? What should she do about the house? Can she find a way to the Cuckooraise enough money to fix it? What's Nesthappened to her dad? Why did he disappear? Maybe he'll come back if she manages to get funding for the house? She carries the weight of all these worries on her constantly, where and she doesn't know how much longer the Vote of Alignment cliff will be heldhold together, or how long she can keep on keeping on. But how will they get in?|isbn=B086LLWP4V1788008626

|isbnauthor=B086LLRZFHKiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston|title=Archibald Lox Julia and the Empress of SuanpanShark|author=Darren Shan|rating=4.5

|summary=Archie's second foray into 'Julia, our pre-teen heroine, has been packed off with her parents and their cat from the Merge' opens with family home in SW England to be lighthousekeepers for a fantastic vista. All of the Born's most famous buildings and monuments - Big Bensummer, in the Taj Mahal,  far NE of the Eiffel Tower - are collected togetherScottish islands. Here be Vikings, joined by those clever Merge vines. But there's no time to waste in admiration: Archie is carrying an urgent cry for help from Inez to a venerable locksmith called Winstonthat kind of Scottish island.Winston is a darling but Dad is afraid going to help - what be automating the lantern, which is to be done? Despite yearning to go home and worry for his foster parentsspecialist thing, Archie feels an obligation while mum will be leaving her career in algae behind to take Winston's placehunt the elusive Greenland shark. And so Archie embarks on a newJulia, well, she will be homesick and even more dangerous, adventure...alone – until she suddenly finds company one night.|isbn=1510107789

|isbnauthor=1776572858Louie Stowell|title=How Do You Make a Baby?|author=Anna Fiske and Don Bartlett (translator)Otherland

|genre=Home and FamilyConfident Readers|summary=ItMyra and Rohan are like Yin and Yang – Myra is loud, bright and hates rules, while Rohan is very polite, serious and worries about the tiniest things. Their only connection? Being born and briefly dying at the same time at the same hospital on Midsummer's day. And so, every year their families get together to celebrate the two's more than sixty years since I asked how babies were madebirthday/deathday. My mother was deeply embarrassed and told me that sheBut when Rohan'd get me s little sister Shilpa is taken by the fairy queen, they must journey to the Otherland, a book about it. A couple magical realm full of days later I was handed a pamphlet (which delivered nothing more than the basicsfairies, vampires, dragons, in clinical language which had never been used in our house before) and I was told that it wouldnGods. It't s going to be discussed any further as it ''wasn't something which nice people talked about''. I ''knew'' more, but was little ''wiser''. Thankfully, times have changedthe worst night of their lives.|isbn=1788000463

|title=Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between WorldsSlides of Bon Repell: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 2 of 3

|summary=Time So. Having done the impossible and unpicked the lock to catch you all up the Forgotten Crypt, from which the Departed communicate with some of my lockdown reading - Ithe Merge, Archie now has ''grop've been doing so much of it that I'm a bit late to the party with actual reviewingthink about. But before that, soirees. OopsSoirees! And where better Archie, much to start than with the new series from Bookbag favourite, Darren Shan? Archie is very down. HeInez's lost a dear friend recentlyamusement, in a tragic accident, and Archie blames himself. He candoesn't face school so he takes himself for a truanting wander around Londoneven know what one of those is. As But he strolls across a footbridgemanages to come through the fancy party unscathed, he sees a girl who is being pursued by some murderous-looking men even after an uncomfortable encounter with Kurtis, whose fledgling romance with Inez was crushed in white suitsthe first volume of this series. He watches, aghast. What is going on? |isbn=B086LKBHD6B093J9TF73

|author=Antony WoottenMaisie Chan|title=Season of the Mammoth (BigShorts)Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths|rating=4.5

|summary= Tannash Danny is eleven years old, and her brother Geb are waiting in great excitement for what he really, really loves to do is draw. He creates fantastical comics, whilst his best friend Ravi adds the hunting party led by their uncle to returnwords. They Danny're hoping for a feast of mammoth meat. Geb longs for s dad, however, wants Danny to concentrate on his maths, and forget about the day drawing, because he says nobody can join make a living from drawing! At least Danny has his uncle Gagba own room, where he can draw in secret and the other warriors on a hunting party and take part in their deeds of derring-dopeace. But their fatherthen one day his parents tell him they have a surprise for him, and this surprise turns out to be his grandmother who has come over from China to live with them, and who will not only be sharing Danny's bedroom but she will also be sleeping on the leader top bunk of his bunk bed! Danny is horrified! His Nai Nai (grandmother) speaks no English, and Danny finds himself forced into being her babysitter, and showing her around the villagetown. Poor Danny, thinks that they also need an education; that knowledge is powerstuck on a maths project, frustrated with his bedroom situation, and then he even has a falling out with Ravi...how on earth will things ever get better?!|isbn=1939269679180078001X}}

|author=Tania UnsworthDarren Shan|title=The Time Traveller Archibald Lox and the TigerForgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3

|summary=Elsie is an ordinary sort of girl. The sort of small girl who often gets overlooked, and forgotten. She is quiet, and compliant, and makes the best of whatever happens to her. So when her parents forget that her school holidays have started before they are free to take care of her, they have to arrange for her to go and stay second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with her Great Uncle for a week. Poor Elsieour hero, forgotten againArchie, just decides to make the best of things. On investigating the house she finds that her Great Uncle had lived back in London in India as a boy, and he has an enormous tiger rug on the floor of one world of the roomsBorn. When Elsie asks him about the rug he seems unhappyIt's not been easy, and he says he has explaining to keep it because his foster parents where he was the one who shot the tiger when he was 12 years old's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez and he says it was the worst thing he ever didhis other friends in the Merge, but Archie has done his best.... So when Elsie suddenly finds herself magically transported back manywell, many years, to the time except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in India when her Great Uncle was 12 years old, she believes Big Ben's clock tower and except for fiddling with that she must try to stop him from killing the tiger, sneaky master lock in order to put something right that happened a long Seven Dials every time agohe can sneak away.|isbn=1788541707B093H8DPQZ

|author=Natasha FarrantGianna Pollero and Sarah Horne|title=Voyage of the SparrowhawkMonster Doughnuts|rating=4.5

|summary=Set in England in the aftermath of World War OneAfter their parents mysteriously disappeared, this is the story of two children, Lotti Grace and Ben, who Danni have lost everyone they love, but don't want been left to let go of their last, tiny glimpses of hoperun the family bakery. Ben is living on But Grace needs the doughnuts and sweet treats that Danni bakes for a narrowboat on the canal, lying to the police about his brotherrather unusual reason...even though she's imminent return from the battlefields to take care of him. only ten years old, she is a monster hunter! LottiMonsters have a very sweet tooth, meanwhile, has been expelled from school and is back at home; it's Grace uses a beautiful house that belongs number of methods to her but defeat them such as throwing baking powder on them, or tricking them into eating a sweet treat that her terrible Aunt and Uncle currently have guardianship forwill, ultimately, be their demise. The One day Lotti meets Ben (the day she steals , though, Grace finds herself facing a dog!) is the beginning of cyclops monster called Mr Harris, who has a deep, and powerful friendship. It sees them become each otherweakness for doughnuts but doesn's family, and undertake a perilous trip t seem to France, in explode as the boatother monsters do, and so things start to try to find out the truth of the people they both love.get very strange…|isbn=05713487691848129432

|author=Joanne M HarrisG Leonard|title=A Pocketful of CrowsTwitch

|genre= Confident Readers|summary= I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-book level Twitch is a boy who loves birds. He keeps pigeons at home, and before you get to graphic sex & violencechickens, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults. even has swallows nesting in his bedroom! There are good books His time spent watching and poor oneshelping birds is easy compared to that of his time in school. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. ''A Pocketful But things are about to change for Twitch in all aspects of Crows'' his life as there is clearly aimed at a dangerous bank robber on the younger readers as witness run, and it's possible that the use of the middle initial missing bank haul is hidden somewhere in Aves Wood, the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore place where Twitch has his secret hide and that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress he knows like the back of his hand! Can Twitch solve the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight.mystery, and find the missing millions?|isbn=14732221841406389374

|author=Ele FountainHannah Peck|title=LostKate on the Case|rating=43.5

|summary=Lola lives in an Indian city with her fatherMeet Kate, although I got the impression she'd rather be a Catherine – and one specific Catherine at that. For Catherine Rodriguez is Kate's idol, and her brotherthe author of our heroine's favourite possession, Amit''The Special Correspondent Manual''. She lives Armed with them in a nice apartmentplucky father, that book, and although they are not rich like some of her talking mouse called Rupert, she is all equipped to manage a train ride to the girls at schoolArctic, they have enough money to be comfortablesee her scientist mother for the first time in yonks. Lola spends her time thinking about her school friendsHowever, and trying to fit in this is a train ride with thema difference, until one dayfor on board is a greedy-seeming harridan and her cat, suddenlya thief – and two glowing eyes, everything shining from the darkness in her life changesa blink-and-you'll-miss-them style. After taking a work trip away, LolaIt's father doesn't come homedefinitely a case for a new young investigative journalist.. They have nobody else to help, and as they wait day after day, Lola wonders what will become of them until, finally, they are evicted from their flat, and she and her brother find themselves forced to live on the streets.|isbn=178269255X184812970X

|author= Angela WoolfeHayley Webster|title= Roxy and Jones: The Great Fairytale Cover-Up|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= After her father gets married for the umpteenth time, Roxy Humperdinck Luna Rae is sent to live with her half-sister Gretel in Rexopolis, capital city of the Kingdom of Illustria. Gretel works as a toilet cleaner for the Ministry of Soup. Why does a country like Illustria need an entire ministry dedicated to soup, you ask? Well, after Roxy finds a secret passage in her bathroom and meets a snarky young woman known only as Jones, she soon finds out why. Turns out, fairy tales are real, and the Ministry’s official job is to safeguard all knowledge of them and monitor the living fairy tales. And, when an evil queen breaks out of a maximum-security prison and threatens to reinstate her reign of terror, Roxy and Jones hold the fate of the world in their young hands…so, no pressure then!|isbn=1406391379}}{{Frontpage|author=Judith Eagle|title=The Pear AffairNot Alone|rating=4.5

|summary=Set in the 1960Luna Rae has just moved house. Moving house is always tricky, but especially when you'sre ten years old, this is a mystery adventure storyand you miss your old home, all about and you and your little sister have to start a little girl called Nell and her quest new school but your mum seems to find her nannybe out working all the time. Then there's your dad, Perrine (Pear) who left her very suddenly doesn't seem like he's coping so well, and then, after keeping in touch regularly by post, disappeared completely from her life, leaving Nell bereft. Thereso there's everything in this story, with underground tunnels as the playground no one to take care of gangs of childrenthings but you. Everything feels different, to travel and detective work, a mystery mould infecting Parisian bakeriesstrange, and mysterious figures following Nell around, and so Luna finds a set way of truly dreadful parentscoping is by watching. She turns detective, and starts keeping an eye on her new neighbourhood, but it turns out she's not the only one keeping watch!|isbn=05713468551788006046

|author= Kirsty ApplebaumFrancesca Simon and Steve May|title= TroofriendTwo Terrible Vikings|rating= 4.5|genre= Confident Emerging Readers|summary= Are you tired of your child's classmates constantly being horrible In a small Viking village there live two twins, Hack and Whack, who are eager to them? Do you want your child be the very worst Vikings ever! Nothing can stop their mad marauding, as they cause havoc at a birthday party, chaos whilst tracking a troll, and undertake a grand journey to have some positive experiences raid Bad Island with people? Introducing the new Jenson & Jenson Troofriend 560 Mark IV androidtheir friends! These state- They get up to all kinds ofmischief and naughty behaviour, along with their wolf-thecub Bitey-art machines are capable of emulating the full range Bitey, and their crazy cast of human emotions without lying, stealing or bullyingfriends. They're the perfect companion for any child! Any mention that these androids are beginning to develop real human feelings are just unsubstantiated rumours and have absolutely no basis in reality…right?|isbn=17880034700571349498

|author= M G Leonard Danny Wallace and Sam SedgmanGemma Correll|title= The Highland Falcon ThiefDay the Screens Went Blank|rating= 5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= Harrison BeckMeet Stella and her family. They're just innocently trying to have a Sunday evening in together, or Hal as he prefers watching a film – using three different screens to be calledwatch three different things, isnmind – when ''poof'' everything goes blank. And it't exactly pleased when his parents send him off with his uncle Nats not just their home, but the entire south-western village of Mousehole, and not just that, either, but the whole country, if not world. Suddenly people are constantly on their phones – hoping they're first to get a travel writerscreen back, and not what they were constantly doing on a long train journeythem before. Although Toasters can toast, this isn't any old train; but TVs cannot do the V part of their job, and no computer can show its computations. You might think this is the Highland Falcongoing to be a social comedy about people stuck in such a Luddite experience against their will, but no. For the royal trainfamily finally remember Stella's grandma, and see if they can get across country to her. Hence this is its last ever journey before it gets sent has to go down as a museumroad-trip book. A number of high But not just that, a slapstick road-society figures, including film stars, millionaires and aristocrats, will be on this traintrip comedy. And more than that, so too – for it is quite the event on the social calendar. However's a slapstick, when an expensive brooch is stolenhigh-drama, Hal realises that maybe this high-octane road-trip won't be as boring as he previously thought. As the passengers begin to turn on each other, Hal vows to get to the bottom comedy with oodles of the mystery…before the train gets to the end cuddly heart that kids of the lineall ages will love.|isbn=15290130621471196887