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[[Category:Confident Readers|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Confident Readers]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robin StevensMax Boucherat|title=Arsenic For Tea (A Wells and Wong Mystery)The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Some detectives have 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 dark and sorrowful past. Others are gifted – or burdened – with extraordinary skillsblanket fort, she has one main intention, and a few are so intellectual they can barely relate that is to log on to Voxminer, the people around themworld-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells, heroines of first Lori has a tiny inkling that this delightful detective seriesstormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, are just ordinary schoolgirls who enjoy solving puzzles and mysteries then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and who somehow end nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up right at on her phone screen, and her safe place in the centre of the occasional deadly drama.game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552570737</amazonuk>0008666482
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean UreKieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton|title=Secrets and DreamsDungeon Runners: Hero Trial|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Mum Meet Kit. Like most of the people in his world, it seems, he is an avid fan of Dungeon Running – the sport where a team of warrior, mage and Dad won the lottery thirteen year healer enter specially prepared, century-old Zoe , magical mazes, and eleven year old Natalie were given race to the exit, perhaps bothering with the treasure or the chance to choose something ''big'' which bad and the points they really wantedgrant you along the way. Natalie chose to have a pony (Unfortunately for Kit, the only thing he's seen of the latest race on the inn TV equivalent is that one team has been retired, eaten, and there was a puppy toonew trio of questors is needed. Possibly very unfortunately indeed for Kit, but no one was counting) he has taken to the goading from the token bully of his world and Zoe decided that she really wanted to go to boarding schoolstumbled into declaring he'll enter as a team. Dad What chance does this friendless, muscle- particularly free- wasn't keen on the idea, zone have in case Zoe would have to mix with ''posh'' peopleactually managing that, but eventually and how could he came round and Zoe started at St Withburga's - and just chance you're thinking of jokes about cheeseburgas, Nat got there before you.possibly hope to succeed?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007553951</amazonuk>1839945184
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick Modiano, Sempe (illustrator) and William Rodarmor (translator)James Sherwood Metts|title=Catherine CertitudePlanet Storyland|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=What little I know of Patrick Modiano was gained from Things have been a bit sticky for the number of 'noEarthlings. AI and automation have been proceeding apace, weoften replacing jobs they've never heard of him, either' articles re paid to do and summaries other tasks that came our way when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the end of 2014took time to accomplish. They suggested his oeuvre was mature, slightly thriller-based but not exclusively so, Just as they were beginning to get used to all this technological change and asked lots starting to think of accumulative questions regarding identity with regard other, new ways to the Vichy government during WWIIspend time, along came an awful pandemic. Identity is a lot more fixed in this musing little pieceLife was pretty much shut down and, for the adult voice-over looks back over a wide removealong with it, and says there will always be a little bit of her living all the events and situations of the bookmany daily social interactions on which they depend so heavily. Those situations are of a young dance-school attendee, and her loving and much-loved father, living a cosy life in Paris – even if the girl never once really works out what it is her father does for a living…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1783443022</amazonuk>1736128426
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Allan BoroughsTom Percival|title=Bloodstone: Legend of IronheartThe Wrong Shoes
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=After Will's life is difficult, in a year travelling multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the globe as apprentice to Verity Brownwrong shoes', India Bentley falls into trouble when shehe has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn's accused t have enough money for even the most basic of trying to assassinate 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 priestbuilding site and had an accident. She Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's rescued by Professor Moonlife seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, who needs her and Verity clings to help him find the mysterious Bloodstone. As moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the trio, plus end of a few companionslong, journey to Atlantis, India is plunged into an adventure even more dangerous and exciting than her first one wasdark tunnel.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447236009</amazonuk>1398527122
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Dougherty and David Tazzyman (illustrator)1805141872|title=Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of PizzaThe Teacher Who Knew Too Much|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There are ''Seventeen banks and a few important things to know about the Island Kingdom of Great Kerfufflejeweller’s have been raided. One is that it is pestered by a criminal gang of badgers, who find it impossible to just sit around in prisonThe police are baffled, but always have to escape and cause danger and nastiness to other people, even if they are on only Ben knows the whole incredibly stupid. You also need to knowtruth – his Maths teacher, howeverMiss Judson, that brother is really a safecracker! With police and sister Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face are great at solving the problems the badgers causeher gangster boyfriend Al on their trail, Miss Judson and getting through Ben go on the adventures in a very self-knowing wayrun. But Al needs them for one last job...'' Goodness me, even discussing the lengths of the chapters and the style of story as they go about their business. Here the problem that Miss Judson is revealed quite late a terror! How on, so in an effort not earth did a nice teacher like her manage to spoil the plot Iget mixed up with a bad 'un like Al? We'll just point find out that in a book this stupidly. Luckily for Miss Judson, deliriously daft you hardly need bother about the plot in pupil who discovers her terrible secret is Ben, the first placeson of a famous magician who has ambitions to be as good as his father some day, and can just relax and have the sheer joy of entertainment for an hour or so.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192738259</amazonuk>who thinks Miss Judson is worth saving
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The New Enemy: Liam Scott Book 3Christopher Edge|authortitle=Andy McNabBlack Hole Cinema Club
|rating=4
|genre=TeensConfident Readers|summary=Liam Scott Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has joined Recce Platoon. the nickname of 'The recruitment process was more gruelling than Liam had even imaginedBlack Hole'. But if you All big movie fans, they're going looking forward to be an in-theatre intelligence gatherer for lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks! However, as the British Armymovie starts, then you need to be ready for anything. And despite his trainingthey very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, Liam is new to this game. He still has a lot to learn and hethey are swept up into an adventure they couldn's going t even imagine. But as they lurch from one film genre to have to do it the hard way - in Kenyanext, where the border with Somalia can they figure out what on earth is subject going on? Will they ever get back to incursions from the al-Shabaab militant group.cinema, and to their real lives?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857533428</amazonuk>1839942738
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=There Will Be LiesAdam Stower|authortitle=Nick LakeMurray and Bun|rating=4.5|genre=TeensConfident Readers |summary=Shelby Murray is seventeen. She dreams of going supposed to college but her mother would never allow it. Shaylene be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is more than over-protective. She homeschools Shelby able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and rarely lets her daughter out on her own. She is obsessed with , well, whatever takes his fancy next of the danger that men presenttwo. Shelby loves her mother but can But he's a bad magician't help the odd twinge of resentment at the level of control she exerts s cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and more than the odd twinge of embarrassment when she looks at catflap they overweightboth use can chuck them out, unfitnot into the regular back garden, pyjama jeans-wearing Shaylenebut into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. And then Shelby is knocked down by This time round it drops them into a car. And everything unravels. Shaylene turns up at the hospital with bags packed. She's running from somethingViking land, but what where a troll hunter is it? And why can't she see the coyote that is watching Shelbyexpected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, talking to herbe honest, warning her of lies but he's turned up and asking her he'll have to save a Child from a Crone?do…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1619634406</amazonuk>0008561249
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie BerryAlex Bell and Tim McDonagh|title=The Scandalous Sisterhood Glorious Race of Prickwillow Place Magical Beasts|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the seven schoolgirls evening a helper at St Etheldreda's School the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs. Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for Young Ladies there is a generation missing in Victorian Ely see their headmistress and her brother drop dead at dinner, they're more concerned about their future than the loss of the two adultsfamily. Knowing that if anyone discovers what A few short years ago, Eli's happened they'll be sent home parents were both lost to families who don't want themthe titular race, they launch a daring plan globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to cover up navigate the sad news, and run world in the school themselvescompany of a magical beast. When This has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the deaths turn out eatery leads to be caused by poisona confession from gran, thoughEli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, they're left not just trying to run a school and convince an alarming number with the sole aim the prize of visitors that nothing's wrong - but also magic at the end – the only thing to solve the murders before there's another killingpossibly save his gran.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848124376</amazonuk>0571382231
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gene KempHelen Cooper|title=The Turbulent Term Taming of Tyke Tilerthe Cat|rating=43.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Tyke TilerOnce again, mice are pitched against cat. I first did so a very long time ago – I might even In this case, principally, we have my copy of Brie the original paperbackmouse, with its ending-spoiling cover artworkup against Gorgonzola the cat – and in case you're seeing a connection, as one they live in a cheese shop and therefore all the names used here seem to be the names of the few books I carried over from those dayscheeses. Tyke Anyway, Brie is a schoolchild in the last year before big schoolshunned, scorned and is permanently in trouble, partly due to hanging round if you must, mous-tracised, for the way his habits don't match the other mice he lives with Danny Price. It seems wherever Danny unfortunately leads, Tyke follows They nibble up paper wrapping from the cheese for bedding – whether he displays it as art and makes stories based on the visuals on it. And that story-telling will come in handy one night, when he feels all alone and cast out. It's digging sheep bones out almost as if there were another character from fable who had had to tell stories to keep themselves alive. This makes Brie the top dog in the town weir systemmouse community, or handling stolen goods when Danny nicks a highthough, as all the others had the chance to half-value note from one of inch some cheese while the teacher's pursescat was distracted. How is But will the story have the term going to end, successful sequel it needs when everything Danny does seems to reflect badly on Tykethat cheese runs out?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571313914</amazonuk>0571376010
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Betty G BirneyLauren St John|title=Imagination According to HumphreyFinding Wonder|rating=3.54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=If you havenRoo't already, meet Humphrey – the most squeakily vocal inhabitant of Classroom 26s life has become almost impossibly difficult. The charming and inventive hamster is here with yet another of his main novels – as opposed to early readersHer mum died when she was young, quiz and joke books, anthologies, [[Humphrey's World now she finds herself awoken in the middle of Pets the night by Betty G Birney|guides the police banging on her door to having pets]] – there are so many around tell her that my edition didn't try her dad has dropped dead on his way to put them all on one inventory page, but chose the corner shop to leave buy a few outlottery ticket. Here the series continues with Humphrey and the same children as he's befriended over the last few volumesWhen asked what other family she has, she can only name her aunt, Joni, and itwho she knows her dad didn's storytimet think very highly of. The class is being read a novel about a boy and the dragons doing evil to his village's weatherBut she has no one else, and everyone is trying so off she goes to write creatively about flying as a responselive with her unreliable aunt. But when someone threatens Things continue to bring a real-life dragon to classget worse for Roo, how could the little class pet be safe, especially as when he hasnshe and Joni leave London in Joni't s old campervan, it breaks down in the imagination to see what the result could be?middle of nowhere and then bursts into flames! Poor Roo!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571282512</amazonuk>0571376169
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stephen PastisAdam Baron and Benji Davies|title=Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were MadeOscar's Lion|rating=4.53
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Timmy Failure We start incredibly bluntly, with Oscar hoping to have his mother – or father, but mother is the CEO more likely – read him his very favourite book a couple of Total Failuretimes before he has to be ready for school. But when he enters his parents' bedroom, all he sees is a mahoosive male lion on their bed, looking sheepish, and admitting that he won't be hungry for another two days. But there are benefits to having a lion around – it can be shown as an unspoken threat to the best detective agency in townbully that ruined a birthday party for Oscar the other month. This book is nothing short And it can shapeshift, so he can take it to school and it can get him out of a historical record of problem. And it's wonderful to have around the house – not limiting his life as an investigatorbiscuit intake, being much more lax about the rules, helped (or perhaps hindered) by his polar bear partner Total and grade-obsessed friend Rolloso on. OK, and always wary of his rival Corrina Corrinait can't work a dimmer switch but it can give Oscar a wonderful time. Can Timmy come out ahead of his evil nemesis?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1406339814</amazonuk>0008596751
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rick RiordanJudith Eagle|title=Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief The Stolen Songbird
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Percy Jackson always thought he was Caro's mother, a normalworld-famous whistler, has failed to return home from her recent work trip abroad and is now missing. Her other mother, if rather naughtyRonnie, kidis having to go up North to take care of her sister who is unwell. Then he vaporised his maths teacher So who is going to look after Caro? Sent to stay with Gam, someone Caro has heard her mother despises, she feels frustrated and ended confused and worried. All her summer holiday plans of building herself some equipment to practise her gymnastics are brought to a halt whilst she is stuck inside this staid old Victorian lady's house, along with an orphan boy, Albie, who is living there too. But she soon finds herself caught up in Camp Half-Blooda mystery, as she discovers a special place for children painting of a bird hidden away inside her mum's old suitcase, and all across London a fearsome gang called the Greek GodsSnakes are thieving artworks and terrorising people. With Zeus, king of Is the painting somehow linked to the Gods, convinced Percy gang? And what has stolen his magical lightning bolt, war could be about happened to break out - can Percy find the lightning thief and save Caro's mother? Is she somehow involved in the daymystery too?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141346809</amazonuk>0571363148
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francesca SimonTania Unsworth|title=Horrid Henry's Tricky TricksNowhere Island|rating=34.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Horrid Henry Meet Gil. Just twelve, he is up so determined to his usual antics escape the care system – the system that constantly puts him in this latest compilation of trickiest tricks everfutureless places that are not homes – and find a home for himself. The book features ten stories He is en route to yet another fosterer, which include some outrageous prankswhen he jumps into an anonymous car, like Henry trying and lets it ride him to his future. That future seems to wake 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 deadtwo directions of a motorway, win a pet talent contest place inaccessible and definitely ignored enough to provide for their safety and spend seclusion. Them, and a mute girl also finding a hair-raising weekend with his awful cousinhome there, Stuck-up Stevealbeit so much more successfully. But none of this compares to his scariest challenge ever; braving Over a girls' sleepover at his neighbourfew weeks we see if their oddball destinies can combine, Moody Margaret's house.or if this is one place where life as we would want it just would not work…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444012088</amazonuk>1804540080
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Walter de la MareHelen Peters|title=Peacock Pie: A Book of RhymesFriends and Traitors
|rating=3
|genre=Children's Rhymes and VerseConfident Readers|summary=It was a surprise for me to read online that Walter de la Mare spent so much of his life in and around London – born England, WW2. Two young girls are new at least in what the country pile called Stanbrook. One is now the borough of GreenwichNancy, passing away destined to be in Twickenhamservice all her life it seems, like the female generations before her. The reason I say this other is Sidney, a girl from a hoity-toity Sussex boarding school that out of the copious poems collected herehas been removed there away from bomber flight-paths. The girls are chalk and cheese, it's as and if cities donwe hadn't exist. Hardly anything of the subjects is manmadeguessed that then their behaviour with each other over their first encounters would only prove it so. The concentration But something is fully on the idyllic amiss, and pastoral, first separately and then in following on so closely in combination they realise the footsteps Lord Evesham must be a rum 'un. Midnight deliveries are received under cover of his debut collectionsecrecy, 'Songs talk is made of Childhood' from 1902meetings with Germans, still veryand not only that, very much Victoriana local Spitfire factory has been attacked. But surely the girls are wrong, and the upper class could never be so underhand?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571313892</amazonuk>1788004647
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris O'Dowd and Nick Vincent MurphyJamie Littler|title=Moone Boy: the Blunder YearsArkspire
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Poor Martin MooneTwo sisters, Juniper and Elodie, surrounded by his sisters who drive him crazyborn fifteen minutes apart, he decides are growing to get himself be chalk and cheese. Juniper is an imaginary friendeager hunter and trader in illicit magic, including relics from prior major wars left out in the Badlands. He enlists Elodie is intent on getting closer to power in one of the religious districts of Arkspire, perhaps even to become the child in line to inherit the help power of his friend who already the Watcher, the closest to a ruler the district has an imaginary friend, and thus begins a wild adventure because what happens when one of the five major victors in said earlier war. Being trained in the magic that only five people can use would definitely change the status of the imaginary friend you imagine isn't any good at being your imaginary friendwhole family. But in finding something oddly magical, and who you'd really like to Juniper might just be your imaginary friend is the customer services representative who comes able to try and help you out?!gain some power of her own – for good, or for very, very bad…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447270940</amazonuk>0241586143
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tohby Riddle024162343X|title=UnforgottenStolen History|author=Sathnam Sanghera|rating=3.5|genre=Graphic NovelsChildren's Non-Fiction|summary=Think of fallen angels, and Lucifer and I was the like come to mindbad company other people got into at school. But they donI was disruptive in religious education classes because I disputed the existence of a 't have to have fallen with such speedgod'. Where was the proof? In history lessons, for such a distance or with such effectit was probably worse still. This book concerns one such creatureNot too long after the end of WWII, and while itI didn't so much want to learn about the British army's not named as an angel as suchsuccesses (and occasional failures, and itbut we didn't dwell on those) in what came to be called 'the colonies's identified only by nobody knowing from where it comes yet everyone silently gets as want to dispute what right the army had to appreciate its presence, it certainly looks like a Western, Christian, angel formbe there in the first place. And so the plot of this gentleLooking back, poetic picture book looks at I still believe I was right - but I regret that I lacked the chance of such a bad thing as maturity to approach 'the fall of an angel being followed by anything more positiveproblem' politely. I wish I'd had Sathnam Sanghera's ''Stolen History''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1742379729</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andy Griffiths and Terry DentonThiago de Moraes|title=The 13-Storey TreehouseOld Gods New Tricks|rating=34.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Andy Meet Trixie. Forever getting into scrapes, larks and Terry live in adventures involving flooding the school aircon with fart powder, she could almost be thought a tree house so fantastic it caters for every whim – as long as youyoung goddess of nuisance. But just when she're a primary schools being told that by her one-last-chance-aged boygiving headteacher, that isthe world changes. ThereSuddenly, practically everything electronic stops working – a power-out, even of electric cars, hits not just the town the school's swimming on one level, bowling on anotherin but the entire planet (apart from mobile phones, as much marshmallow as you could eat and all that powers the gadgets and gizmos their brilliant imaginations could come up withInternet, just for our convenience's sake). But this idyllic life also comes with responsibilities Trixie, luckily, realises what has happened – one moment you're painting a cat yellow the ancient Gods have taken the power of power from us. And so she begins her epic quest, to see if gather all the people that can steal it becomes a canary and flies away (no spoiler back – it does)namely the characters from myth that have past form in stealing from the Gods, ie the next you get reminded of an overdue deadline to write a booksemi-deities, giants, half-gods and so on known as the tricksters. What on earth could possibly happen to inspire such a book overnight?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447279786</amazonuk>178845295X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Frank Cottrell BoyceHannah Gold and Levi Pinfold|title=DesirableFinding Bear
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Teenage Sam and his little sister Lizzie are starving [[The Last Bear by Hannah Gold|Last time]], April had been on the streets of LondonBear Island, which is gripped by terrible cold. Asking an old businessman for moneya lot further north than many people would venture, and finding a man who looks at them ridiculously unexpected but delightful friendship with such sheer contempt a polar bear – that Sam's heart fills with hateshe called Bear. He swears that he will seek vengeance Back home, things on the domestic and rob the old manfamily front are a bit advanced, but not caring whether his victim will live or die. But before he can do so, a strange spirit appears to himperfect for her, and warns him about so can easily be ignored when word comes through from the terrible path he will put himself islands Bear was last left on with this violent act. Can Sam resist the temptation to gain revenge? Several more spirits show him the possible consequences of his action, as we see Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol from For a new viewpoint.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408854139</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dylan Thomas bear doing very Bear-y things has been shot and Peter Bailey|title=A Child’s Christmas in Wales|rating=4wounded.5|genre=Children Desperate to make sure he's Non-Fiction|summary=Christmas time growing up in a Welsh seaside town was magical for Dylan ThomasOK, always snowy she and full of adventure. From attempting to extinguish house fires with snowballs her father return to hippo footprints in the snow his childhood Arctic and hope that in the snow was a time world of wonder very white and very dangerous things, she can find one specific white and dangerous thing – and pure joythat the friendship can continue.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444013467</amazonuk>0008582017
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer GraySimon Fox|title=Atticus Claw Learns to DrawDeadlock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Who knew how much trouble a rainy day could bring? When nothing else inspires themLate one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, children Michael and Callie and police cat sergeant Atticus all enter a draw-some-pickles competitionthen suddenly rings Archie, for the chance to win demanding he fetch something from a trip to, ersecret place, and join him on the pickle factoryrun. Atticus has been around a bit – he used They get together, but barely begin to be smell the world's best cat burglar – and he seems to recognise one whiff of Southern trains when the faces father is arrested, leaving Archie on the pickle jars as an old enemylate express to Brighton, but at least the main baddies of the series – the Russian spy mistress and her cattoting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the town magpies – are miles away and tucked up safely inside bearer of a giant shark. So lo and behold when Atticus's entry wins, and the whole family gets taken to the factoryheap of questions. And lo and behold when the factory owner seems rather suspicious, and lo and behold when a certain shark gets captured…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571305334</amazonuk>1839944420
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael MorpurgoCath Howe|title=Listen to the MoonMy Life on Fire
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=ItRen's Mayfamily home is destroyed in a fire. She, her parents, 1915. World War I is underway and the Scillionians have already seen lossesher little brother lose everything. Like the rest of Britain, they are beginning to realise that this war won She doesn't be over have any time soon. When Alfie and his father are out fishing one dayof her clothes, they hear a child's cries. On one or any of the archipelago's uninhabited islands, they find a halfher special little knick-starved little girlknacks from her cupboard, abandoned and in a terrible state. She can only speak one word: Lucy. Who is this foundling? Is she a ghost? A mermaid? Or, more worryingly, could now she be a German spy? The name Wilhelm is on the label of her blanket, after all. And why does she gaze living at the moon with such longing in her eyes?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007339631</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen|title=The Squickerwonkers|rating=4|genre=Childrengrandmother's Rhymes and Verse|summary=Selma is a young girl who finds a strange attraction on the edge of a fair – a large gypsy caravan-styled contraptionhouse where they can't touch anything, which she entersor do anything, alone but for her shiny red balloonor even eat the foods they normally eat. She appears When she goes back to be aloneschool she discovers that the class are doing a special art project, until nine marionette puppets suddenly appear on the stage withincreating boxes of their lives, and a disembodied voice introduces them all to her. They display things that are the Squickerwonkers, important to them and show who they are as we are about to see, they can reveal someone's entire character with the simplest of actions…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783295457</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sally Gardner and David Roberts|title=The Matchbox Mysteries (Wings and Co 4)|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=This was my first introduction to the Wings & Co fairy detective agencya person. It's certainly the sort of book I really should have come across sooner since it's wonderfully odd! With Emily working alongside of Fidget, the talking cat, as well as But Ren has nothing to put in a lot of keys and an overly talkativebox, egotistic magic lamp this isn't the sort of book you read as a bedtime story and drift off half way through! In this book there is trouble in Podgy Bottomso she finds herself starting to steal things. Someone is stealing carsSmall things, shrinking them down into a matchboxthings that people might not really miss, and there is also a crazy purple bunny and a troublesome broomsticknot when they have so much already. Will the detective agency be able But what will happen to figure her if someone finds out what on earth she is going ondoing?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144401014X</amazonuk>1839942835
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=K A S QuinnRob Keeley|title=The Queen Alone (Chronicles of the Tempus)Boy Who Disappeared and Other Stories
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Katie Hooray! Bookbag favourite Rob Keeley is back, and once more she's back in Victorian England. This time, however, she isn't quite sure who called her back in time or for what purpose and, unfortunately, something went wrong as she came and she brought someone else along with hera return to the short story format! In the final episode of the Chronicles of the Tempus we see Katie trying The Boy Who Disappeared treats us to save Prince Albert's lifeeleven new tales, trying each as fun to prevent Britain messing up the outcome of the American Civil War, and rescuing Queen Victoria from an asylum!read as his previous offerings.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848870566</amazonuk>B0BVW69N1G
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angie SageLaura Noakes|title=PathFinder (TodHunter Moon Book One) Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Twelve year old Alice TodHunter MoonMeet Number One. Or rather, Cosima Unfortunate. Or rather, who prefers just Cos to her friends. The practice in the home she lives in is for the girls to just be named by the number they correspond to in the ledger, and they're all Unfortunates – young people with disabilities, uncommon mentalities or suchlike that Victorian society frowns greatly upon. But Cosima bears the tag as a surname because nothing else seems to be known about where she came from, as Todthe first ever inmate, is and unique in having no known family in the outside world. During a Pathfinderdaring escapade to steal some posh cakes from the kitchen one afternoon, she discovers a member of plan involving said outside world – a fishing tribe with a mythical history of travelling across devilish Lord Fitzroy seems to want to adopt all the starsgirls for his Institute. She lives a nice life in her Pathfinder community until her father, her only surviving parent But why, doesn’t come back from a fishing trip and Tod is left alone what does that body entail? And could it possibly bring Cos closer to the past she has so little link with her horrid step-aunt Mitza.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858150</amazonuk>0008579059
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda NewberyAlice M Ross|title=The BrockenspectreNowhere Thief
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Tommi lives up At last there is new stock in the mountains with his parents impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and his baby sisterher mother run in a seaside town. Mamma is artistic and paints beautiful designs on chairs and stools and planters for tourists Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it. She also knows she should be free from worries about being found out, because she has the ability to buy. Pappi is a mountain guide leave this world, and Tommi's hero - brave and fearless and a lover use an unworldly portal of his wild mountain home. Tommi wants nothing more than kaleidoscope colours to be like Pappi. But things aren't peaceful at home. Pappi is only truly happy by himselfenter other worlds, out amongst where the peaks. After just a day or two at home without guiding work, he becomes irritable sea levels are rising dramatically and critical the buildings are generally empty of Mammi humans and his childrenripe for plunder. After an argument one day With eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything to actually generate custom at the shop? Well yes, Pappi strides out of is the house and onto answer, but the mountain. And he doesn't return.fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857551566</amazonuk>1839943769
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emer StampNatasha Farrant|title=The Super Amazing Adventures Rescue of Me, PigRavenwood
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=HelloThis story is another excellent adventure from the author of ''Voyage of the Sparrowhawk''. I Ravenwood is Pig an old house, in the North of England, where Bea and I has one book out alreadyRaffy have been living for most of their lives. In it I tells you in diary form about how I ends up on They are part of a spaceship that EVIL CHICKENS make out of complex, extended family arrangement, as Bea is there with her Uncle Leo, and Raffy is there with his mum, and they are living together as a tractorfamily. I cannot speak human but I knows They have grown up swimming in the bookbag really likes my first book. So now I has a second. In cove, roaming through the past I has problems trees, completely at one with an evil farmer who wants to put me in a pie but now all I has is happiness of the nature around the house and peace. I even has a new best friend called Kitty loving every inch of the Catplace. But my old best friend Duck now the house is telling me Kitty under threat, as Leo is not under pressure from his other two brothers to sell the best new best friend I can haveproperty to a developer as it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain. How is Duck right The children find themselves worrying not only about where they're going to live, but if they'll even be together, and how is I wrong?if Ravenwood itself will be torn down.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407136380</amazonuk>0571348785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Map to EverywhereRobin Birch and Jobe Anderson|authortitle=Carrie Ryan and John Parke DavisSecret Beast Club: The Unicorns of Silver Street|rating=54
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The upside to being forgotten by everybody Jayden's nose is forever in a book, which means he knows a lot about mythological creatures – the minute they lose sight phoenixes and unicorns of you the world, for example. Aisha is addicted to her new tablet, where she can see videos of anything that it makes stealing things pretty easymight be out there. The down side problem, as their mothers see it, is that you they are never have 'out there' themselves, exploring the outside world of Hackney, London. But when a narrowboat turns up carrying a friendscience-minded, educational purpose, you and with a past involving Jayden's cousin, they find a magical world they never have someone to turn to if you knew existed. For many of those mythological creatures are sad or sickreal, and maybe worst including the one Aisha thinks she's seen on a bit of local footage. The crew of all you neverthe boat, everincluding a living gargoyle, see a face light up are tasked with recognition as you approachsaving the rare critters – and the kids unknowingly have the magical sight needed to join in. Of course it means you can say and do absolutely anything you like Dare they side with Leila, because it will be forgotten immediatelythe woman on board, but thenand her relative who lives as a figure in a painting, why bother? In five seconds from now, who's going to careand become saviours of the unseen?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444010549</amazonuk>0241573483
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B09XWSXSKY
|title=Maestro Orpheus and the World Clock
|author=Robert Penee and Joanne Grodzinski
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Frederick (or Fred, but never Freddy, please) couldn't sleep. A tune, rather like the ticking of a clock was playing over and over in his mind. It happened every time he came to visit his grandfather. He hadn't really wanted to come; after all, he's ten now and all those old clocks don't appeal to him anymore.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Nonsense Limericks (Faber Children's Classics)Nigel Baines|authortitle=Edward Lear and Arthur Robins (illustrator)A Tricky Kind of Magic
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Rhymes and VerseEmerging Readers|summary=There Cooper loves to perform magic tricks. His father was a young man whose critique<br>Of this book was submitted one week<br>When they asked magician, and named Cooper after the great Tommy Cooper. But sadly Cooper's father died suddenly, and now Cooper doesn't quite know who to be, or how to be. And when his dad's prop rabbit starts talking to him, he 'Was it fine?'<br>He said really'No denyin' –<br>doesn'Theret know what's very little here they could tweakgoing on anymore!'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571302262</amazonuk>1444960261
}}
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