Newest Confident Readers Reviews
The Tapper Twins Tear up New York by Geoff Rodkey
If you didn't last time, meet the Tapper Twins, Claudia and Reese. They're in sixth grade at a posh New York City school, and are just trying to get on with things – while making no attempt whatsoever at getting on with each other. This time round, Claudia was instantly sniffy at her brother's idea declared to her on a school bus, just because it was his, but soon realised how great it could be – to host a school charity treasure hunt for gangs of four fellow pupils. With a great prize on offer she bows down from organising it and takes part, against her brother and everyone else – and that's when the problems start. It's not as frightening as the tabloids make out, she assures us – but let's face it, there's high drama, celebrity, greed, urgency – and those pesky adults, all making the smooth running of things most unlikely… Full review...
The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne
Meet Pierrot. As a very young child in 1930s Paris he is going to have a very awkward journey through his young life. His father is a violent drunk, reacting badly to what he saw in WWI, and although married to a French woman, is still staunchly German. That woman, Emilie, is going to die, and leave Pierrot an orphan, which will leave him in a home where he is bullied. But from the reaches of Europe and from the black corners of his family comes an aunt, Beatrix, who will give him a home, of a kind, at a most unusual mountaintop building. It's not her home – she just works there and had to ask special permission from someone special. The place? The Berghof. Full review...
The Spirit of London by Rob Keeley
Ellie, Charlie and Mum have left Inchwood Manor and are headed home to London, where Mum's latest Journeyback project is renovating an old 18th century house, 47 Foster Square. But it's not quite home to London. They're not returning to their old house but to another tiny, cramped flat. When asked why, all Mum will say is, "Ask your father." Full review...
The World of Norm: 9: May Still Be Charged by Jonathan Meres
If you ever wondered what Harry Enfield's Kevin going UUH, that's SO unFAIR!! but stretched to the length of a book sounds like then wonder no longer. Norm is only twelve but he already knows life is completely unfair. He has a horrid girl next door who annoyingly wants to spend time talking with him, he has two awful younger brothers, he has school, and he has a world of parents and adults around him all wittering on in the most weird, antique phrasing. They don't help him understand the world at all, just lay all the world's problems on his shoulders and move on. This morning in concern, for instance, Norm has hardly moved at all – he's still in bed when he's been grounded. His parents have looked up his phone bill online, and it's rather long. As long as Norm's entire list of woes, perhaps – and therefore is just one more thing that's a burden. And as life is so unfair, the only way out is to wait for his parents to decide between him paying them back or grounding him for a month – until something even worse, more unwelcome and more unfair gets mentioned… Full review...
Goth Girl and the Wuthering Fright by Chris Riddell
Goth Girl and the rest of the Attic Club are not having the best of times. Ada's best friend is at school, while that girl's father Charles Cabbage tries to build a computer – with the weird help of three monkeys to fetch and carry his research volumes. Ruby is so anxious it's left to Ada to care for and cater for her and not the other way round, so frightened is she by the hauntings in the gothic pile they call home. And others are being bullied. So even though there are newcomers of the same age to the place, things need perking up. So what better time for Ada's father to hold a literary dog show – bringing the country's finest authors and their pooches to parade in contest for a respected audience? Full review...
Diary of a Time Traveller by David Long and Nicholas Stevenson
With the usual complaint that 'History is Boring!', Augustus slumps over his school desk – until his teacher, a certain Professor Tempo, comes to his aid. She gives him a notebook and yellow pencil and says he should imagine himself in a place in the past to see how interesting it actually could be. And lo and behold he's there, seeing the world of the past's effect on the world of the present for his very own eyes. He ends up doing this more than a couple dozen times, filling the notebook with amazing sights he's seen and people he's stood alongside, from Mozart to Einstein, from Chaucer to Lincoln, and what we read is what he comes up with in this brisk and colourful volume. Full review...
Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie by Jeff Norton
Adam is twelve. He has a crush on Corina who's in his class at school, he likes collecting things, and he has early onset Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which means he would rather wear purple spandex and dance the Macarena right down Main Street than go within five miles of a germ. He frets about a lot of things, actually: if worrying was an Olympic event, he'd get the gold, every time. Other than that, things are pretty okay. He has normal, loving parents (apart from the fact they still insist on going to SMOOCH concerts), a small group of friends who share his interest in comics and video games, and a standard-issue irritating sister. Nothing weird there, then. Nothing but the fact that he's been dead for three months. Full review...
Meet at the Ark at Eight! by Ulrich Hub, Jorg Muhle and Helena Ragg-Kirkby (translator)
An educated penguin, an agnostic penguin and a violent, smaller, young penguin walk into a snowdrift… You might not be able to make a full joke out of that opening line, but this book practically does continue on from there. Three penguins – each a little different from the other, even if they generally look and definitely smell the same, and God, a subject of their conversation when a butterfly comes along, of all things. The young, hot-headed one (well, in the pictures he wears a woolly hat, he's bound to be hot-headed) leaves in umbrage, leaving just two – which is perfectly timed if you're a dove, and come along telling all the animals to get into Noah's Ark in pairs, as an almighty flood is about to happen… Full review...
Username: Evie by Joe Sugg
Meet Evie. She's surprisingly unwelcome and alienated at school – for a trendy and attractive girl, nobody at all seems to have any time for her, apart from the geeky card-collecting boy with the milk-bottle glasses on the bus. Perhaps it has something to do with her father's thatched house – after all, she must be a witch to live there. It's not that she would wish to live there, with nobody else around, and the memory of her deceased mother. But luckily someone is choosing a place for her –her father is able to put all his work into a cyber-world for her, the E-Scape, which is close to the perfect world. All that remains is to programme the humans to be her friends, and make the connection Evie has with them and them with her in return to be of mutual, confirming, happy benefit. But someone else has entered the E-Scape, and their influence seems all that much more powerful than Evie's tentative happiness… Full review...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Mark Burstein (editor) and Salvador Dali
If you don't know the story now, then where have you been for a hundred and fifty years? A young girl sees a hurrying white rabbit, follows it, falls down a hole, fails to recognise the 'stranger danger' in partaking of random foods and drinks just because of a label on them, nearly drowns a whole menagerie of animals in a lake of her own tears, takes advice from someone on drugs, plays cards, or croquet, or both or neither, and wakes up to find it all a dream. Someone else tried out such gibberish on a young girl, wrote it down in a flurry, made a hugely successful name for himself, and woke up to find even at this remove that most people (unlike me) adore the thing. But it's not just for now, its 150th birthday, that the work gets reprinted. In the 1960s, someone came up with the idea to put the esoteric, surreal and daft mind of Salvador Dali in cahoots with the esoteric, surreal and daft world of Carroll's Alice, and the result was a very rare and valuable edition – a box set of illustrated booklets, perfectly suited to the very surrealistic 105th birthday. Since getting sight of one is like seeing a flat clock in Dali's pictures, this decent hardback replication is the nearest you'll get to owning one of the most special of Alice editions. Full review...
How to Train Your Dragon 12: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury by Cressida Cowell
A relentless battle. Human against dragon. On the Doomsday of Yule, the battle will end and only one side can be victorious. If the dragons win, the human race will be annihilated. If the humans win, they will unlock the secret of the dragon jewel, with the potential to destroy all of the dragons. The only hope is a human boy called Hiccup, an unlikely hero who has a wish to unite human and dragon once more. Unfortunately, Hiccup is lying unconscious on a beach at Hero's End, lost and alone with no boat. What is more, Hiccup has no memory; no idea who he is and why he is so important. He also has two poisonous fangs embedded in his arm; the ticking teeth of a Vampire Spydragon which serve as a tracking device for the vicious beast, who is closing in as we speak. Suffice to say, things aren't going well for Hiccup and they can only get worse... Full review...
Zom-B Fugitive (Zom B 11) by Darren Shan
REPEATING STANDARD WARNING!
If you haven't read the first book in this series, STOP READING NOW! NOW! Spoilers ahoy! Full review...
The Phantom Bully (Star Wars Jedi Academy 3) by Jeffrey Brown
Doesn't time fly? It only seems a short time ago that Roan Novachez was starting his first term at Jedi Academy Middle School, yet here he is, all grown up and ready to start his final year. As always, there are plenty of twists and turns, teen troubles and relationship issues mixed in with the force-wielding, piloting and lightsaber battles. Bullying is still a real issue for Roan this term, as it seems that someone has made a personal mission of setting him up to fail. Everything is riding on his performance this year, as flunking out will mean being held back a year and his friends moving on without him. Full review...
The Grubby Feather Gang (Bigshorts) by Antony Wootten
Life is confusing for George Sanders: his father, the local vet, has refused to 'do his bit' and volunteer to fight in France. There's bad feeling in the village - with the women giving Dad white feathers - and even George's mum believes that he should go and fight. To top it all George is currently being suspended, upside down, from the rafters in the hayloft by the local bully who is determined that George is going to do his maths homework. You'd think that it couldn't get much worse, but the next day he's caned at school when he doesn't feel that he was in the wrong. There's no wonder George is confused, is there? Full review...
The Truffle Mouse by Holly Webb
Alice is going through a tough time right now. Even though her mum and dad split up two years ago, she'd always hoped that they would eventually get back together. But when dad introduced his new girlfriend and her daughter and announced that they would be moving in, everything changed. School isn't any better, either. She's always getting told off in class and is jealous of her best friend Lucy, who seems to have the perfect family, but doesn't appreciate it. When mum sees how withdrawn Alice has become, she takes her to the pet shop to buy a hamster to take her mind off things. However, it's not a hamster that catches Alice's eye, but a sweet little mouse, with fur like cocoa powder. The trouble is, mum is terrified of mice! Full review...
Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre
When Shen finds himself stranded in the middle of a frozen sea, with 66 shivering pugs for company and no food, he’s desperate to find help. Little does he suspect that this is just the start of their adventure in the frozen north: with his new friend Sika, and the pugs pulling their sled, he’s suddenly part of a race to the top of the world. Will they make it in time to meet the Snowfather or will one of the other contestants beat them to it? Full review...
Poppy Pym and the Pharaoh's Curse by Laura Wood
Poppy Pym is leaving the only home she's ever known (in Madame Pym's Spectacular Travelling Circus) to become a boarding school student at Saint Smithen's School. And, if starting school for the first time at age 11 isn't enough, Poppy and her new friends – Kip and Ingrid – find themselves in the middle of a mystery. Dangerous accidents start to occur at Saint Smithen's the moment a temporary exhibition of Egyptian artefacts enter the school. While everyone else attributes these to the Pharaoh's curse, Poppy and her friends are determined to discover who is really causing the accidents. Then, when the priceless ruby at the heart of the collection is stolen, their investigation broadens as they try to uncover the thief. Full review...
The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands
Seventeenth century England isn't always a comfortable place to live. Apart from the obvious differences from the modern day – no National Health Service, no laws to protect orphans like Christopher from cruelty and exploitation, and a constant foul smell from poor sanitation - fear and suspicion are a daily fact of life. In 1665 Charles II has been back on the throne for several years, but not everyone is happy about his extravagant and luxurious life-style, even among those who found the Puritan rules of Cromwell's time excessively strict. There are spies everywhere, and rumours of conspiracies fill the streets. It's a time to keep your head down and avoid attention from the authorities. Full review...
Honey and Me by Karen McCombie
Most girls starting out Brook City School are hoping for something new and different, but Kirsten just wants things to be normal. Even good things seem to come with a sting in the tail and worst of all, Mum and Dad are really not getting on. In fact Kirsten is happiest at school and does all the after-school activities she can manage just to keep away from home for as long as she can. Her elder brother, Finn, who's at sixth form college, is struggling too: what used to be thought of as cheeky at school has turned into disruptive. When things get really bad Kirsten is suddenly reminded of her old friend Honey and wonders if she can get in touch with her. Full review...
Nick and the Glimmung by Philip K Dick
Meet Nick. He lives on a future Earth, where multiple large classrooms are taught by just one holographic teacher, which might sound impractical but can actually help with advice when you declare to the class that you are breaking the law. Nick, you see, has a pet cat, and in this massively over-populated and under-resourced world, pets are illegal. There's a simple solution – wait for the anti-pet man to turn up with his weaponry and armour and dispose of it, but the family have decided to take the other way out – emigrate to an entirely different world. Hence they embark on the trip to be pioneer farmers on Plowman's Planet, even when they're forewarned of a host of different and most unusual animals already resident there. That advice still doesn't really prepare them for the battle whose crossfire in which they immediately get caught… Full review...
The Ghosts Who Danced and other spooky stories by Saviour Pirotta and Paul Hess
Ghosts are all over the world, don't you know. I don't know of any as of yet but I dare say that people have fixed ghost stories to be set on Antarctica; they're certainly common on all the other continents. York has 500 spectres to itself allegedly, all corners of all civilisations claim to know of spirit world entities – and people even go as far as being so undignified they see them in Auschwitz. The lesson from this excellently put-together book is that ghosts are worldwide, and any one from just about anywhere can have a very interesting story to tell. Full review...
