==Confident readers==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Nick Garlick and Nick Maland
|title=Aunt Severe and the Dragons
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Daniel is a little boy whose parents have gone away exploring. They telephone him every day, but then one day the phone calls stop and so Daniel has to go to live with his Aunt Severe. She takes his toys away, feeds him spinach sandwiches, wakes him every day at four-thirty and gets him helping with her rather strange rubbish-collecting activities. Things get more interesting for Daniel when he discovers four little lost dragons hiding in Aunt Severe's garden. He tries to help them, but before he can do anything three of the dragons are captured and locked up in a zoo. Daniel is left to rescue them with only the fourth dragon, Dud's, help and, as you can imagine, he's called 'Dud' for a reason!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184939055X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Garen Ewing
|summary=The 'Something Wickedly Weird' series is a splendid mix of Gothic horror and cartoon-style fun. The scrawny young hero, young Stanley Buggles, who lives in a 'darkened industrial town', as the first page tells us, is plunged into an adventure from the moment he arrives (all alone, as tradition dictates) at Crampton Rock. He has inherited his great-uncle's mansion, a vast old pile on an island linked to the mainland by a long winding footbridge. The right atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobic unease is created immediately, especially when we learn that letters are only collected from the island once a fortnight. Whatever is on this island, Stanley will have to deal with it alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340931027</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould
|title=The Train Set of Terror: A Measle Stubbs Adventure
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You will feel sympathy for Measle from the very start of this book. Not only is he an orphan, and stuck friendless in a horridly dingy house on the wrong side of the train tracks, but he shares his life with its main torment - his guardian, Basil Tramplebone. Basil makes no effort to improve Measle or his lot - he does not educate him, keeps Measle and his inheritance a great distance apart, and feeds him slop. Measle would even like to have a bath now and again - but not in the putrid brown and green gunk coming from the taps. The only thing that redeems Basil at all is that he owns the world's best train set, one Measle would love to get to know a lot better. Unfortunately for Measle, he's about to get that wish granted...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729705</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cathy Cassidy
|title=Love, Peace and Chocolate (Pocket Money Puffins)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jess and Kady have been best friends since they were three years old and now they're in year eight at Parkway Community School. They're on the edge of puberty but things have been a bit slow on the boyfriend front – not that either of them is looking to rush things, particularly as there isn't a single Y8 boy who can make their eyes light up. They've a good, solid friendship which means a lot to both of them and they both think that nothing can come between the girls. Unfortunately they hadn't taken the arrival of Jack Somers into account.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014133021X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Natasha Narayan
|title=The Maharajah's Monkey: A Kit Salter Adventure
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Kit Salter has a nose for adventure. Somehow she always finds trouble, or it finds her, and this latest episode is no exception as she finds herself travelling from the home comforts of Oxford all the way to India, then on to the freezing mountains of Tibet. What has happened to Monsieur Champlon? Has he abandoned poor Aunt Hilda? Why is the mysterious monkey leaving threatening messages for Kit? And what does it all have to do with the Maharajah? Kit and her friends set off on a fantastic journey to investigate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847245293</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Denning
|title=The Last Seal
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=In 1380 the warlock Stephen Blake released the demon Dantalion from the Abyss, only for his nemesis Cornelius Silver to banish him straight away. Dantalion has nursed his wounds for nearly 300 years – and in 1666, descendants of the original pair clash as he
aims to return to the world, and burn down London by starting the Great Fire. While the fire rages around London, and Dantalion’s followers try to break the seals which hold him in the Abyss, four unlikely heroes join forces to stop them from being destroyed – and to save the world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956483550</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Platt
|title=Would You Believe...in Mexico people picnic at granny's grave?!
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Well if there’s one important aspect of families, it is that books are included. It is evident from the details, trivia and facts here that you don’t need a father, a mother, or siblings. You might even have several spreads of half- and step-siblings, and copious parents here, there and everywhere. You might get to have a nanny, a cohort of family helpers, but one thing I would thrust on anybody would be a collection of books at home – and yes, books such as these tidy 48 pages would be among them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119856</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Platt
|title=Would You Believe...bed testers get paid to sleep?!
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=It is quite certain the reader of this book will not be a bed tester, however broad the smile it carries as it suggests anyone can get the employment they dream after. Neither will she or he be a vital scribe for some ancient civilisation, a slave, a drudge, or a worker in a Communist collective farm. But it is definitely an eye-opener how all that and so much more can be considered by just 48 tidy pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119864</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Platt
|title=Would You Believe...Vatican City is a country?!
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Cities don’t just spring up around us. They have taken thousands of years of civilisation to form, however surprising that might appear at times. Conversely, there are some who are just a few hundreds of years old that have been empty for centuries, and others that have been planned over a drawing board and become a capital city in a decade-long instant. All are within these tidy 48 pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119708</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Platt
|title=Would You Believe...two cyclists invented the aeroplane?!
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Where can you find a welter of trivia and facts about transport from the ages, from the first use of Shanks’s pony, to the latest holidays to the edge of space? What has so much detail it can fit in the reasons for Mark Twain’s pen-name? Where can the adult browsing their child’s non-fiction library find a 'Glamorous Glennis' going 'kinda screwy' and see how it refers to the breaking of the sound barrier? In these tidy 48 pages, for one.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199119694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Morris Gleitzman
|title=Now
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We first met Felix in ''Once''. He thought he was the luckiest child in the orphanage, since he was the only one whose parents weren't dead. Sadly, he was wrong about that. We followed his story in ''Then'', in which he and his dear friend Zelda are on the run from the Nazis at the height of the Holocaust and its terrifying Final Solution. In Now, we catch up with Felix many years later. He's built a good life as a surgeon in Australia, and is now frustratingly retired, unable to operate because of his shaky hands. He's looking after his granddaughter, Zelda's namesake, whose parents are doctors volunteering in Darfur.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014132998X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carl McInerney
|title=The Funniest Football Joke Book Ever
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Who scored the most goals in the Greek Mythology League? The centaur forward. Badoom boom tshhhh. It's a football joke book, packed to the gills with all sorts of cheesiness and silliness. Funniest ever? Perhaps not, but it's not too bad.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849391114</amazonuk>
}}