Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Sam Llewellyn
| Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Sam Llewellyn | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: Jill Murphy
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| Summary: Abbot Dagger's Academy's Polymathic Skolars save the world from a Dread Thing in this jolly time travel caper. Super fun in the mode of How To Be Topp, if a little light to be other than a library consumable. | |
| Buy? no | Borrow? yes |
| Pages: 208 | Date: February 2008 |
| Publisher: Puffin Books | |
| ISBN: 0141321725 | |
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Abbot Dagger's Academy takes all the children nobody else wants. They have the bad, the stupid, the spoiled rich, the autistic, the geeky, and even the keen-to-the-point-of-bursting. Most of them are of the big, bad and stupid variety though - these are the Skoolies. There are just three polymathic genius children - these are the Skolars. Onyx is so keen she makes you want to spit. She's good at languages and history. Owen is autistic. He's good at maths and chess. Rossetti is a prankster. He's good at running and psychic communication.
Dr Cosm doesn't like the Skolars, or the kindly but buffoonish headmaster. He's intent, not only on getting rid of the head and taking over the school, but also on world domination. To this end, he has stolen the school's Greyte Cup. No ordinary school trophy, the Greyte Cup is actually the Holy Grail in disguise. To prevent Dr Cosm's fiendish plans from coming to fruition, and to avert a consequent Dread Thing, Onyx, Owen and Rossetti must travel through time with the aid of Miss Davies' time doves....
Abbot Dagger's Academy was rollicking fun, although perhaps not quite such rollicking fun as Llewellyn's Little Darlings series. The action rattles along, there are plenty of jokes and the villain, Dr Cosm, is as camp and villainous as you could possibly want him to be. However, I did tire of the constant clever = good, less clever = violent and bully-ness of it all. Yes, geeky kids get bullied and yes, it's great when they get their own back, but even a newly confident reader would get fed up with it. You're not a write off if you're not top of the class, but it seems even the kindly headmaster at Abbot Dagger's Academy thinks that.
Enough of my piousness though - Abbot Dagger's Academy is easy to read, has plenty of jokes that newly confident readers will find funny together with the kind of rickety, hit-or-miss time travel so popular with Doctor Who generation. It's a recipe for a successful and enjoyable light read for children in the early primary years, boys and girls alike.
If they liked Abbot Dagger's Academy, they might also enjoy Tanya Landman's Waking Merlin.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Sam Llewellyn at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Sam Llewellyn at Amazon.com.
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