==Confident readers==
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{{newreview
|author=Julia Jarman
|title=The Time-travelling Cat and the Great Victorian Stink
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Consider cats. Normally they like to leave you things like poop, and dead animals, generally in the middle of the kitchen floor. Topher's cat leaves himself a stone statue version of himself when he decides to time travel to some past time of history. I know - odd. I can also introduce you to a very different Topher, one just escaped from the workhouse in Victorian London - if only he could escape the stench of the open sewers in London, and the hunger in his stomach just as easily. Well, I could - but actually they are the same person, just with a completely different mind. When our Topher travels through time as well - on the back of a bird - he finds himself in the person of the second, historical lad. Will that homework project about Victorian history be enough to help him out, and perhaps prevent a nasty crime or two?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849390193</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Candy Gourlay
|summary=Jake Bastin, son of famous former footballer Steve, thought his life was difficult enough even before his father enters negotiations to join St Petersburg’s newest football team as manager. But when the agent his dad’s discussing the move with collapses of a suspected heart attack, things get far more complicated – because Jake is convinced he was actually poisoned, and can’t understand why his dad seems happy to go along with a cover up. As the pair move to St Petersburg, the bodies start piling up, and Jake goes from having to fight to control his temper, to fight to save his life. With no way of knowing if he can trust anyone, even his own father, can the youngster stand up to criminals who are happy to kill to get what they want?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405249501</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dominic Barker
|title=Adam and the Arkonauts
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Adam is on a mission. Both he and his father have spent the decade since his mother was kidnapped by an Evil Scientist looking for her, and perfecting their own skills. They might have got the best clue of all so far - one that has led them to the mysterious, hidden, and downright alarming city of Buenos Suenos. Those skills? Being able to communicate with animals. Since learning to gibber like a spider monkey they can both bark, purr perfectly, and more. It will take the extraordinary menagerie to survive the unusual city, and try and discover what happened to Adam's mum - and what the Evil Scientist might want by holding her hostage for the same skills in return.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880025X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenny Nimmo
|title=Charlie Bone and the Red Knight
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Since the loss of his father, Charlie Bone has had to live in the house of horrible Grandmother Bone. But when he discovers he can hear people in pictures talking, a whole new world opens to him. His grandmother and her even more unpleasant sisters insist he should now attend Bloor Academy, a school where he meets other children endowed with magical abilities because they are descendants of the Red King. This King, an African magician, came to the North nine hundred years ago, and left a part of his powers to each his ten children. But several of those children turned to evil, as have their descendants, and Charlie and his friends have to stop them from doing terrible harm to the town. In each of the books in the ''Charlie Bone'' series, he encounters new allies and new enemies, until the whole story culminates in one immense final battle in 'Charlie Bone and the Red Knight'. This book is based on the search for a will, a quest which gradually draws together many of the themes of the series, and ends with the kind of solution which will leave the reader sighing with satisfaction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405249609</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Thomson and Chloe Thomson
|title=Have You Started Yet?: You and your period: getting the facts straight
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Every young girl will face her periods starting but it’s the preparation which goes on beforehand which will determine whether or not this is seen as the body developing naturally or a problem. Both are attitudes which are likely to stay through life and it’s obviously better that it’s the firmer rather than the latter. ‘’Have You Started Yet’’ gives factual information in an informative and reassuring manner and in a form which is easily readable to girls of about nine years old and above.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230744907</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Pete Johnson
|title=The Vampire Blog
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The night of his thirteenth birthday, Marcus's parents sit him down for a chat. He fears there'll be some fingernails-on-a-blackboard stuff about the facts of life, he'll fend them off with a wry remark or two, and it'll all be over. After all, how bad could it be? Very bad, is the answer. Very, very, very, very bad. Because this chat isn't about sex at all. It's about fangs and blood cravings, and shape-shifting. Because Marcus is a half-vampire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0440869358</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony Horowitz
|title=Legends: Battles and Quests
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Bringing things that are this old to an audience this young cannot be an easy feat. Anthony Horowitz must be more than able. An old volume of retold legends and fables from his typewriter in the 1980s has become a series of six books, rejigged on his computer, and presented very nicely by Macmillan. The first to hit the shelves ([[Legends: Beasts and Monsters by Anthony Horowitz|Legends: Beasts and Monsters]]) was a successful gift to us of five stories of olden beasties and baddies. Here we get a full half-dozen, and the quality is just as compelling.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510169</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ali Sparkes
|title=Wishful Thinking
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We first meet Kevin covered in sick. He doesn't travel well, and his day out with his gran in the car isn't going as well as he might wish for. He doesn't really seriously wish for anything, but a diverting list of things he'd like – a better complexion, a better chance with the school hottie, a Wii, etc – gets dropped into a stream. And lo and behold, the god of that river, someone called Abandinus, comes to life, thinking he's got a worshipper at last, and might just be prepared to grant some wishes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192756117</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony Horowitz
|title=Legends: Beasts and Monsters
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When they say there is nothing new under the sun, they might use this book as evidence - but they'd only be half-right. The legends of the sphinx's riddle, and the capture of the gorgon's head, are as old as the Parthenon hill, but they have never been presented as they have here. They were published in a similar fashion in the 1980s, with a younger Anthony Horowitz offering a large compendium of folk stories, legends and tales of classical derring-do. With the attention span of the current under-twelve, however, to be considered, his publishers have allowed a sprucing up, and a reformatting - one book has been turned into six, with a brace each year from now til conclusion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330510150</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracey Turner
|title=Dreadful Fates
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Imagine the delight you get, as a book reviewer, when you chance upon a title that stands out, by filling a nice handy gap in the market you'd never even noticed, and doing it so well you want to alert as many people as possible. This is such a time, Dreadful Fates is such a book, and as for the gap… This book hits upon the darker corners of all those copious 'highlights of history for the kids' books, touches upon The Darwin Awards compilations of stupid people dying in stupid ways, and merges with those collections of famous last words and epitaphs some of us like flicking through now and again – and does it all for the under-thirteen audience.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408124211</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould
|title=The Funfair of Fear! - A Measle Stubbs Adventure
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There is one thing Measle could really be called afraid of. Not the usual teenage things, like having a bath, no. He's lived through being inches high and stuck in a nightmarish train-set diorama with an evil cockroach and worse for company, and as a result, he's going to be afraid of a wrathmonk – a warlock turned bad – such as the one who put him there. So you'll pity him when it becomes obvious a gathering of wrathmonks are forming, to get their revenge on Measle's newly-found family. But what are wrathmonks in turn afraid of, I hear you ask? That's right – a garden gnome.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Mould
|title=The Werewolf and the Ibis (Something Wickedly Weird)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|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>
}}
