|summary=Oh to be popular - and the rainbow orchid certainly is. If, in fact, it exists at all. A collecting challenge for rare plants might hinge on its recovery, imperial British explorers would like to know the truth about it - and its presence on some mysterious ancient carved tablets hints at some mystical part it may once have played in a superweapon. Hence, where this book starts, everyone - from a film starlet, to a dashing explorer's assistant, to a plucky aviator, to an evil henchwoman of an overweight industrialist - is after it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140525047X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Vanessa Curtis
|title=Zelah Green: One More Little Problem
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=We first met Zelah when her OCD got so bad she was sent off to a live-in centre for treatment. She's at home now, with the OCD still around but not totally debilitating. She's still jumping on the stairs - but not so many jumps and not so often. She's still scrubbing her face, but it isn't quite red raw. You'd call her overly fastidious rather than ill. And her therapist is pleased with her progress. But then...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405240547</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lauren St John
|title=Laura Marlin Mysteries: Dead Man's Cove
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Laura has been in foster care since she was born, but Social Services have recently discovered that she has an uncle. So, at the beginning of this adventure mystery she finds herself moving to a house by the beach in Cornwall to live with Calvin Redfern, a man she has never met before. Laura's experiences have taught her to question everything, to be independent and to stand on her own two feet, so having an uncle who trusts her to be sensible, rather than lay down a list of rules, seems ideal. But Uncle Calvin and his house are shrouded in secrets. Why does he work such strange hours? Where does he go late at night? And why are there no signs of his past in the house?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444000209</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sue Mongredien
|title=Penguin Peril (The Secret Mermaid)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Molly originally moved to the seaside so that her parents could live with her Gran who was getting old and needing help. There's a secret between Molly and her Gran though: Gran used to be a secret mermaid and now Molly is too. During the day Molly is an ordinary schoolgirl, but at night with the help of her magical shell necklace she becomes a mermaid and returns to the deeps to help the other mermaids when there's a problem. This tim it's the penguins who have mysteriously disappeared from the icy seas and the mermaids are concerned that the Dark Queen might be behind the troubles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409506347</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elen Caldecott
|title=How Ali Ferguson Saved Houdini
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Elen Caldecott has done it again! Hard to believe she's managed another book as amusing and insightful as [[How Kirsty Jenkins Stole the Elephant by Elen Caldecott|How Kirsty Jenkins Stole the Elephant]], but here it is! Ali Ferguson has just moved into a new flat with his mum. He loves her very much, but he also misses his dad, who left them two years before. He desperately hopes his dad will come back to them one day from his travels in Asia: his mum is sure that will never happen. But Ali is a cheerful boy with a positive outlook on life, and he sees moving to their new home as an adventure. And it isn't long before he finds himself in a real-life mystery, every bit as engrossing and dangerous as the ones he loves to imagine.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880574X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Monica Dickens
|title=Follyfoot
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Follyfoot Farm is the home of the Colonel, his wife and her daughter Callie – along with the stable hands and rather a lot of unwanted, neglected or elderly horses. Some people paid for their horses to retire there but that was unusual and everyone lead a hand-to-mouth existence to give the horses the best life possible. Not everyone feels the same way about the horses though – or about the people who live and work at the farm – and along with looking after the horses the stable hands have to find out what's going on and why.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849391300</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Frank English
|title=Magic Parcel: The Awakening
|rating=3
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jimmy Scoggins is an ordinary boy of nine, who lives with his mother and his brother. He loves to visit his uncle Reuben, believing the old man must have special powers because he always knows exactly what type of ice cream Jimmy would like to eat that day. Reuben tells Jimmy thrilling tales, and at the beginning of this book actually sends his nephew into another world, called Omnia, for an adventure. Jimmy is not the first boy to go to there: his brother Tommy used to go too, but now he is thirteen he has stopped, feeling it is all rather babyish. But something has gone wrong this time: Jimmy does not return, and Tommy has to cross the barrier between worlds to find him.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956236855</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shannon Hale
|title=Forest Born
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Rinna is the youngest of seven children, and the only girl. As a child she lives an idyllic existence in the forest with her beloved Ma and a huge, loving family. But Rinna has gifts which she does not understand, and which frighten her because she senses in herself a terrible potential for evil. She loves her home deeply, but when the trees which once made her feel so peaceful appear to reject her, she is confused and unhappy to such a degree that she decides to leave the forest and join her favourite brother Razo at court in the city. This leads her into a cracking adventure full of magic, betrayal and terrifying peril.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408808617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Dowswell
|title=The Cabinet of Curiosities
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Lukas Declercq begins work as an apprentice to his uncle, a court physician to the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague, it's only after an absolutely hair-raising journey. Robbed at knifepoint and left naked and penniless, he fell in with a much more streetwise child, Etienne, who helped him blag his way across the country.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800462</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Grindley
|title=Bitter Chocolate
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Pascal and Kojo are best friends in a place where friendship is scarce. The boys work on a cocoa plantation in West Africa, far from their families. It's brutal work overseen by brutal men and the boys labour from dawn 'til dusk, rewarded by beatings, a wooden pallet to sleep on, and a bowl of corn paste. They're always hungry and tired. Kojo tries to keep up his spirits, looking forward to the day he can take his wages home and make a difference to his family. But Pascal isn't so optimistic. He knows they'll never be paid, and he suspects they'll never be allowed to leave. He's probably right.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074759502X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gareth P Jones
|title=The Space Crime Conspiracy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Thirteen-year-old Stanley Bound is an ordinary boy from south London who lives above a pub with his bad-tempered half-brother Doug. He is bullied at school, and the situation only gets worse when he discovers that the popular new boy Lance has been both lying and stealing. Lance gets his revenge by framing Stanley, and now no one trusts him, even his grumpy brother. Little wonder, then, that our sad and lonely hero dreams of travelling to distant places to escape his miserable life. But as we all know, that is a dangerous desire: Stanley should have remembered that people who get what they wish for often regret it. By the end of the book he has travelled the universe, been accused of murder, and met more bizarre characters than even his wildest dreams could have created.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747599815</amazonuk>
}}
