Newest Confident Readers Reviews
Confident readers
The Party Animal and Don't Look Under the Bed (Deadly Tales) by Roy Apps
Bored with sleeping soundly? Fed up with sweet dreams? Well this is the book for you! Deadly Tales features two nightmare urban legends that you'll pray aren't true. Full review...
The Railway Children by E Nesbit
Few people can be unaware of The Railway Children. It's a story which has stood the test of time not least because of the wonderful images of steam trains which it evokes for today's readers. Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis (Phil) have to leave their London home when their father goes away unexpectedly and they move to a cottage in the countryside which is near the local railway station. They make friends with the porter, Albert Perks and the 'Old Gentleman' who is regularly on the 9.15 train. There's fun and they have adventures but they still wonder if their father is ever going to come home. Full review...
My Big Fat Teen Crisis by Jenny Smith
Sam’s left alone when her best friend moves to the Outer Hebrides. Can she take this opportunity to reinvent herself as a cooler, more sophisticated person? And will she manage to win the heart of the new boy at school, David? Aided by her childhood friend Cat, who’s just returned to the area, she’ll do her best – as long as the nasty Tania doesn’t get in the way. Full review...
Butterfly Summer by Anne-Marie Conway
Becky isn't best pleased to be moved from her home in the city, where she has friends and a place, to the countryside where her mother grew up. There's a whole secret past that Becky feels on the verge of discovering - starting with friends her mother never mentioned, friends who drop unintentional hints about the father Becky has never met, and ending with the photo she finds of her mother with a baby - dated 12 years before she was born. Full review...
Me, the Queen and Christopher by Giles Andreae and Tony Ross
Freya, who is seven years old, received a very important letter. On the back of the envelope it said Buckingham Palace and it was from the Queen, inviting her to tea. It looked as though the day was going to be a disaster as Freya curtsied - and managed to knock the Queen over. But the Queen is nothing if not resilient and up she got and off they went to her private quarters where she and Freya made themselves baked beans on toast and mugs of tea ('always dip your tea bag exactly twenty-seven times' is the Queen's advice for a good cuppa) and really it's rather like being in Freya's Gran's flat. Full review...
The Traitors by Tom Becker
What's the saying - sin in haste, repent at leisure? Well Adam is going to be the embodiment of that. One moment where he plants a kiss on his best mate's girl's lips, even though they seem to have split up - at least temporarily - and lo and behold he's snatched by a passing dirigible, and shipped across the universe, to a place outside of time, where the idea is he has three hundred years in prison as penance, after which he will be inserted into the very instance he leaves, remembering only that he should behave a bit more diplomatically in future. Of course, Adam has other ideas... Full review...
Secret of the Shadows by Cathy MacPhail
If there's one thing, more than any other, which strikes you about the Tyler Lawless books, it's how ordinary and everyday the heroine is. She could easily be the girl up the road, or the one who sits next to you in geography: solid, real, utterly normal. And that is Cathy Macphail's skill: she can create characters who are absolutely convincing and lifelike, who live in the same reality as us, liking the same clothes and food and music. And yet, Tyler sees ghosts. Full review...
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and Tony Ross
Pippi Longstocking lives the life of every girl's dream. Her mother is dead and her father was blown off his ship. Pippi believes that he's away being the King of the Cannibals (and that she's therefore a Princess of the Cannibals) and in the meantime she lives on her own - well except for a horse, a monkey and a suitcase full of gold - and with NO grown-ups to tell her what to do. Well, a few do try, but Pippi always gives them short shrift and gets on with living her life the way that she wants to live it. Full review...
Rubbish Town Hero by Nicola Davies
What is most striking about this excellent little book is the utterly matter-of-fact way it is recounted. Violence, near-slavery, starvation and disease are as familiar to the children we meet in this story as television and homework are to its readers. The story is told through the eyes of Chipo, a young boy who can neither read nor write but who willingly took over responsibility for his little sister Gentle when the bombs killed the rest of his family. Gentle has a cleft palate and finds it hard to swallow or speak, but she dreams of a place she calls Happy Split-face Land, where people like her can be healed. She saves up for the trip by washing old plastic bags (she is paid a penny for every hundred), and although Chipo does not believe such a place exists the big brother in him will do nothing to take away her hope. There is no self-pity, no jealousy or resentment evident in either child for the things they do not have, simply a determination to survive and make enough money to stave off hunger and disease. The result is a cracking good story, full of heart-stopping danger and wild escapes, extraordinary encounters and heart-breaking generosity. Full review...
Apocalypse Moon (The Joshua Files) by M G Harris
Well, I didn't see this coming. After four lurid, neon plastic covers to these books, the fifth and final one is stark black. The hero, Josh Garcia, probably didn't predict this, either - that every step he seems to have gone towards understanding and preventing the end of the world in December 2012, is looking to have been in vain. And even having seen so much throughout the series, even he hasn't seen anything as galling, disappointing and hellish as earth, after the end event, as foreseen so long ago by the Mayans. That black is very appropriate. Full review...
Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder: The End of the World. Maybe. by Jo Nesbo
If you put authors you least expect to diversify from more literary to children's works on a scale of one to ten, Jeanette Winterson must be a four, Ian McEwan a high eight, and Jo Nesbo, Nordic crime sensation de nos jours at least eleven. But this is now the third in the series of youthful, frivolous adventures, and this time the titular professor, diminutive smart Alec Nilly and Lisa (and their seven-legged spider) have to save the world. Full review...
Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge
The year is 1899. Each night at twelve minutes to midnight, the inmates of Bedlam (London's Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane) rise up from their sleep and begin scribbling strange words and messages everywhere they can... scraps of paper, the walls, scraps from their clothes, even on their own skin. These insane ramblings seem to depict the impossible and hint at the future. Thirteen year old Penelope Tredwell, orphan heiress and writer of best-selling magazine The Penny Dreadful, is intrigued. Hiding behind an actor hired to play the noted author of the Penny Dreadful mysteries, Penny drags him unwillingly into a macabre investigation. As she seeks to discover the meaning of insane ramblings of these unfortunate inmates, and turn them into what would be her best-selling and most famous story ever, Penny finds that she's uncovered a sinister plot controlled by a very real, very evil, very unlikely villain, and she may well be the next victim. Full review...
Goblins by Philip Reeve
Poor Skarper. He's such a loser. In the violent and bloodthirsty goblin world where fighting and eating and taking other people's loot are all-time-favourite, number-one activities, he has a terrible handicap. He thinks. In fact, he's pretty clever, for a goblin, to the extent that he uses the goblins' bumwipe heaps for . . . reading. Yup, you heard me. Reading. The foolish hatchling works out that the black squiggles on the mouldering heaps of soft and crinkly stuff left, long ago, by the ancient inhabitants of the tower, are written words, and instead of going out raiding like any sensible goblin, he creeps off to a quiet corner to work out what they mean. Silly, eh? Full review...
Black Arts by Andrew Prentice and Jonathan Weil
London, 1592. Jack successfully completes a test with a local crime family and becomes a "nipper" or cutpurse thief. But Jack's first victim accidentally brings him into contact with a London even more dangerous than the one he already knows - one where magic is real and the fight between good and evil can have fatal consequences. Jack returns home to find his mother murdered by Nicholas Webb, a charismatic Puritan preacher currently whipping up the London crowds against demons and witches. Full review...
Grimm's Fairy Tales: Rumplestiltskin by Saviour Pirotta and Cecilia Johansson
Rumpelstiltskin is one of the better known of the tales from the Brothers Grimm and a perennial favourite. The poor miller shows off in front of the king about the abilities of his beautiful daughter - she can apparently spin straw into gold. The king insists that the girl be sent to the palace and when she arrives tells her to get a load of straw spun into gold - or suffer the (fatal) consequences. The girl is saved by the appearance of a dwarf who works his magic in return for the girl's necklace; on the second night it's her ring she gives up and on the third it's the promise of her first-born child. Full review...
Grimm's Fairy Tales: Twelve Dancing Princesses by Saviour Pirotta and Cecilia Johansson
There was once a king who had twelve beautiful daughters. Frightened that they would sneak out and go dancing he locked them in a big bedroom at night, but each morning he would find their satin shoes danced to pieces. As he couldn't work out how they escaped he issued a proclamation to all the young men of the land. Any prince who worked out how they escaped could marry one of the daughters and would inherit the kingdom. But - if after three nights he hadn't discovered the secret, he would lose his head. Full review...
The Demon's Watch by Conrad Mason
We're the Demon's Watch, son. Best you don't think of us as the good folk. More like the dangerous folk.
Joseph Grubb lives in Fayt, a busy port between the Old and the New Worlds. In Fayt, humans, elves, trolls, ogres and fairies live together in relative peace. But it's not all harmony. The League of Light is threatening the port, wanting to force back into the Old World way of segregation and persecution of the fey folk. And there is suspicion of multiculturalims even in Fayt itself - Joseph is a half-goblin and an orphan. His goblin father was murdered for marrying a human woman and Joseph now lives and works at a tavern owned by an uncle who despises him and calls him Mongrel. Full review...
Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
Wahoo isn't a cool kid. He can't play sports, and he doesn't have the latest gear. But no one at school bullies him because Alice, the twelve-foot alligator who lives in his dad's zoo, accidentally bit his thumb off one day. The other kids reckon if he can walk away from an ordeal like that, then he must have something going for him. And by the time this story is over, he'll be up to his ears in street-cred. Full review...
Titanic: An Edwardian Girl's Diary 1912 by Ellen Emerson White
Margaret Anne Brady had been at the orphanage for several years when one of the Sisters told her that she'd been asked to accompany a lady who was crossing the Atlantic. This was a dream come true for Margaret as he only relative - her brother William - lived in Boston and he'd been trying to save up her fare so that she could join him in the USA. Mrs Carstairs is wealthy and she and Margaret will be travelling First Class - on the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic. All Margaret's dreams seemed to be coming true at once. Full review...
The Paradise Trap by Catherine Jinks
When Marcus's mum has to economise over their holidays, it means just the two of them, revisiting a campsite she herself knew as a child, in a grotty old second-hand caravan. It's a greasy, shabby, squeaky little closet of a caravan, and no-one can agree on what the awful stink pervading it reminds them of. But when the trip is hyped up as a great time for both, it seems to have a chance of coming true, for a bizarre cellar to the caravan leads everyone to their dream trip - if only, unfortunately, one way... Full review...
The Flask by Nicky Singer
Twelve-year-old Jess is dealing with a lot. Her beloved Aunt Edie has just died. Her mother is expecting twins - but these new babies will be Jess's half-brothers and will complete Jess's mother's marriage to her stepfather. But will they complete Jess's family? Will they even survive? Because the twins are conjoined. And in 70% of separations, only one twin lives. And if this weren't enough in the way of trials and tribulations, Jess's best friend Zoe is moving towards a relationship with a boy. Does this mean she will leave Jess behind? Full review...
Cows in Action: The Viking Emoo-gency by Steve Cole
The future world's balance between cows and humans is a lot different to our own, as the bovine species has evolved into something a lot more intelligent; so much so that in order to gain the upper hand, both parties are using time travel to snatch advantages in other times and places. In this episode of the series, it's a robotic ter-moo-nator and a fundamentalist scientist who have gone back to Viking times, leaving just three special cows from the current age with the task to go back and sort things out on the side of a happier, human-friendly existence. Can they succeed, or will much of what we know of since the Viking era be re-moo-ved from our history books? Full review...
The Witch of Turlingham Academy by Ellie Boswell
Boarding school, midnight feasts, a crowd of best friends and cute boys to gaze at (though mostly from a safe distance): what more could you ask from a story for girls of twelve and under? Well, how about throwing a bit of magic into the mix? Perfect, huh? Full review...
Road to London by Barbara Mitchelhill
Elizabethan London, made all the more wonderful by the splendour of the court and the magic of Shakespeare's imagination, is a perfect place to set an adventure. Mysteries, plots and conspiracies abound, and the stark contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor makes for a colourful and thought-provoking story. Add to that the privileged position we find ourselves in as we follow our young hero Thomas and his good friend Alice from the stinking streets full of cutthroats and foot-pads right into the presence of the Good Queen herself, and young readers are in for a treat. Full review...
Tom Gates: Everything's Amazing (sort of) by Liz Pichon
Tom Gates, our chronicler of all that happens in Year 5, is back with more stories of all that's happening at school and at home. He and his friend Derek decide to enter Derek's dog, Rooster, in the local dog show, but they might have been just a little over-enthusiastic with the shampooing and Rooster ends up looking rather more fluffy than usual. Tom and his sister Delia are still at daggers drawn over, well, just about everything and she's not impressed by the noise that Tom and his band make when they're practicing. Still, Tom has a birthday coming up and his only worries are that some of Granny Mavis' baking might be just a little too unusual and if his Dad does DJ then the whole thing might turn into a disaster. Full review...
