|summary=I do like a good collection of fairytales, and by that I mean the rather more menacing, edgy versions, rather than the sanitised re-tellings that we often see. Here Joan Aiken is retelling some European fairytales and they are full of dragons and mermaids and goblins and witches. It's exactly the sort of more unusual collection of stories that would have kept me happy and quiet on a dull, rainy afternoon as a child and it has the added attraction of many atmospheric and beautiful illustrations by Pienkowski.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857550098</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Beck
|title=The Haunting of Charity Delafield
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
Charity Delafield has grown up in a very solitary way. Rattling around in Stone Green Hall, her father's ancestral home, she has been isolated from the outside world by her strict and forbidding father because of a "condition" she has apparently suffered from since birth. With only her governess, Rose, and her cat, Mr Tompkins, for company, Charity is a lonely child.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0370332105</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Melvin Burgess
|title=The Cry of the Wolf
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=hought to have been extinct in Britain for centuries, there are actually 70 English wolves left when Ben meets the Hunter. Burning with mortification at being mocked for poor shooting skills, Ben lets the carefully-guarded secret slip to this awful, vile man. And over the next three years, the Hunter makes it his business to find and kill these beautiful, rare creatures. Eventually, there is only one family left and Silver and Conna will do anything to protect their cub, the last of his kind...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849393753</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Ignatow
|title=The Popularity Papers
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The RRP of this book is a whole £4 more than the average [[Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell|Dork Diary]]. What do you get for that extra outlay, and why do I even point this out? Well, both this series and that are designed as if they were created by a member of the target audience - an American tweenage girl with a lot to say about herself, her school life and how, once you've avoided your parents embarrassing you, the popular girls at school being condescending and rude at the best of times, everything in life will still work its damnedest to heap ignominy and embarrassment on you.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1419700634</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antony Wootten
|title=A Tiger Too Many
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jill's brother, Pete, was a keeper at London Zoo and when her mother was at work she would go to the zoo with him. She became very attached to an elderly tiger by the name of Ronny but with the outbreak of war tough decisions had to be made. What would happen if poisonous snakes escaped during a bombing raid? What about the elderly and dangerous animals? Jill is heart-broken when Ronny is shot but there's consolation in the form of a tiger cub, the runt of a litter rejected by his mother, who would need all Jill's care if he was to survive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0953712311</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sian Pattenden
|title=The Peppers and the International Magic Guys
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Esme and Monty are the Pepper twins, and whilst their hippie parents are away on holiday 'reconnecting with nature' the twins are left with Uncle Potty who is a member of the International Magic Guys club. Unfortunately the club is threatened with closure, and the more nervous Uncle Potty becomes about the club's future the more disastrous his tricks are! Will he ever be able to perform in the show that must save the club?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007430019</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Geraldine McCaughrean
|title=George and the Dragon and a World of Other Stories
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
Some people may wonder if we really need yet another collection of stories: after all, many of the tales in this book are already well-known. But that would be to miss the point. What is distinctive about this book is the fact that it is written by the multi-award-winning Geraldine McCaughrean, one of our most skilful, respected and prolific authors. Each of the stories here is like a gem made of words: beautifully told, using description which ranges from the lyrical to the comic, and both parents and children will derive a huge amount of pleasure from them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444002384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jamie Thomson
|title=Dark Lord: The Teenage Years
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=What would you think, if you met a thirteen-year-old boy who turned up out of the blue and insisted, loudly and colourfully, that he was an evil demon and that he intended to smite you dead or submit you to a thousand terrible torments? Or both? Yup – the kid's nuttier than a fruit cake. Got a screw loose. Several sandwiches short of a picnic. And he's clearly played way too many computer games in his short life. So, despite his threats and protestations, he's got to go into foster care until his real family is found: after all, he can't be left sitting in a car park forever, can he? And once you realise there is no sign of a relative anywhere, well, there's his education to consider.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408315114</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris d'Lacey
|title=Fire World
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=David Rain is an impressionable, imaginative boy who can ''imagineer'' (that is, visualise objects and make them solid). He is a threat to the highly organised society of Co:pern:ica, particularly to the terrifying Aunts who control society on behalf of the Higher, and his parents are blamed for their own faulty emotions, thoughts and abilities, and punished. David is sent to the librarium, the repository for obsolete books, where he meets a mysterious girl called Rosa. She will play a part, along with the beautiful but threatening firebirds and unexpected members of David's own family, in discovering the secrets of the ancient tapestry of the librarium and confronting threatening forces from Co:pern:ica and beyond.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408309599</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Francesca Simon
|title=The Sleeping Army
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=When Francesca Simon was invited to write about anything she liked, she decided to put the Lewis chessmen at the centre of an adventure. They have long fascinated her, and she has always wondered why they look so glum and worried. Add to this the fact (which she admitted in a recent interview for the Guardian) that if she were left alone in the British Museum she would want to touch everything, pick up everything and generally run amok (rather like that naughty Loki the Trickster, not to mention an equally horrid young boy called Henry . . .) and the seeds of her story were sown.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682789</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Owen and Korky Paul
|title=The Misadventures of Winnie the Witch
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Have you met Winnie the Witch yet? I do hope so. She's really quite bonkers, often rather disgusting, and she has a fat, long-suffering cat called Wilbur. She's a bit of a favourite in our house, so we were eager to sit down and read her newest stories together!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192732145</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Bond
|title=The Tales of Olga Da Polga
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet Olga, a proud, loveable and loving guinea pig. We see her first, as does a girl called Karen, living in a pet shop with some friends, and after a cycle of short stories she will end by living with friends of very different kinds. In between she has to experience life with humans (or sawdust people) and survive scrapes in the wilder world, but still has time to explain where guinea pigs' tails went and how they got their squeak.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192731939</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Meres
|title=May Contain Nuts (The World of Norm)
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Nothing, but nothing, is Norm's fault. If he virtually sleepwalks into weeing in his parent's wardrobe it's because they've downsized to a new, smaller home. If his best friend crashes Norm's own bike, it's his brother's fault. If his parents have had it up to there with him it's up to them to really state their mind and not be obtuse. When everything happens - lies, deceit, unhappiness and dog poo on the carpet - it's the world's fault for being so unfair.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408313030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jayne Woodhouse
|title=And Rocky Too
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We [[The Stephensons' Rocket by Jayne Woodhouse|first met Rocky]] when Anna's father, the feckless Pete, brought him home as the latest in his many money-making schemes which inevitably cost the family dear. This one was to have a longer-lasting effect than most though – through his affection for Rocky, the retired racing greyhound, Pete realised that he had to support his family and Anna's brother Darren made a friend of another boy. Even Wilf, the pensioner who lived next door found hidden talents and it looked as though the family was set fair, right?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954925696</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Packham
|title=The Bex Factor
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Reality TV, especially the kind of talent competition where the backstory of the contestants is as much a part of the programme as their performance on stage, is a part of most young people's lives. A whole culture has grown up which dangles big breaks, lucrative contracts and happiness-ever-after to those talented few who can sing or dance, or, better still, do both at once. Fourteen-year-old Bex dreams of singing her way to stardom via the latest TV show, called 'The Tingle Factor'. All she needs to do is persuade geeky Year Ten Matthew to accompany her on the guitar.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848121636</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=J R R Tolkien
|title=Mr Bliss
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
If you wanted to produce a classic of children's literature, it would probably look a lot like this. It would be written by a famous name as a private exercise for their children, with the author's own illustrations. It would feature a title character, with a typical Edwardian headstrong attitude, yet with an ability to create slapstick. It may well have fairytale characters as you've never seen them before. And it would be presented in a deluxe, pristine heritage edition such as this.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000743619X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Borgenicht
|title=WCS Ultimate Adventure: Mars! (Worst-Case Scenario Ultimate Adventure)
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=
How many endings do you prefer your books to have? This claims 24, is the reason I ask. I can't be sure that the original Fighting Fantasy books of old didn't have a lot more, as well as the combat process, but in this style of choose-your-own-adventure franchise, two dozen isn't too bad at all. It's a younger-styled decision-making read, for the under-thirteens, and follows Borgenicht's seeming lifelong plan to get all sorts of survival info, either vital or trivial, into as many books as possible.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>081187124X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Gibb
|title=Best-loved Classics: Rapunzel
|rating=5
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Educators are, apparently, concerned at the moment at the number of children starting school who don't know any of the old traditional fairy tales, so it's nice to see a new version of Rapunzel that is based on the original story by The Brothers Grimm. This is a lovely book to share and stays closer to the original story than Disney's 'Tangled' film.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007364806</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joanna Nadin
|title=Penny Dreadful is a Complete Catastrophe
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
|summary=Penny is not really Penny Dreadful. She is Penny Jones. But when her encounters with a rat called Rooney, a cat called Barry and her cousin Georgia May, and her testing of a patent burglar trap and digging for buried treasure all end in catastrophes, is it surprising that she is known as a Disaster Magnet?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409536076</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angie Sage
|title=Septimus Heap: Darke
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=The seventh son of a seventh son has magical powers, as we all know. And Septimus is that son, although it took quite a time for him to find it out. Now he's apprenticed to Extraordinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand, she of the short temper and fabulous shoes, and he's about to embark on a horrendously dangerous part of his training, called Darke Week. For this exercise he has chosen to rescue Alther, a ghost who was accidentally Banished (a lot of words start with capital letters in these books) by Marcia, but once again the baddies have other ideas.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408806282</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jean Clemens Loftus
|title=Ruby Rocksparkle: Her Wildly Incredible Adventure
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Ruby Rocksparkle and her thirteen - yes! thirteen! - siblings are all named after gemstones. Ruby's father is a peasant farmer in the happy little kingdom of Felicitania. Felicitania is ruled by the kingly King Flavian and his beautiful second wife, Queen Morgana. His son, Prince Alano, is busily preparing for the day when he must rule, and the time for him to find a wife is fast approaching. Ruby, a vivid, read-headed beauty, dreams of marrying Prince Alano. If only he could ever marry a commoner - but even Ruby knows that could never be.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1452059780</amazonuk>
}}
