|summary=There's nothing like a good villain to spice up a tale, and they come in all shapes and sizes in this, Frank Cottrell Boyce's second book about [[Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by Frank Cottrell Boyce|Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]]. The previous story ended with them trying to flee Tiny Jack, a nasty piece of work with a seriously horrid Nanny and a fondness for feeding people to his pet piranhas, and as this book opens they find themselves nose-to-nose with a dinosaur. A real, live one, with her mind firmly fixed on lunch.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023075774X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Morpurgo
|title=A Medal for Leroy
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Michael never knew his father and so is content to live alone with his mother. In fact, he rather enjoys feeling different and special, partly because unlike most children at school he only has one parent, but also because Maman is French and looks, to Michael at least, like Joan of Arc.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007487517</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cornelia Funke
|title=Ghost Knight
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Jon arrives at boarding school in a haze of angst, not looking forward to staying in an old-fashioned town, worried about dealing with new teachers and classmates, and furious at his mum's boyfriend, known only as The Beard, for his role in the banishment. Events take an unexpected turn for the worse when Jon finds himself being stalked by a pack of sinister ghosts with a vendetta against his family, borne out of a deadly conflict with his ancestor. With the help of Ella, whose grandmother specialises in ghost tours for tourists, Jon is successful in summoning the knight Longespee to protect him. However, the ghosts prove to be more resilient than he first thought, and when Jon discovers the terrible fate of the last boy who called Longespee for help, he realises that he is in more trouble than ever before.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444008234</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=A B Saddlewick
|title=Monstrous Maud: Spooky Sports Day
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Quite how do you make a sports day spooky? Well, in this topsy-turvy world, you don't have to do much. It's nasty enough for vampires to be competing in the daylight, it's not fair on monsters with tails or for mummies with bandages to trip over – and it's just a bit too girly, prim and proper – and a bit too pink, for monsters. Monstrous Maud, of course, isn't a monster, but does go to a special school dedicated to them. How can she hope to train her best friend, who is quite hopeless at any sporting activity, and also manage to keep her monstrous disguise up when the starting gun is fired?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780550731</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Gardner
|title=Operation Bunny - Wings & Co
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Emily Vole very nearly enters this world with a bang; abandoned at Stanstead Airport in a hatbox that is mistaken for an explosive device she only just escapes being blown up by the bomb disposal squad. After this inauspicious beginning things briefly improve for Emily when she is adopted by a wealthy couple, Daisy and Ronald Dashwood, who have no children of their own. However, the couple soon tire of their little girl and following the birth of Daisy Dashwood’s triplet daughters poor Emily is relegated to the role of a servant who is banished to the laundry room and forced to sleep on the ironing board. Life is miserable for Emily until one day she meets her kindly next door neighbour Miss String and her talking cat, Fidget. Through her new friends Emily discovers that there really is such a thing as magic and she soon find herself thrust into an exciting adventure she could never have anticipated.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444003720</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Gray
|title=Atticus Claw Breaks the Law
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Meet the new criminal gang in town – three evil, thieving magpies, led by the vicious Jimmy, and Atticus Claw, the greatest cat burglar. Together they are on a mission to rob the entire town of all its jewellery, watches and other shiny valuables. To help him rest up between missions Atticus has decided to live right at the centre of the action – the parents of the children who adopt him are in turns the local police officer, and the woman charged with running a luxurious ''Antiques Roadshow''-styled affair at the local manor house. There will be bling, there will be sardines as a reward for Atticus – and with the animals' inside information on the roadshow, nothing can go wrong – can it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571284493</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Prineas
|title=Winterling
|rating=3.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Thirteen-year old Fer doesn't feel like she belongs with everyone else. She keeps getting into fights at school, she's teased for her unruly appearance, and her grandmother won't let her go anywhere except school. Then she rescues a mysterious boy called Rook from some wolves, and is taken to a wondrous, but cruel, world where it's always winter and a dangerous queen rules the land. Can Fer save the day?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857384287</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Walliams
|title=Ratburger
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=There are lots of similarities between the style and plot of this book and those of Roald Dahl. First of all you have a child who is living in a situation so outrageously terrible that it becomes funny, and for whatever reason, all the other adults around don't seem capable of helping. The villain, while being fairly two-dimensional, has enough disgusting and frightening qualities to make readers shiver in delicious anticipation whenever they appear. And the miseries just keep piling up until it doesn't seem there's any way out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007453523</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Renee Russell
|title=Dork Diaries: Dear Dork
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=You can see how easy it would be for a series of children's books to settle into a stale formula, repeating the same idea time over time until the last drop of originality had dried in the sun and the coordinated covers were bleached into off-white. The characters got boring, their interactions meaningless, and the author covered old ground for the hell of it for one last buck. Now look at this series, and in particular this fifth full, proper title in it, and you'll see just how that hasn't happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857079360</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rob Keeley
|title=The (Fairly) Magic Show and Other Stories
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Hooray! Rob Keeley has written a second book of short stories. We really enjoyed [[The Alien in the Garage and Other Stories by Rob Keeley|the first one]] here at Bookbag Towers, so we were really looking forward to reading the second.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780883013</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephanie Burgis
|title=A Reckless Magick
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Kat's sister Angeline is about to be married, and the twelve-year-old witch is off to the wedding. But where Kat goes, chaos quite often follows, and this is no exception - can she fight off smugglers, make sure the wedding goes off smoothly despite Angeline's fiance's mother's objections, deal with the person following her, prepare for her Guardian initiation ceremony and find out the truth about her mother? I genuinely wasn't sure when reading this - as wonderful as Kat is, there are rather a lot of challenges there! It was a tense read which had me desperately hoping Kat would make it through.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848774850</amazonuk>
}}
