Lucky Star

Reviewed by: Lola Rose Young age 8

  Lucky Star
  by Cathy Cassidy

Powder Monkey by Paul Dowswell

I would recommend this book to children over six years old because it is quite bloodthirsty. It is the story of a little boy named Sam, who ran away from a boring town and was press ganged into the navy on a ship called The Miranda. The story is set two hundred and six years ago, in 1800. At that time Britain was at war with France and Spain.

I would say this is a really good book, and really gives the atmosphere of how life might have been then. You learn a lot about the navy and life on sailing ships: on different ships they had different types of beds, for example on one ship you might have bunks and on another you might have hammocks.

Powder Monkey is also really exiting (powder monkey means somebody who loads cannons with gunpowder) because there are three battles in it. In the second battle, just when they had beaten one Spanish ship, another Spanish ship appeared on the horizon, coming nearer and nearer, which looked like it wanted to battle too. During the battles Sam the powder monkey had to dodge the cannonballs smashing into the sides of the ship while he was collecting powder from the hold. The occasional splinter came shooting through the sides of the ship and some of them were very big. They were very dangerous because they were sharp and they could easily stick through your arm, for example. One of Sam's friends, on the the ship got a gigantic splinter, about as big as a grown man's hand, through his arm.

Most of the men on the ship are quite hard to understand because they never went to school and so they speak different to us.

Reviewed by: Lewis Morey

FLANIMALS by Ricky Gervais

I think Flanimals is a good book for boys at the age of 8 til 11. I bought it out of my pocket-money. It's a very good book, and I won't give it up.

Reviewed by Ethan aged 8.

The Worst Witch All at Sea by Jill Murphy.

The book I recommend is The Worst Witch All at Sea, by Jill Murphy. It is the fourth book in the series.

The story begins at Mildred's third term at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches (Mildred is the 'worst witch'). Mr Rowan-Webb is the magician Mildred rescued from the school pond in her first year at Miss Cackle's Academy. Mr Rowan-Webb invites Mildred and her classmates to spend the week at his house by the sea. But there is trouble waiting for Mildred when she arrives! Her cat Tabby, who she has had for all her years at the academy, is needed to help catch mice in the kitchen. Miss Cackle thinks Tabby doesn't fit in with the other cats because he is ginger and the rest are black. Another girl, Fenella Feverfew, left her cat Ebony behind when she finished her last year at the academy. Miss Cackle offers Mildred Ebony instead of Tabby. So, Mildred takes Tabby to the kitchen and the five cooks hand over Ebony who is not a very good mouser. The cooks start fawning over Tabby. Mildred solemnly walks back to her room and sneaks into her best friend Maude's room to tell her the terrible news about Tabby. The two best friends plan a mission to rescue Tabby from the kitchen.

This is a wonderful, adventurous and magical story for kids aged seven to eight. I think you should read The Worst Witch, The Worst Witch Strikes Again, and A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch before you begin to read The Worst Witch All at Sea.

Reviewed by: Lara Slyce

Alpha Force by Chris Ryan

Alpha Force is a series of books. Although I've only read the first two, I can already tell how great the rest will be! The characters are called Alex, Li Paulo, Hex and Amber. They're a group of teenagers who are completely different but end up being best mates. Basically they get stranded on a desert island in Survival (the first book) then head off to South America.

In a nutshell, it's for anyone who likes the Alex Rider series (Anthony Horowits).

Reviewed by: Issy Gately, aged 10.

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