Mr Majeika and the School Trip

Humphrey Carpenter's Mr Majeika and the School Trip is three magical school stories for 6 year olds about a teacher who used to be a wizard (and still is, when nobody's looking).

What happens

Class Three at St Barty's are off to an outdoor activity centre for three days of canoeing and caving. Then they arrive. The river has dried up, the caves are blocked by a rock fall and all that's left is long walks.

Unless Mr Majeika can sort it out overnight. Which, of course, he can.

By the morning there's a jungle outside the window, a river rushing with logs and a canoe trip with real rapids. There's also a crocodile who says he only eats bananas. Would you climb on his back?

The other two stories carry on in the same cheerful way. A very rich property developer tricks the head teacher into selling St Barty's so he can knock it down. Then the class try work experience, after a green drink from Mr Majeika makes them all as tall as grown-ups.

It's gentle, silly fun. Spells go a bit wrong, help arrives by magic carpet and Jody, Thomas and Pete usually spot the problem first.

Hamish Bigmore is the one everybody loves to dislike. He's the rudest boy in the class, he moans about everything and he keeps ending up as something ridiculous (a rubber duck, at one point).

There's a cartoon baddie too. Wilhelmina Worlock, a wicked witch, has four of the children brought to her cave and plans to eat them for tea. It's played for laughs and it doesn't last long.

One thing that feels a little old-fashioned. The first story has the children carried off by a crowd of little green people dancing round a totem pole, with a big cooking pot waiting in a cave. They all look exactly like Hamish, but it's an old joke and you might want to talk about it.

Each story is quite long, so this works nicely as a read-aloud over a few bedtimes. If your reader likes magic turning up in an ordinary classroom, they'll feel right at home.

What to read next

If they haven't met him yet, try the book where Mr Majeika first arrives. He flies in through the classroom window on a magic carpet on a wet Monday morning, and has to pretend it's a bicycle.