Flying Fergus 8 – Trouble on the Track

Sir Chris Hoy and Joanna Nadin's Flying Fergus 8 is a funny cycling adventure for 8 year olds about a team that has to decide who races, and who gets left out.

What happens

Fergus Hamilton is nine and completely bike mad. His squad has been training hard for the International Championships in Manchester. Then a letter arrives. Only four riders can be named for the team, plus two reserves, and there are eight of them.

So Grandpa and the other coach set up trials. There's a knock-out race called Devil Take the Hindmost, a Keirin and a road race. Suddenly teammates are spying on each other and nobody's speaking. Worst of all, Fergus's best friend Daisy has gone cold on him. She's upset about his new friend Sorcha, and the two of them are level on points for a place.

That's the real story here. It's about what happens to a friendship when you both want the same thing. Daisy says some pretty cutting things, and Fergus keeps trying to fix it (not always very well). Anyone who's ever fallen out with a best friend will feel every bit of it.

There's magic too. Fergus can pedal into Nevermore, a parallel world where his dad lives, and where his dog Chimp talks like an Australian. The king there wants the court wizard to use spells to win a race. Cue a swarm of wasps, a frog the size of a cow and a serpent with four heads (one of them a poodle). Meanwhile the queen keeps shouting "Orf with his head!" It's completely daft and very funny.

The races are great fun as well. Your reader will pick up what a Keirin is, why you save your legs on the early laps and what a pacesetter does. Who knew there was so much thinking in riding round a track?

Sorcha talks to Fergus through a notebook while he learns sign language. It's a small detail done nicely.

This is the eighth book in the series, so there are in-jokes and old rivalries. It explains the important bits as it goes, though, and the friendship story stands on its own.

What to read next

If they want more of the squad, the seventh Flying Fergus book is in the library too. The team needs fresh coaching, and Grandpa brings in Charlie Campbell, a wheelchair basketball champion, instead of the cycling hero Fergus had in mind.