Alice-Miranda at Camp

Jacqueline Harvey's Alice-Miranda at Camp is a school mystery for 9 year olds with a new girl who's lovely to the teachers and not at all lovely to Millie.

What happens

Caprice Radford arrives at Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale with a long mane of copper hair and a voice that sends a tingle right down Mr Trout's spine. Her mother is a famous TV cook. She's won a scholarship. And she'd like everyone to know all of it.

Millie can't stand her within ten minutes. Then she overhears Caprice on the phone in the cupboard under the stairs, calling her ugly and mean. When Millie says so, Caprice bursts into tears and tells Sloane they were both just homesick!

Who hasn't met a Caprice? Sweet as pie with the grown-ups and quite different once they leave the room. Alice-Miranda isn't sure yet. Millie is VERY sure. Watching them see it so differently is half the fun.

(Sloane, meanwhile, comes back to find their shared room tidied to magazine standard and decides she loves the new girl.)

The school is bursting at the seams. Year seven has just been added, the new boarding house isn't finished and everyone is squashed into Grimthorpe House. So when Miss Grimm announces a surprise five-day camp, the cheer nearly lifts the roof.

It's a trial run for a new award Queen Georgiana wants to launch, with points for things like courage, creativity and helping out in the community. There's a special prize for the girl with the top score. Caprice has decided it's hers before the cheering stops.

There's a proper mystery bubbling underneath too. It opens at two in the morning, with an old man creeping down to a locked vault under a big old house. It's full of paintings and guarded by a stuffed polar bear called Sidney. He notices something out of place but can't think what.

Meanwhile Alice-Miranda's dad is working out whether the paintings in that cellar could pay to keep the house's care home running. You'll probably guess the two threads are going to meet.

This one is a long way into the series. The early chapters fill in quite a bit of family history from earlier books, and some of it is a big surprise if your reader hasn't got there yet.

What to read next

So if they're new to Alice-Miranda, go back to the start with Alice-Miranda At School. She's seven and a quarter, she's phoned the school herself to ask if she can start a year early, and the headmistress won't come out of her study.