Alice-Miranda Takes the Lead

Jacqueline Harvey's Alice-Miranda Takes the Lead is a cosy boarding-school mystery for 9 year olds with a spooky witch story, a school play and a VERY pushy new mum.

What happens

Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones is the youngest girl at Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies. She's tiny, she hugs everyone, and she can't think of a single reason not to be happy.

The new term starts with a secret midnight meeting (at quarter to nine!) in Jacinta's room. The girls tell Alice-Miranda about a witch who lives deep in the woods with about a hundred cats. A branch scrapes the window and the whole room shrieks.

Then the new girl arrives. Sloane Sykes is eleven, wears far too much make-up and gets caught rummaging through Jacinta's wardrobe on her very first morning.

Her mother, September, is even worse. She teeters into assembly in gold heels and announces that Sloane should have the lead in the school play. She's desperate for Sloane to befriend the richest girls, and she's thrilled to find out who Alice-Miranda's parents are.

Meanwhile the girls are putting on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the boys from Fayle School, and auditions are coming up.

It's a very jolly read. The grown-ups have wonderful names (the housemistress, Mrs Howard, is Howie to everyone), there's always cake, and Alice-Miranda wins people round by being endlessly kind. Watching her try it on Sloane is half the fun.

Sloane isn't just a pantomime baddie, either. You get little glimpses of her side of things, and she starts to wonder whether her own mum sees her as a bit of an inconvenience. That's a lovely touch for a reader who likes to understand why someone is mean.

There's plenty for pony lovers too, because Alice-Miranda's naughty pony Bonaparte has come to school with her this term.

This isn't the first book in the series. The girls mention things that happened last term and over the holidays, but you can follow along without them.

What to read next

If you'd rather start at the beginning, Alice-Miranda At School is where she turns up at Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale a whole year early, aged seven and a quarter, and senses straight away that something is missing.