Angela Nicely 6 – Starstruck!

Alan MacDonald's Starstruck is the sixth Angela Nicely book, three very funny stories for 6 year olds about a girl whose big ideas always land her in hot water.

What happens

Angela lives next door to a boy called Bertie, and she can cause just as much chaos as he does.

In the first story, her favourite boy band is playing the Arena. Snooty Tiffany Charmers has front-row seats, of course. So Angela tells a whopping great fib. She's going to meet Zac, the lead singer! Now she has to find a way to make it true (a rail of stage suits comes in very handy).

In the second, Mrs Nicely has entered the Best Kept Garden Competition. The prize is a voucher, and Angela has already spent it on a trampoline in her head. Her helpful ideas include dotting every soft toy she owns around the flower beds. It gets worse from there.

In the third, Angela decides she'd make a brilliant agony aunt. She takes on the quiet new girl, Molly, who doesn't have any friends yet. Angela's advice involves a sign stuck on the back of Miss Boot, the scariest teacher in the school. What could possibly go wrong?

Angela is such fun because she's completely sure she's right. She isn't, of course. You can watch each plan wobbling towards disaster while she has no idea (her friends Laura and Maisie usually do). Poor Mrs Nicely ends up with her head in her hands.

The stories are short and full of chat, with plenty of shouting in capitals. ANGELA! That makes them brilliant for reading aloud, or for a child who's just getting going with chapter books on their own.

If your reader enjoys a cheeky heroine who never learns her lesson for long, Angela is a treat. She fibs and she schemes, she's caught every single time, and somehow you're still on her side.

What to read next

Once they've taken to her, the very first Angela Nicely book has a head teacher's surprising new hair, a modelling job and a spa weekend with no biscuits.