Bridget Vanderpuff and the Baked Escape

Martin Stewart's Bridget Vanderpuff and the Baked Escape is a madcap orphanage adventure for 8 year olds starring a girl who's brilliant at absolutely everything (so far).

What happens

Bridget Baxter has lived in the Orphanage for Errant Childs for nine years. She can pick a padlock with her eyes shut. She keeps lockpicks, a telescope and a bracelet of tiny books hidden in her enormous orange hair. Her school skirt even turns into a parachute when she presses a button.

The Mistress, Miss Acrid, can't stand her. She eats nothing but fishy sandwiches, keeps jars of eyeballs in her office and makes sure Bridget is shut away whenever families come looking for a child to take home.

This year it's worse than ever. Bridget jumps into the dungeon so that her best friend Tom gets his chance. When she climbs back out, every other child has gone to a new family. She's the very last one left.

Then a nervous little man in a green car rings the bell, asking for a wild-haired girl who loves stories. Miss Acrid swears there's no such child. So what does Bridget do? She drops down the chimney, of course.

It's properly silly from the first page. Miss Acrid gives chase on steam-powered roller skates, waving a sword shaped like a salmon. She refuses to say "children" because she hates irregular plurals (so it's childs, mouses and tooths). There are numbered notes dotted through the story, too, each one with an extra joke.

Under all the silliness there's a lot of heart. Bridget and Tom's goodbye in the maze, with a swapped ring and a tiny book, is really sweet. And the moment she sobs in the corner of the dungeon shows just how much she wants a family.

Mr Vanderpuff turns out to own the bake shop in the village. Baking is the one thing Bridget has never tried, and she's about to discover she's hopeless at it. For a girl who mastered ballet in a week, that's quite a shock!

If you've got a reader who loves a truly horrible grown-up getting what's coming to her, this is a treat. Every time Bridget gets one over on Miss Acrid, it's very satisfying.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, The Orphans of St Halibut's has more children left behind in a dreadful orphanage, a matron who dangles people out of windows and a cake that keeps getting stolen.