Flying Fergus 7 – The Wreck-It Race

Sir Chris Hoy and Joanna Nadin's Flying Fergus 7 is a bike-mad team story for 8 year olds about a cycling squad whose new coach comes from wheelchair basketball, not bikes.

What happens

Fergus Hamilton is nine, ordinary in almost every way, and has an ENORMOUS imagination. This morning he's picturing himself lifting the trophy at the Internationals while his hero, Spokes Sullivan, cheers from the crowd.

Then Grandpa shows him the stopwatch. He's slower than he was at the Nationals. So is everyone else.

The squad has got a bit big for its boots since winning. The two coaches, Grandpa and Choppy Wallace, are bickering again. Grandpa decides they need someone new with fresh ideas, and Fergus's mum says she knows just the person.

It isn't Spokes Sullivan. It's Charlie Campbell, a basketball star Fergus has seen on the telly, who plays in a wheelchair and wears a "Girls Rule" sweatshirt. The squad are not impressed.

Charlie locks their bikes away. She has them doing yoga. Then she signs everyone up for the Wreck-it Run, a race for charity where every pair builds its own machine out of scrap. The squad get to work in the yard behind Grandpa's shop. Fergus and his best friend Daisy start with an old red sledge. What have any of these things got to do with winning a bike race?

That's the fun of it. Fergus thinks Charlie's ideas are bonkers, and the book lets your reader wonder right alongside him.

It's also very, very silly. Wesley shows off on the finish line and sets off a crash that ends with Dermot choking on a pink wafer biscuit. Grandpa and Choppy manage half a lap of the test run backwards. Fergus's dog Chimp is always after a sausage.

And there's magic too. When Fergus pedals fast enough, he ends up in Nevermore, a parallel world where his dad lives, and where they are holding cycling trials of their own with Princess Lily. In this one he lands in the Queen's prize petunias.

This is the seventh Flying Fergus book, so there's a big gang of characters already in place. The rivalries are easy to pick up, though, and each chapter moves fast.

What to read next

If your reader loves bikes and a magic kingdom with a princess in it, Princess BMX could be a good one next. Princess Avariella is bored stiff of royal life, and she'd much rather be sliding down the palace stairs in a potato sack.