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Ross Montgomery's Fortune's Fools: A Romeo Roller Coaster is a very silly sports day story for 9 year olds that borrows its feud from Shakespeare.
Dom and Blake are the two best athletes at New Forest Academy. They're also the two bestest best friends. They finish each other's sentences, and they've got loads of nicknames (Dom made them all up himself and told everyone to use them).
Then their Shakespeare-mad head teacher, Mr Fortune, names the school houses after characters from Romeo and Juliet. Dom is a Montague. Blake is a Capulet. And the whole school starts taking it WAY too seriously.
A house mascot gets its ears pulled off. Lunch tables split down the middle. Two teachers glare at each other in the corridor. Then Dom's mum and Blake's dad have a screaming row in the playground, and the traditional sleepover is off!
Sports Day itself is total chaos. There are parents in face paint and teachers who look like giant grapes. Poor Mr Fortune ends up barricaded in the games shed with a megaphone. And both boys get entered for every single race, against each other.
It's laugh-out-loud stuff, and cleverer than it looks. The story sums up Romeo and Juliet near the start, so your reader gets the jokes without knowing the play. A few of the chapter titles are borrowed from it too.
What's lovely underneath is the friendship. Dom and Blake fall out over a misunderstanding, the kind that's easy to have when everyone around you is shouting. Anyone who has ever had a falling-out at school will recognise how quickly it snowballs. And the way these two sort it out is very sweet.
It's a short, quick read, so it's a great pick for a reader who'd rather be out on the track. Or for anyone who enjoys watching grown-ups behave far worse than the kids!
If they want more of Mr Fortune's school, Hurly Burly is Ross Montgomery's Macbeth one. Beth is desperate to win the best-behaved pupil prize for a third year running, just as the drama club is rehearsing the Scottish play.
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