Heidi Heckelbeck 16 – Heidi Heckelbeck Is the Bestest Babysitter

Wanda Coven's Heidi Heckelbeck Is the Bestest Babysitter is a short, chatty school story for 6 year olds about a girl who is quite sure she has grown up already.

What happens

A wedding invitation arrives and it's for grown-ups, which means a babysitter. Heidi points out that she is not a baby. Her little brother Henry points out, loudly, that he isn't either. Heidi puts on a grey wig from the dressing-up trunk and asks whether that does the trick.

Mum says no. So when school announces a fair with a prize for the booth that sells the most tickets, Heidi knows exactly what hers will be. A babysitting booth.

Her best friend Lucy will not touch it. Little kids never listen, she says, and they get into your things. Bruce wants a science booth. Laurel wants an art studio.

They end up doing all three at once, as the Little Explorers' Museum, and Heidi is left with a problem she brought on herself. What do children actually do at a babysitting stall? Nobody buys a ticket to be watched.

Then Heidi remembers what she's really good at, and this is where the series shows its hand. Heidi is a witch. There's a Book of Spells under her bed and a medallion to hold while she chants, and her dad keeps a secret-ingredients drawer.

She picks a trick called the Rainbow Confetti Fountain. She gathers the paper, the chilli flakes, the fizzy sweets and a tub of what she is fairly sure is whipped cream.

It is not whipped cream.

The pleasure here is how quick it is. Very short chapters, mostly people talking, and a joke never far away. Melanie Maplethorpe swaggers in to announce she has the winning idea and refuses to say what it is, which is the funniest thing in the book until it goes wrong for her and Heidi is unexpectedly kind about it.

It's American, so expect second grade and Elementary rather than year groups.

What to read next

This is the sixteenth, and it stands up perfectly well on its own. There's a much earlier one in the library, Heidi Heckelbeck and the Cookie Contest, where she enters the school baking competition and has never made a batch on her own.