Middle School – Winter Blunderland

James Patterson's Winter Blunderland is a funny, freezing Middle School adventure for 11 year olds about a boy who swaps Christmas at home for polar bears.

What happens

Rafe Khatchadorian is melting in kazoo practice when the email arrives. Dr Deerwin, the vet he helped last summer, wants him on a research trip to Alaska in December. Her daughter Penelope is going too.

Rafe says yes before he's finished reading. His mum says "Over my dead body!" (She's heard that polar bears sometimes eat people.)

So he asks the last person he wants to ask. His little sister Georgia stays up until two in the morning building him a slideshow, then adds some Celine Dion at the end. Mum cries. Rafe is going.

Alaska isn't the high-tech research dome he pictured. It's a rusty trailer, a plastic outhouse and two kids his own age, Panuk and Uki, doing all the work. None of the three local bears has sent a signal from its tracking collar in weeks. And there's a wanted poster on the wall for a poacher who makes Uki shiver.

Reading it is like having Rafe talk at you nonstop. He's hopeless on snowshoes. He's squashed between two huge dog-sled racers on the plane. He knocks a lever and shoots off across the snow in a runaway sidecar. Every disaster comes with a joke about it.

There's a sweeter side too. Rafe has a tiny crush on Penelope and would NEVER say it out loud. Penelope has a stutter that disappears when she talks to animals, and Rafe tells you about it with real affection. When she finds an arctic tern with a broken wing and nurses it, you can see why he likes her.

The animals are the best part. Caribou, musk oxen, a moose that looks like a truck with fur, and at last an actual polar bear. It's raiding a rubbish dump for pizza crusts, and Rafe goes from thrilled to sad to cross in about a minute. That's a nice honest moment about wild animals living off our leftovers.

If you've got a reader who loves animals and doesn't mind a lot of silliness on the way, this is a great pick.

What to read next

If they'd like Georgia's version of family life, try My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar. It's her turn to tell the story as she starts at Rafe's old school, and she has plenty to say about her brother (not much of it flattering).