Polly and Buster 2 – The Mystery of the Magic Stones

Sally Rippin's The Mystery of the Magic Stones is the second Polly and Buster book, a witch and monster adventure for 7 year olds about a friendship a whole town disapproves of.

What happens

It opens in the middle of the trouble, which works beautifully. Polly is nine and she's a witch. Her oldest friend Buster is a monster. Witches and monsters aren't supposed to be friends. Polly stood up for him in public anyway, and now a gaggle of grown witches is hunting the pair of them.

Their teacher Miss Spinnaker hides them at her mother's cottage in the forest. Getting there takes a midnight broomstick chase with spells flying, and Polly has to steer while her teacher fights back over her shoulder. Buster spends the whole thing with his eyes squeezed shut. (He wants everyone to know he's not scared. He's airsick. Completely different.)

Polly carries three magic stones her father gave her. When she holds them she sees a long cold tunnel, a purple fog creeping towards her feet, and then a face she knows. The stones want her to go to the mines where her father is buried. Miss Spinnaker tells her flatly that nothing brings anybody back and that she's never to go near them.

So there's the problem. Trust the stones, or trust the grown-up keeping her alive.

What makes it such warm reading is everything around the edges of that. Miss Spinnaker's mother Flora has pink frizzy hair, a floral nightdress and several teeth missing, and she fakes a coughing fit to get an enemy off the doorstep. Her husband Mortimer is a monster in a frilly apron who makes excellent flipcakes and kisses Flora's head every time he passes her.

One thing to flag before bedtime. Polly's father died five years ago when the mines collapsed, and a good part of her is still hoping. The book is gentle about it and sad on purpose. A child who has lost somebody might find that too close, or might find it a comfort. You'll know which.

What to read next

If your reader takes to a girl who isn't much good at being a witch yet, Mildred Hubble is waiting in The Worst Witch. She crashes her broomstick into a wall on her second day at Miss Cackle's Academy, and things rather go downhill from there.