Princess Mirror-Belle and the Sea Monster’s Cave

Julia Donaldson's Princess Mirror-Belle and the Sea Monster's Cave is a magic story for 7 year olds about a girl whose reflection keeps climbing out and causing trouble.

What happens

Ellen is on holiday at Whitesands with her grandparents and her big brother Luke. She's browsing a gift shop, wishing she'd saved her six pounds for the mermaid mirror on the shelf, when the mirror speaks to her.

It's Mirror-Belle. She looks exactly like Ellen, right down to the single slipper and the plaster on one finger. She is also, she'll have you know, a princess.

What makes these stories so good is that Mirror-Belle never once doubts herself. Those aren't freckles, they're beauty spots. Those aren't seals on the rock, they're some very disappointing mermaids. A child building a sandcastle gets told off for not planning to live in it.

Ellen spends the whole time trying to bring her back to earth and getting absolutely nowhere. It's a bit like having a friend who tells whopping fibs with such a straight face that you start to enjoy them.

Then Mirror-Belle decides that some initials scratched on a cave wall are a coded map to a sea monster's treasure, and stays behind to dig. Ellen goes back for lunch. And the tide comes in.

That night bit is properly tense, actually. Ellen lying awake in the camper van, doing the sums about the water, working out that there's no mirror in the cave for Mirror-Belle to escape through.

There are two stories in this one. The second moves back home to school, where Ellen has been left out of a classmate's Unusual Pets Club because her dog Splodge can only fetch sticks. Mirror-Belle's solution involves a rather unusual pet of her own.

Nothing here is frightening. There's a nice running joke about Ellen's brother Luke being pursued as a future prince, and a very satisfying moment where the bossiest girl in the class has to hand over a certificate she badly wanted to keep.

If you've got a reader who likes a character with no shame whatsoever, this is a good one. It's short, funny and completely daft.

What to read next

They can also go back to where it all started. The first Mirror-Belle book has Ellen at home with chicken pox, being told by her own reflection that it's actually dragon pox, and that the cure involves emptying the entire bathroom cabinet into the bath.