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Julia Donaldson's Princess Mirror-Belle is a funny, magical book for 7 year olds about a girl whose reflection climbs out of the mirror and won't behave.
Ellen's off school with chicken pox. She's missing the class trip to see the dolphins, Mum's busy teaching piano downstairs, and her spots are SO itchy.
So she goes to look at them in the bathroom. That's when her reflection dodges to one side and tells her not to scratch, or she'll turn into a toad.
The girl who climbs out looks exactly like Ellen, right down to the pyjamas and the single slipper. Only everything's the wrong way round. And she says she's a princess who woke up that morning from a two-hundred-year sleep (she also says a dragon captured her last week, so you can see how this is going to go).
Mirror-Belle is grand, bossy and completely sure of herself. Every question Ellen asks gets a bigger fib in reply. She has dragon pox, not chicken pox, and she wants to know if Ellen was captured by a chicken.
Her cure needs most of a bottle of bubble bath, Dad's shaving cream, stripy toothpaste and a lot of Mum's best perfume. Guess who gets the blame?
There are three stories here and they all run the same way. Mirror-Belle turns up, causes chaos and slips back into a mirror, and Ellen is left to explain. In a big shop she decides she's in a castle, bounces on the beds hunting for a pea under the mattress and kisses a toy frog in case it's a prince. In the last one she sneaks into her brother Luke's pantomime as an eighth dwarf.
The fun is having a naughty double. Ellen is shy and sensible, and she's a bit horrified by Mirror-Belle. But she's secretly delighted too. She giggles when the toothpaste goes in, and it's Ellen who suggests adding Luke's hair gel!
If you've got a reader who knows their fairy tales, they'll love spotting them. Mirror-Belle is friends with Snow White (she only ever bites the green side of an apple, just in case) and she can feel a pea through any mattress.
Nobody believes Ellen, of course. Mum thinks Mirror-Belle is an imaginary friend, which only makes it funnier.
If this one goes down well, Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers comes next in the series. This time Mirror-Belle offers to stand in for Ellen at her annoying cousin's birthday party, so Ellen can sneak off to a swimming party instead.
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